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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

#441
> To put into perspective the situation we are in, imagine one of your neighbours commits a crime and is arrested by the police. You don’t know which neighbour has committed the crime but you are linked to each other by the street you live on and therefore you are ‘associated’ to that neighbour.

More like you handed over keys to your car to a neighbor and the next morning there's blood on the bumper and the cops are knocking on your door. You do bear some responsibility but since it's Google's store it's their rules and the analogy kinda breaks down because Google cuts off access in order to mitigate the impact of a Sybil attack.

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

#442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem is when you can't reasonably choose to do business with someone else and move on, as they are free to do with you. Something I learned the hard way when I first started out in business is to never make your business dependent on a single entity. Whether it's a supplier, or a publisher, or a telco, or whatever. They are all single points of failure, and unless you're a huge business, one failure can b…

Do you avoid companies that take only Master/Visa who are happy to prevent certain businesses receiving payment? All internet business that needs Google search to get visits? 5% bing doesn't really cut it. I mean it's easy to say and believe that you should avoid those single points of failure, but the real, practical landscape often includes many of them.

GP stated they avoid investing in them. i.e. the risk profile doesn't align with their I vestment strategy.

What you're bringing up is kind of obvious but also irrelevant.

I'd ask what businesses do they invest in and figure out if those businesses are really less risky. I would posit they are probably not. The risk of having amazon Google or apple being a single point of failure is abysmally small compared to all the other risks out there.

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

#443
post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

""trust" should depend on your own evaluation of the developer, based on metrics like how long their app has existed, customer reviews, what protections they have around handling data, etc. You have the ability to do a much better job evaluating trust than Apple or Google are likely to." Wow - no, we do not have the ability to ascertain the overall trustworthiness of a dev, certainly not better than Google or Apple.…

Assuming the developer has been in business for a significant amount of time, there are a lot of signals that help tell you whether an app is legit or not. As a random example, if I look for information aout Overcast (a fairly successful app from an independent developer), I get: * A bunch of reviews from users, very few of which sound fake: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/overcast/id888422857 * Articles about the ap…

"but Google and Apple don't really have any more information to go off of than you do regarding that "

Apple requires people to provide a business number among other things, and they have substantial ability to 'dig in' to a developers background.

Users have zero interest in this, and nobody has time to do some big investigation into some company for the sake of some app.

The whole point of the app stores are to filter through the crap for us and give us some idea of what's good and what's not.

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

#444

> I had created a Google Developer Account simply so I could pass on the login details to my app developers who uploaded and updated the app via my account each time. Sounds like one of those developers was previously banned for violating ToS and Google suspects the author is the same person with a new account trying to evade the ban. Instead of sharing login details, the correct thing to do is add a user and give th…

> The situation sucks but Google's action seems reasonable? Like they can't just let people create new accounts to evade bans.

It seems like the opposite of reasonable to me. You hit the nail on the head for _why_ this happened but this person now has _zero_ recourse for correcting their mistake.

Yes, they screwed up. They shouldn't have let them do it through their account. But now, because they screwed up, you're fine with the action that they can literally never be on the Google Play store ever again? The largest mobile store with the largest share of phones and you can't be on the store because of this?

Absolutely unacceptable.

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

#445
post #50

I actually just got my Google Ads account suspended because I forgot to update my billing address before adding a new card. The suspension was for "suspicious billing activity", tried appealing twice with the correct billing address, and was told the suspension is final (some automated email) both times. They won't take my calls because the account is suspended, which leaves me not being able to advertise on the #1 s…

> One tiny mistake leads you to a lifetime of suspension to a service vital to almost any business.

This really is where Google might be too big...

Since Google is such a force, and they don't have time to support or help people/companies lost in the algorithms, maybe competition is the only thing that can solve this because most companies are too small/medium for them to care.

Lots of these systems are probably well intentioned and risk averse by default, but in the end have too much influence on the market as a single point of failure.

Highly concentrated systems with single points of failure that fail on a large scale are bad, but even worse is highly concentrated systems that randomly get in an error loop but too small to correct, only here it is small/medium companies stuck in that algorithm purgatory vortex.

