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Google terminated our startup's developer account – what do we do?

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Re: Google terminated our startup's developer account – what do we do?

#91

Post by mark-r »

braydo25 wrote: post #89

I'm not sure what specifically caused it, but a representative from the Play policy team just reached out to us and has given a thorough review of our developer account and reinstated it. We are extremely grateful to anyone in this community that may have played a hand in having a real person at the Play policy team reach out, as well as the ongoing conversation here to improve overall relations between the Play stor…

This has happened often enough in the past that they probably have a procedure in place. It keeps the internet from blowing up in their face but it doesn't solve the underlying problem.

Re: Google terminated our startup's developer account – what do we do?

#92

Post by JohnFen »

throwaway28883 wrote: post #50

Unfortunately, this is the way things go. If you are going to build a business on top of something offered by Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, etc, you will never rest easy because you should know your app can be killed at any time for any reason, right or wrong. These companies are omnipotent and untouchable. They have these automated systems in place because they have determined them to be the most cost effective w…

What you say here is correct. I learned a more generalized version of this with the first business I ever started:

if you are entirely dependent on a single supplier or a single customer, your business is very much at risk.

Re: Google terminated our startup's developer account – what do we do?

#93

Post by JohnFen »

kazinator wrote: post #39

What do we do? Put an .apk file up for download on a website you control.

That's viable. You can also use any of several alternative app stores. There are lots of people like myself (although we're the minority, obviously) who don't use Google Play at all anyway.

Re: Google terminated our startup's developer account – what do we do?

#94

Post by buxtehude »

PhoenixReborn wrote: post #81
alasdair_ wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I literally know zero people using Google Cloud. Everyone is on Amazon or Azure. Snapchat uses Google Cloud. So does Pokemon Go.

Bear in mind that Niantic (company behind Pokemon Go) was originally an incubated project within Google. So they have plenty of reasons to stick with GCP for the hosting. As for Snapchat they were originally on Google App Engine so that incentivised them to stick with the platform as well. But for new companies starting today it'd be a tough sell to use most of GCP.

Companies who see Amazon as a competitor are very often going to GCP instead of AWS.

There is also a growing trend of multi cloud deployments - using those that are best for your particular use case or increasing your fault tolerance.

Re: Google terminated our startup's developer account – what do we do?

#95

Post by sitkack »

JohnFen wrote: post #88
curun1r wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re actually fantastic and have a genuine desire to arrive at the correct number. I had one take over an hour on the phone to explain to me the logic behind the IRS’s position and, once it became clear that the problem was with a corrupted data import and the cost basis was incorrectly computed, took two more hours of his own time without me having to wait on the phone to arrive at the conclusion that the IRS act…

The IRS has always been good with me -- they've been fair and fast (for a federal government operation). My state's revenue department is the one I truly fear.

Illinois? Everything they ever sent was wrong.

Re: Google terminated our startup's developer account – what do we do?

#96

Post by dustindiamond »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #82
trhway wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, to start with the power of monopolies should be limited. Google with play store on Android is the MS with IE on Windows 20+ years ago.

No it's worse. Yes Microsoft used their market share and deep pockets to drink other companies milkshake, but they didn't use control over the OS to prevent uses from installing competitors software. As a friend said 10 years ago, this is the end of general purpose computing.

Oh, that is definitely not true.

Internal OS code was ‘tweaked’ to cause problems for certain 3rd party applications.

[edit]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DR-DOS#Competition_from_Micros...

Taken from child reply.

Re: Google terminated our startup's developer account – what do we do?

#97

Post by pjmlp »

ProAm wrote: post #47
noonespecial wrote: post #16

They seem to think they have plenty of developers to burn through like this as if they were some sort of consumable. But if every developer who has been banned can get other developers banned just by association, this will start slow and then move like an epidemic. They don't know it yet but unchecked this will seem to them to instantly become an existential threat to the play store. There's nothing like a geometric…

> They don't know it yet but unchecked this will seem to them to instantly become an existential threat to the play store Unfortunately when there are realistically only 2 app stores, and considering Apple devices cannot use the Google Play Store it doesn't matter. Google can do what it wants, just like Apple can do what it wants as for there is no real consequence. There will always be another developer willing to t…

Plenty of CRUD like apps can be done as mobile web sites.

Re: Google terminated our startup's developer account – what do we do?

#98

Post by dustindiamond »

buxtehude wrote: post #94
PhoenixReborn wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bear in mind that Niantic (company behind Pokemon Go) was originally an incubated project within Google. So they have plenty of reasons to stick with GCP for the hosting. As for Snapchat they were originally on Google App Engine so that incentivised them to stick with the platform as well. But for new companies starting today it'd be a tough sell to use most of GCP.

Companies who see Amazon as a competitor are very often going to GCP instead of AWS. There is also a growing trend of multi cloud deployments - using those that are best for your particular use case or increasing your fault tolerance.

Do you host your own k8s for multi-cloud? Rancher?

Re: Google terminated our startup's developer account – what do we do?

#99

Post by pjmlp »

jshowa3 wrote: post #15
nukeop wrote: post #6

So now anyone who has ever owned a terminated account is a Typhoid Mary and as Google refuses to provide any details about their bans and cuts all communications with banned accounts, it's like being exiled by a commandment from high above. People talk about possible future AI abuses but here we are with people getting abused by an AI system right now. Being banned from ever having a Google Play account is a death se…

That's what happens when you build a store architecture where its the only way to release an app. When stores were introduced offering built-in DRM, not allowing native apps, and only providing a license to use the software, it was only a matter of time before these things happened. Having no control or ownership of what you put on your machine was a death sentence. Problem is, people love stores like Steam and frequ…

Back in the Symbian and J2ME store days, there was actual support to talk to.

Re: Google terminated our startup's developer account – what do we do?

#100

Post by OkGoDoIt »

klardotsh wrote: post #71
josteink wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I literally know zero people using Google Cloud. Everyone is on Amazon or Azure. I can count the times google has burnt my hand though...

Welp, today you get to meet one, hi, I'm klardotsh! Don't get me wrong - I hate it and wish we were on AWS for a multitude of reasons, but we use Google Cloud at Lumen5 and despite my personal distaste for it, it mostly "just works" most of the time, even if almost zero of the setup is intuitive. Their Kubernetes offering is a stronger sell than AWS's (IMO) which is a big reason we've stuck with it.

At this point it's hard to quantify the likelihood of being ruined by Google arbitrarily banning you, but at some point that needs to factor into the calculation just like an SLA or major disaster insurance. If there's a 0.01% chance you'll get screwed by Google, but the service is 10% better/cheaper, maybe that's a worthwhile risk? But the numbers are not moving in the right direction.
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