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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

#501

Post by icebraining »

adventured wrote: post #342
avip wrote: 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…

There's no such thing as a terms of service that gets you out of openly commiting fraud. The issue isn't the ToS. It's fighting Google in court. If fraud is occuring, the ToS will not actually protect you. You want to know what's keeping Jack Dorsey and Sundar Pichai up at night right now? They both recently openly lied to Congress and can be put in prison at any time for it. A powerful congressperson merely has to d…

What lies did Pichai tell Congress?

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

#502

Post by gambiting »

solatic wrote: post #465
gambiting wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? If you take them to court over this they would have to at least send a representative and that costs money - in a case like this they would almost definitely tell the engineering team to fix this specific case. Especially since this is in the UK so if Google lost they would be liable for the process fees. Maybe even small claims court would be enough, and that's 100% not worth sending a lawyer for.

Let's imagine for argument's sake that there's a developer account team inside Google which could pull the relevant machine levers and reinstate OP's account. OP has already talked to developer relations support managers who have proven to be unable to get the developer account team to comply. Why should a Google legal team be more successful than a developer relations support manager at getting the developer account…

You're correct if the case has any amount of complexity to it. This case does not. So unless they actually commit to it, the chances are very decent that the court will ask "yeah Google, why did you take this person's money and then closed their account? Unless you provide extremely compelling evidence for a good reason to close it, I'm going to order you to reopen that account".

You can't bury a small claims court in paperwork - that's by design. And like others have suggested, if you write the letter in plain language, stating that they should at least look over your case again or it will be taken as bad will by the court, then the legal team might request that this information be provided by the engineering team - who will in turn say ok yeah, this is bollocks. Or they might not and he will lose. Either way, I would at least send a letter indicating such intention.

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

#503

Post by floatingatoll »

pizza wrote: post #205
floatingatoll wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google does not seem bound by the burden of proof you describe. What evidence supports your claim?

They can do whatever they want but it's just a standard that I find valuable. That's my opinion, not a fact.

(For whatever it’s worth, I agree with your opinion, and wish it was legally binding upon them.)

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

#504

Post by HillaryBriss »

benologist wrote: post #490
JetSpiegel wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204419... Their revenue last year was 136 billions. Even if we charitable assume app developers spend 10 billions per annum in aggregate, that's only 10%. Ancillary revenue.

Android alone accounted for $31b revenue in 2016, according to Oracle, of which $22b was purportedly profit just for 2016. Excluding Android's contribution to their advertising ecosystem, which is another chunk of that $136 billion you mention. That's far more than 10% of their gross profit, but even if it was less why would that absolve Google of responsibility? The % doesn't create the customer the transactions do.…

Wait. I'm reading that differently.

I read it as saying $31 billion in revenue since Android was released, not in 2016 alone. That was more than 10 years ago.

And of that $31 billion, $22 billion is profit.

Finally, a lot of that revenue came from payments made to Google by handset operators, not app developer fees.

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

#505

Post by davchana »

calabin wrote: post #279
sbov wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Something I learned the hard way when I first started out in business is to never make your business dependent on a single entity. Seems impossible. Assuming you're an internet business, how did you make your business not dependent upon your domain registrar?

I can't remember the exact details of the story I read here on HN, but there was a case of some SaaS company that had this exact issue. Fortunately they were able to spread the word to temporarily use a backup domain on a different registrar via social media until the issue was resolved. If anyone reading this remembers that story, I would very much appreciate a link.

Jotform & Zoho had similar issues in the past.

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

#506

Post by mark_l_watson »

It is well understood what the benefits and potential problems of using Google Services are. Being an Android developer, like the company in this article, seems most problematic because unless you want to sell digital assets outside of the Play store, there is no alternative.

For individuals and other companies, it is easy enough to place an abstraction layer around using Google Services: have your own domain temporarily or perhaps permanently attached to a G Suite account. Be systematic about creating Google Takeaway data dumps and saving them yourself. When using GCP, write your own or use standard library wrappers around GCP APIs.

Then you get the advantages of using Google, protected against low probability of occurrence problems.

I also like to use Amazon and Microsoft services and I take similar precautions.

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

#507

Post by dgudkov »

bdibs wrote: 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.

One sometimes needs a lawyer to deal with the complexity of government laws. It seems like soon there will be a small thriving job market for "googlawyers" -- people who will earn they bread and butter by getting through the Google's bureaucracy.

PS. Jokes aside, it's a sad state of things.

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

#508

Post by massaman_yams »

coleca wrote: post #338
progval wrote: post #275

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.

Adding DMARC would put a stop to that.

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

#509

Post by HillaryBriss »

on_and_off wrote: post #165
heptathorp wrote: post #51

> 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…

It seems reasonable to me as well. So far 99% of the people I have seen complaining about their account being suspended were unwilling to read the ToS, even less to try to comply with them. I am pretty sure that the review process does mistakes as well, but as always bad actors spoil everything for everybody. FWIW, I had 2 apps removed from the play store earlier this month. They were all based on the same codebase (…

> ... when I coded the feature using that permission, it was legal to use it.

was it related to SMS?

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

#510

Post by HillaryBriss »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #444
heptathorp wrote: post #51

> 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 f…

> ... they can literally never be on the Google Play store ever again

question: is Google really that good at detecting the relationship between an account they banned, and some other new account created under a different name with someone else's credit card?

i mean couldn't this small business get another credit card under a different name and then create a totally new developer account under a different name -- and keep that all totally isolated from the previously banned account?

is that just not practically possible? if it worked at least initially -- what would they have to lose?

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