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

#446
post #225
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…

Caprices of TOS details, reviews, algorithms, service quality, or whatever are not the real problem. The real problem is when you can't reasonably choose to do business with someone else and move on, as they are free to do with you. Network effects are causing more and more important things to both expand into great significance and to be dominated by a single company (or pair of gatekeepers, both of whom must be app…

The first real recourse is not to invest your money or time in such an institution in the first place. It is foolhearty to ignore researching your busniess partners and I don't, for a minute, think these people failed to do so; they're just trying to recoup their money at this point.

Nobody is forcing you to use google products, and they are not a replacement for the real security in a business of loyal customers and employee's anyway. Why anyone ever consider investing in making apps for a phone given the way the market is today I will never understand.

Your second real recourse, if you can't get away from them and at that point this becomes a responsability, is to resist or fight them. In this case, getting some capital together and filing a class-action lawsuit. Another way to resist; make an app that roots the phone and poisions the data-brokers well by feeding them garbage information in a way that is impossible to effectively filter. Charge $5 a year, update the phone like antivirus updates it, have teams that work on popular vs unpopular apps, and before launching a campaign against a large app or investment firms, short the companies stock for added revenue. Invest in breaking the model of a closed ecosystem, which is required for all this spyware and for abusive EULA's to actually work right in the first place.

And when you do those sorts of things, you create a ruckus, and plenty of economic damage. That tends to draw the ire of law enforcement and government, and you will find that is the most effective way to demand new regulations. In politics, its only when you hit critical mass that change occurs.

And the final recourse, which is also a responsability that nobody likes to talk about. Their business addresses of them and their executive management can be found, and there are 17 guns per man women and child in the USA for a very good reason. You really have to fail as a society for violence to be justified and to be the only effective measure; arguably right now we're failing pretty hard if the fertility rates and life expectancy statistics are any measure. Google might not be responsable for that, but they are part of the symptom of a disease.

One could say the moment Google decided instant search was a requirement and began putting people in a bubble so effective that the only way to really survive was to decide free news is fake news. That at that moment violence became inevitable. I certainly hope it isn't.

But it is going to require people begin acting like grown-ups and taking some risks to avoid that. You'd do well to remember that.

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

#447

This is terrible and I feel for the developers. I trust that they are honest in their description of their side. I also acknowledge that Google have a long way to go in terms of communication. That said, I’ll offer an alternative history... The author hired developers who have previously uploaded malicious code to the Play store, or actively tried to circumvent restrictions on it. That developer uploaded an app, Goog…

You clearly have no knowledge or experience in this field at all. Because of you did you would have known that creating a new account after suspension immediately results into another suspension. Google is just a shit company. I don't need 50 sentences for that to explain. "A reasonable action by Google" Come on man. Do you have any idea what's going on here. You whole story sounds like big pile of crap.

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

#448

In some ways, I feel that this is a systemic problem with mobile app developers. Most these guys have barely any interest in technogy or innovation. As long as they can code something up and make a quick bug they are happy. They should have seen this coming when all their apps had to go through the playstore if they were serious about it. If they are half as serious about this as usual opensource community they would…

What a pile of crap you are saying. Generalizing entire groups. Very offending to some of us. The mobile dev industry is filled with talented and motivated Devs. What you say is not right. I would be the same as declaring you to the group of nerdy usually ugly developers working in dark rooms with pizza boxes everywhere. No interest for business and no interest for girls because they are all porn addicted.

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

#449

The real threat to Google will come when someone sues over this behavior as an antitrust case. This is part of "supply chain" antitrust law. It's sometimes called a "refusal to supply", where a manufacturer refuses to sell to a retailer. That's legal if it is not "part of a predatory or exclusionary strategy to acquire or maintain a monopoly."[1] If you're the only supplier of something, antitrust law starts to apply…

So few people understand this when these situations arise. We just need the right people with the right pockets and the right connections to DC to have such an issue.

The problem is that they don't. :(

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

#450
post #69

I don’t buy the guy’s analogy of crime and association. If you willingly lend the keys to your truck to someone else, and he or she commits a crime while using the vehicle, it might get impounded. Know the people whom you work with, or just do the work yourself.

This, also Mark accessed his account for the first time after this issue ? It sounds a lot like he gave his credentials to his dev team which is a major violation of the ToS of the play store. But hey, looks like reading these is too hard, better to just whine afterwards.

No he probably added team members to the playstore account. So people can login with their own Google accounts. That's a feature inside their product and accepted .
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