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Google removed my ads-free app for “deceptive ads”

purpleleafsoftware.com

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Re: Google removed my ads-free app for “deceptive ads”

#211

Post by dmitryminkovsky »

r_singh wrote: post #149
quickthrower2 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. Although I mostly use google for [Technical Keyword] not working with [Technical Keyword], rather than [Who should I vote for]. I actually use hn.algolia.com more often when I want an opinion on something important to me :-)

I use hn.algolia.com as a more reliable source to look for info & opinion on a lot of things a lot more than I use google. I feel like there ought to be a google competitor now that google is so crappy.

> I feel like there ought to be a google competitor now that google is so crappy.

I switched to DDG on my phone and it’s good. Recommend it.

Re: Google removed my ads-free app for “deceptive ads”

#212

Post by dmitryminkovsky »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #197
czechdeveloper wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's feudalism, because you don't have a choice.

You have a choice, the choices are just worse. I tried using DDG for a long time, but it's just _terrible_ for technical queries.

Not as good as google, but it still makes sense to make it (or something else) your default search engine for those 99% of times it actually works just fine.

Re: Google removed my ads-free app for “deceptive ads”

#213

Post by Yizahi »

majewsky wrote: post #182
maxxxxx wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems this will be our future. A lot of systems will be massive, automated and do mostly the right thing. But to cut cost there will be no way to fix errors so if you get caught up in such a situation you are just sorry, out of luck.

Why so nihilistic? Systems are like that because people designed them this way . If it takes regulations to fix that problem, I'm all for it.

[flagged]

Re: Google removed my ads-free app for “deceptive ads”

#214

Post by giantsloth »

ucaetano wrote: post #90
echelon wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they're not equal citizens on mobile devices. Web often feels sluggish on mobile, and it doesn't have the same access to device and hardware APIs, nor does it allow low-level control of concurrency and allocation. (I don't want to get off topic about HTML/JS. It does a lot of jobs well.) There could have been an open, cross-platform native app stack if Apple and Google and a consortium of other companies had join…

You can do all of that, just download the apk. What you seem to want is that app stores should be forced to accept any apps? The rest is just saudosistic nostalgia. There wasn't mass access to the internet, you're just missing the times when a small elite had access to the internet. Consumers are far better now than they were.

The implication of “Consumers are far better now than they were” is that they are better, because of the App Store. This is false, completely illogical, and a straw man argument (as no one suggest users of tech have it worse in 2019 then 2005). Consumers are better off now, because technology has gotten better, not because App Stores have made things better. App Stores have actively caused harm to the consumers through lock in and through a compression of imagination amongst end users of how much better things could be.

You’re also factually incorrect about “a small elite had access to the internet”. That may have been true in the 80s, but by 2000 usage was at 50% and climbed to 75% by 2010. I mean the dot com boom was predicated on wide user adoption, so I don’t even know why you would even think that stat made inuitive sense.

https://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/internet-broadband/

Re: Google removed my ads-free app for “deceptive ads”

#215

Post by czechdeveloper »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #197
czechdeveloper wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's feudalism, because you don't have a choice.

You have a choice, the choices are just worse. I tried using DDG for a long time, but it's just _terrible_ for technical queries.

I can replaces search, i use DDG as default, I have simple shortcut to google.

But I use gmail, google docs, Android with many google integrations. I could find alternatives, but really not as good. And mostly it would be just another company, where I'm not sure I can trust either.

Local and self-hosted options are just really not good enough. For example in MS Excel, I can't load actual currency tickers, or share it simply.

I also use Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter. If I don't I'll just have no voice.

I have my own web, but nobody goes there.

Open Internet is gone for me.

Re: Google removed my ads-free app for “deceptive ads”

#216

Post by coredog64 »

Tsubasachan wrote: post #193
golergka wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're a mobile app developer, what choice do you have?

On Android you can easily sideload apps. So there is a choice. I understand that 90% of people get their apps exclusively from the Play Store but that is not because Google is evil. Its because people prefer one store were they can find everything: the supermarket model.

My previous employer made it a condition of their BYOD mobile policy that I wouldn’t side load apps onto my device.

So even though it’s technically possible, it’s not always a going to happen.

There’s also side loading as a malware vector. If you do side load, you need to remember to turn off non-AppStore access immediately after.

Re: Google removed my ads-free app for “deceptive ads”

#217

Post by weberc2 »

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #211
r_singh wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use hn.algolia.com as a more reliable source to look for info & opinion on a lot of things a lot more than I use google. I feel like there ought to be a google competitor now that google is so crappy.

> I feel like there ought to be a google competitor now that google is so crappy. I switched to DDG on my phone and it’s good. Recommend it.

I’ve been using DDG full time everywhere for a year and it was really good but has become pretty bad in the last few months. I begrudgingly have to open Google more and more. Not sure what is up.

Re: Google removed my ads-free app for “deceptive ads”

#218

Post by weberc2 »

andreareina wrote: post #208
pavel_lishin wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a choice, the choices are just worse. I tried using DDG for a long time, but it's just _terrible_ for technical queries.

I use DDG as my main engine and I find that to be true. Unfortunately even Google's become pretty bad, I never know when it's going to ignore one word of my two-word query.

I often find DDG will even ignore quoted terms altogether. It was really good for a while, but it has gone downhill and now I need to open Google a few times a day.

Re: Google removed my ads-free app for “deceptive ads”

#219

Post by dahfizz »

rswail wrote: post #156
dahfizz wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When there are free and open source alternatives like fdroid, I don't see how the law could force Google to host an app that they don't want to. Google only gatekeeps what they host, not what exists on the platform. I do think there is a case here against apple because they do gatekeep what the user has access to, but people love to fine Google way more than they do apple, even tough apple is infinitely more anticomp…

How is Apple anti-competitive in terms of iOS? They onbly supply iOS to themselves and the App Store is only available to Apple products. You could argue that they take advantage of the desire of app developers to access their market, but that's not "anticompetitive". It's unfair, but life wasn't meant to be fair.

Google has been fined before for optionally bundling free apps with Android. How is that anticompetitive when apple forcibly bundles thier software and ecosystem with thier hardware?

IANAL but I think it's an unfortunate result of how the antitrust laws work. Because Google provides a free OS and works with partners to make handsets, etc, they fall under extreme scrutiny. But apple doubles down on being a walled garden where you must use only thier hardware, software, and app platform. Because they don't have any partners like Google does, there's no interactions that apple has that can be taken as anticompetitive, even though the way they force thier users into thier ecosystem is very anticompetitive imo.

Re: Google removed my ads-free app for “deceptive ads”

#220

Post by shawnz »

antocv wrote: post #134
quickthrower2 wrote: post #119

From the blog comments: > Good luck man. I had an app removed because someone did a review of it and their review had screenshots of my app and Google banned the app for copyright infringement siting them as the source. No appeal, one strike, never got through to a human. If true that’s laughablly insane.

You, still using google for anything, is insane. OK, harsh word, but really, your behaviour is modified by the search results/ads/suggestions you see. Every search you do, leans you to continue using Google in the future, and looking at the web through their eyes.

Bubbling (something Google does intentionally to make the user experience better) is a much different and much less serious problem than the fact that Google offers inadequate customer support and has a heavy-handed banning policy
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