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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?

#111

Post by yeldarb »

comboy wrote: post #101
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…

I was just rationalizing in my head that I only hear one side of the story, that surely there were some good reasons they were banned. Google has a lot of users, and I only hear about those worst cases and so on. But no, get to the frontpage and poof, it's solved. It really sucks for all those startups who didn't have luck getting their post viral.

Even if you do go viral there's no guarantee :-/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3803568

It's 7 years later and my company is still banned from Adsense and to this day they've never told us why.

On the bright side, I should be seeing some of the class action settlement money any day now.. http://www.adsensepublishersettlement.com

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

#112

Post by protomyth »

sitkack wrote: post #95
JohnFen wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, the IRS is actually very good and the people who answer the phone know what they are doing. I also like that they really try to get a solution you can live with.

Never dealt with the state of ND, but my one dealing with Illinois makes me think its not confined to the tax department. I detail my problems with their DOT in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5521011#5521345

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

#114

Post by int_19h »

em500 wrote: post #59
deogeo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were banned for 'association' - that makes me believe that even if you set up a fresh account yourself, if someone that was previously banned works on it, and Google finds out, you could still be banned. Also, banned by Google != less than reputable.

Some form of 'association' is probably unavoidable, otherwise it would be trivial to game for truly bad actors. Big problem is that the current policy seems to insufficiently discriminatory between bad actors and accidental policy infringement. Perhaps they can start with short bans and rapidly increase ban length on recidivism.

Side note: this is basically what the hypothetical "private police" would look like, except it would be people and not apps that get removed...

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

#115

Post by nikofeyn »

mark-r wrote: post #90
kerng wrote: post #85

Google is automating things to a scary degree, with no way to appeal or ever even talk to a human. Unless you are a big corporation and have an account manager things can be tough. Similar with GCP, countless horror stories over the years. I wonder if Google ever plans to address these issues or if in grand money scheme of things it just doesnt matter.

This has been the way Google has worked from the beginning. Stories like this need to be shouted from the rooftops every time they happen, just to warn people. Google got to where they are today by building absolutely everything with a mind to scale, and justice doesn't scale.

turns out "don't be evil" doesn't scale.

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

#116

Post by fernandotakai »

avip wrote: post #103
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...

I moved all my deployments to google cloud. I've started to use it originally because BigQuery was light years ahead of any foreseeable competition (Athena didn't even exist). I've stayed for awesome firebase. gcp has great offerings.

their kubernetes offering is miles ahead of anyone else.

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

#117

Post by perl4ever »

mindslight wrote: post #79
mehrdadn wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you've had a bad experience with the IRS because otherwise it's really frustrating to see the government-targeted analog of libel. Imagine working hard and professionally to serve your country only to have your reputation tarnished like this.

That was not a political comment - merely remarking on the practicalities of dealing with large powerful organizations. While some aspects of interacting with the IRS may be refreshingly easy compared to expectations, they are not setup to be universally so. See the steep after-the-fact penalties for getting some types of things wrong (as opposed to simply just preventing them in the first place), as well as the proh…

"See the steep after-the-fact penalties for getting some types of things wrong (as opposed to simply just preventing them in the first place), as well as the prohibitive fees associated with "private letter rulings"."

Fees for private letter rulings don't seem like a problem to me, because people always have the option of arranging their affairs in a simple and straightforward manner. In order to deter gamesmanship, there needs to be a substantial cost to running close to the edge.

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

#118

Post by perl4ever »

em500 wrote: post #57
crooked-v wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not comfortable with the idea that Google can effectively dictate the employment prospects of all Android developers forever, regardless of past behavior.

Lifetime bans are pretty harsh, but some form of time-based penalty is probably quite reasonable to keep out truly bad actors and recidivists. (Even with the current measures, the Play store was/is teeming with malware and scammers.) Perhaps some simple form of exponentially increasing penalty (start with 3 months, double/triple/quadruple at every next ban).

Perhaps some simple form of justice system, as has been developed in many societies over centuries?

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

#119

Post by endorphone »

deogeo wrote: post #31
jayd16 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like the full story is always less than reputable contractors. Set up fresh accounts yourself, people!

They were banned for 'association' - that makes me believe that even if you set up a fresh account yourself, if someone that was previously banned works on it, and Google finds out, you could still be banned. Also, banned by Google != less than reputable.

Google is a bitch to deal with, and that they put up layers and layers of barriers to actually talking with a human being is infuriating and a massive risk to anyone doing business through them...

...however, let's consider the other possibility: Google is in a perpetual game of whack-a-mole with nefarious actors who are the ones putting the scams, malware filled trash, etc, on the Android store. They get knocked down and pop up again under a new account, $25 later. These people are never going to admit their actions when telling the tale, however, so I'm always a little skeptical.

That was one thing I appreciated about Apple's process, at least for a company account -- I had to provide various business documents, get a business search done, etc. If I get knocked down, I can't simply make up a new name and appear again. Clearly it isn't perfect, but it does seem to reduce the scum churn.

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

#120

Post by mindslight »

perl4ever wrote: post #117
mindslight wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was not a political comment - merely remarking on the practicalities of dealing with large powerful organizations. While some aspects of interacting with the IRS may be refreshingly easy compared to expectations, they are not setup to be universally so. See the steep after-the-fact penalties for getting some types of things wrong (as opposed to simply just preventing them in the first place), as well as the proh…

"See the steep after-the-fact penalties for getting some types of things wrong (as opposed to simply just preventing them in the first place), as well as the prohibitive fees associated with "private letter rulings"." Fees for private letter rulings don't seem like a problem to me, because people always have the option of arranging their affairs in a simple and straightforward manner. In order to deter gamesmanship,…

It's only a substantial cost to someone operating on a small scale, so it actually exacerbates the ability of the rich to engage in more gamesmanship than the middle class suckers.
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