Open letter from an Android developer to the Google Play team • Hacker News Board

Re: Open letter from an Android developer to the Google Play team

#21

Post by microcolonel » Sun, Aug 18, 2019, 11:31 PM UTC

bfrog wrote: post #17

Monopolies and walled gardens are wonderful, not. Anti consumer and anti competitive at every level. Google is like a black hole, there’s no escaping it.

They build the escape hatch right in to the platform. Epic games distributes their APK directly from their website, and so can you.

It's fun being on the Play Store while it works for you, but ultimately your access to it is conditional, and somewhat arbitrary.

At least you have the option though. Apple's platform is not like that.

Re: Open letter from an Android developer to the Google Play team

#22

Post by ngold » Sun, Aug 18, 2019, 11:48 PM UTC

rladd wrote: post #2

Google is equally horrible about adwords (and probably most other customer service related issues). They terminated our adwords account saying that there was something wrong with the site it was advertising and giving a list of 12 extremely general things which might be the problem, none of which seemed to apply. They also provided no way to respond or get in touch with anyone at all. Their advice was "fix whatever y…

An ad company middleman doesn't care about humans.

Re: Open letter from an Android developer to the Google Play team

#23

Post by HillaryBriss » Sun, Aug 18, 2019, 11:48 PM UTC

IMHO, an ethical course of action for Google employees is:

1. quit your job

2. apologize to the global community of users and developers

3. give half your money to a charity

Re: Open letter from an Android developer to the Google Play team

#24

Post by deogeo » Sun, Aug 18, 2019, 11:48 PM UTC

noarchy wrote: post #18

kevingadd wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The iOS app store is a monopoly. Are you arguing otherwise? There's no way to run an alternative store there. If it's really so easy to ship an alternative store on Android and Play Store isn't an artificial monopoly why are there no successful alternative stores? Is it because Google's is really the best possible store and thus a healthy, functioning market produces no competition ? Are people really choosing to be…

>The iOS app store is a monopoly. Are you arguing otherwise? There's no way to run an alternative store there. I have to agree, it is a monopoly within the context of iOS devices. Apple works fairly hard to patch iOS in order to prevent the latest jailbreaks, thus removing a major avenue where a user would have the freedom to sideload the apps of their choosing. In Google's case, while I don't think the Play Store is…

A better way of defining (near) monopolies is through market power [1]. It gets at the heart of the matter for which 'monopoly' is just a proxy - the ability of a company to shape the market, even if it has competitors.

For example, Microsoft never once had monopoly on operating systems...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_power

Re: Open letter from an Android developer to the Google Play team

#25

Post by lvs » Sun, Aug 18, 2019, 11:52 PM UTC

Google simply doesn't have any interest in customer service. It's just not part of the culture. When new services launch, it appears as if Googlers are running some of the interactions to give a good first impression, but soon after the buzz dies down, there's no longer any incentive to continue doing so. They automate as much as possible, and outsource the rest to farms abroad. This pattern repeats across all Google products and services.

Re: Open letter from an Android developer to the Google Play team

#26

Post by the_trapper » Sun, Aug 18, 2019, 11:53 PM UTC

kevingadd wrote: post #16

torben-friis wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of the reason, the fact that you can have your livelihood taken away without an explanation or human contact is pretty worrying.

Doesn't have to be taken away by Google either. They're extremely bad at processing DMCA notices, so a competitor or malicious teen can take you off the store for weeks. No recourse.

For this reason I would never trust my livelihood with the Play Store. Beer money, yes, paying my bills, hell no.

Re: Open letter from an Android developer to the Google Play team

#27

Post by pdonis » Sun, Aug 18, 2019, 11:54 PM UTC

_nickwhite wrote: post #20

Google is what, a 3/4 TRILLION dollar company, based on market cap! It's absolutely unfathomable that they have such a prolific reputation of non-customer service and inability to contact them. Any other company would suffer massive consequences with customer service that poor. What will it take for them to turn this around? Maybe they believe they are too big for this to matter?

> they have such a prolific reputation of non-customer service

No, they don't, because Android developers and users are not Google's customers. Google gets no direct revenue from them so it has no incentive to provide the kind of customer service that would be expected for a paying customer. The only incentive they have is to provide whatever services will get them more revenue from their actual customers: ad purchasers.

Re: Open letter from an Android developer to the Google Play team

#28

Post by OJFord » Sun, Aug 18, 2019, 11:55 PM UTC

brokenmachine wrote: post #13

ImNotTheNSA wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of their reasoning is that if they publish the rulebook, then people will find ways to misuse the services in a roundabout way. It’s easier to find bugs in source material you can see, than that you cannot. I don’t agree with this, but I think it’s most likely the reasoning.

They can have a catch-all at the end to cover those situations. They make the rules, so the rules can include, "you can be removed at the discretion of google" at the end.

If it makes you feel better, you could view the current rules as consisting solely of that line?

Re: Open letter from an Android developer to the Google Play team

#29

Post by kevinyew » Sun, Aug 18, 2019, 11:59 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #27

_nickwhite wrote: post #20

Google is what, a 3/4 TRILLION dollar company, based on market cap! It's absolutely unfathomable that they have such a prolific reputation of non-customer service and inability to contact them. Any other company would suffer massive consequences with customer service that poor. What will it take for them to turn this around? Maybe they believe they are too big for this to matter?

> they have such a prolific reputation of non-customer service No, they don't, because Android developers and users are not Google's customers. Google gets no direct revenue from them so it has no incentive to provide the kind of customer service that would be expected for a paying customer. The only incentive they have is to provide whatever services will get them more revenue from their actual customers: ad purchas…

Except they get a cut of app sales and in app purchases, so this doesn't make any sense. Why would they bother running the Play Store at all if it didn't make them money?

Re: Open letter from an Android developer to the Google Play team

#30

Post by tylermenezes » Mon, Aug 19, 2019, 12:03 AM UTC

Guidebook, a 70+ person company, also appears to have just had their account banned as of yesterday morning.

It's an app that tells you what's happening at conventions. Hard to see the bad faith there, but I bet the conventions they've signed contracts with this week will be very unhappy.

The co-founder has taken to tweeting at his network to try to find a contact. Crazy to think a rogue algorithm might put 70 people out of work if he can't find someone quickly enough.