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Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account

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Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account

#391
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “ This ultimately hurts app stores ” Good, app stores need to die.

App stores are the least-unreliable mechanism I have to trust executable code. I don’t even enable JavaScript by default. Do you have an alternative trust mechanism that can’t be subverted via, for example, algorithmic voting?

> App stores are the least-unreliable mechanism I have to trust executable code. I don’t even enable JavaScript by default.

How did the rest of us ever live through the 80s and 90s when we had to purchase software from physical stores based on reviews in magazines and word-of-mouth...

More seriously, the PC software industry works well without app stores, download sites usually check for malware to some extent and successful publishers earn trust by not screwing over their users.

Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account

#392

The question I always have with this stuff is this: To attract developers, these platforms make some promises. A "review" process for supposed violations of TOS causing cancellations is always among them. But to me these "reviews" always seem either completely faked or some version of a lowest-level employee simply restating that the algo has made its choice and they are powerless. More incriminating is that every ti…

I think recourse to Google's behavior, has to be through appeal to mobile operators.

it is not just google that makes promises or benefits from positive user experience, availability of options to end users and so on.

Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account

#393
Google is all about scale. The one thing that doesn't scale is personal service, so they don't offer it - it's not part of their DNA. Getting a human to make a judgement call on any decision is near impossible, because that's the way Google designed their company.

It has been that way from the start and probably will be that way forever. Stories like this go back ages.

Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account

#394

The question I always have with this stuff is this: To attract developers, these platforms make some promises. A "review" process for supposed violations of TOS causing cancellations is always among them. But to me these "reviews" always seem either completely faked or some version of a lowest-level employee simply restating that the algo has made its choice and they are powerless. More incriminating is that every ti…

Same thing happened to me on PayPal when I reported a fraudulent transaction. Automated process said nope it’s not fraudulent and I was unable to appeal this.

It wasn’t until a few times contacting them and DMing their support team on twitter that I was able to force an actual person to look at the obviously fraudulent transaction and fix it up instantly.

The algorithms suck, if I say someone took money from my account with an email and name that I’ve never seen before then you can’t just say nope not fraudulent!

Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account

#395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how did you make your business not dependent upon your domain registrar? It wasn't an internet business, so I didn't have to deal with those kinds of perils. But more to your point, I knew a guy who put one on .com, one on .info, one on a county tld. Advertising material rotated through the three. His logic was that it didn't really matter what address was advertised because people just hit a search engine for the br…

Seems effective, but I assume he took a huge SEO penalty, possibly without being aware of it. The search relevance of the site got divided by all the domains.

Google at least is smart enough to identify alias domains, and you can even tell it how to behave in the search console

Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account

#396
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So says you. This is what the ToS say: Google may terminate this Agreement with You for any reason with thirty (30) days' prior written notice. In addition, Google may, at any time, immediately suspend or terminate this Agreement with You if: (a) You have breached any provision of this Agreement, any non-disclosure agreement or other agreement relating to Google Play or the Android platform; (b) Google is required to…

This agreement requires 30 days notice if your agreement is not terminated for breach of terms. So in the case that you have a dispute, they could in fact be in breach of the terms without that 30 days notice. E.g. They can't just say "we don't want to do business with you anymore starting now," at least from this clause.

They could presumably argue that they close your account today, but the agreement is terminated 30 days in the future.

Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account

#397
post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google may terminate this Agreement with You for any reason with thirty (30) days' prior written notice. The irony's that the mentioned notice was sent to the junk folder by Gmail. (I'm assuming Gmail from the screenshots)

I see this all the time. Legit mail from Google gets stopped by Googles own spam filters on our Corp google apps account. But clearly forged phishing emails purporting to be from our CEO (sent “from” their email address but not from Googles own servers when we use Google apps and have DKIM/SPF setup) gets through to the inboxes.

I just found my Google support chat transcript in my spam folder on Gmail.

Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account

#398
Pretty scary they associate accounts like that.

I know some web developers that have to login to client's Google accounts... For example, using Gmail to download/send mail via their hosting account. Convenience to have it all in one place but some clients who are small business owners don't really want to or know how to deal with things like setting up their email putting in the IMAP and POP details.

Then if you make apps for example, if the company isn't a tech startup you'd be the one uploading the app too. Say they are a small restaurant chain and you wrote them an app.

Also there's local seo companies where companies will manage small businesses Google Business page listings for them too.

There was a story posted about an entire company that got their GSuite banned, and employee's personal accounts unrelated to work got deleted too. https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/8kvias/tifu_by_gettin...

I like many other people use Google services daily, and a fan of some of their products. However support seems like a blackhole from many other stories online, other's that made it to HN too.

Not sure I'd want to use them for anything business related (Domains, Hosting, Internet, Phone, etc), other than publishing to the Play Store if I ever made an app since you are kinda forced to if you want a popular app that's cross platform. I forget the post but a few days ago people on HN was talking about Google's Cloud offerings and recommended not using any cloud specific APIs. I haven't really been following Google's cloud offerings but I know AWS offers a lot of APIs for databases, etc - but the idea is to use tools and programs that can run on any cloud so it's easy to switch if you wanted or needed too without being locked in. Good general advice no matter who the provider is though.

Google Fi interests me but I remember on the top page of HN someone had a billing problem, and not sure if that was solved. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18886804

Google Fi is supposed to be really useful for people who travel internationally for example, with iPhone support recently added but visual voicemail, etc isn't supported yet... If they add visual voicemail in the future I'd be more interested in switching but support is a concern for me.

Also YouTube other people talk about, don't have that as your only income stream is one of the points. However if you are popular enough I've heard you get like some sort of account manager assigned to you, so maybe they get higher priority for support issues.

Re: Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account

#399
I hate to say it, but Jesus, this is one of the worst apps I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen bootcamp coders create better apps after just a month in bootcamp. I can’t believe you spent $25K on this, did you use one of those Indian app shops...? It kinda shows.
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