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Open letter from an Android developer to the Google Play team

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

#31

Post by zaroth »

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…

Obviously, they get a cut of App Store revenue. Android is worth many billions of dollars to Google, and having quality apps on the store is an essential part of the ecosystem.

To be sure, this is Google failing in a way that they should care about, and likely do care about, but failing none-the-less.

The reason is because their culture will not allow them to succeed in these types of human interactions. And there is no doubt that that culture is poisonous and will ultimately bite them hard, on Android, on Search, and I think most of all on YouTube.

IMO, this will eventually cost them billions of dollars, whether it is in lost revenue due to apps that are no longer on the store, end users switching to alternative products, or hostile legislation and fines.

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

#32

Post by pdonis »

kevinyew wrote: post #29
pdonis wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> they get a cut of app sales and in app purchases

Yes, but that doesn't make developers their customers. It makes developers their business partners, and business partners in a hugely asymmetric relationship, since there are zillons of developers and would-be developers and only one of Google.

Basically, an individual developer is negligible to them because there are always more where that one came from. So they have no incentive to handle particular edge cases with particular developers; they just remove that developer and another one takes their place. Most developers don't throw edge cases at them, so this strategy works fine for them.

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

#33

Post by zwily »

kevinyew wrote: post #29
pdonis wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

They know that whatever algorithm is used here will fire off some false positives. They also believe that paying people to review in order to correct the false positives is not worth it.

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

#34

Post by sneak »

torben-friis wrote: post #11
ziggity wrote: post #8

Without knowing more about the "sophisticated anti-piracy system" employed by the app author, it's hard to determine if Google's claim of malicious behaviour is valid. This could be something as simple as bytecode obfuscation, or something as complex as scraping every bit of personal information available through possibly-questionable means and sending to an insecure server. Copy protection schemes are notoriously us…

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

His livelihood was not taken away; he is still free to program for a trade or to sell his apps directly to users.

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

#35

Post by pdonis »

zaroth wrote: post #31
pdonis wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Obviously, they get a cut of App Store revenue. Android is worth many billions of dollars to Google, and having quality apps on the store is an essential part of the ecosystem. To be sure, this is Google failing in a way that they should care about, and likely do care about, but failing none-the-less. The reason is because their culture will not allow them to succeed in these types of human interactions. And there is…

> this will eventually cost them billions of dollars

It might, but that problem, if you think it's a problem, is not fixable by Google providing better service to developers, because better service to developers would prevent their current business model for apps from scaling, and without scaling it won't make them money.

> their culture will not allow them to succeed in these types of human interactions

Their culture might be the immediate cause, but I think the root cause is the economics of the business model they have chosen. The only way to fix that would be to choose a different business model, and the obvious alternate business model would be to sell their services like search, maps, gmail, play store, etc. directly to their users, making their users into customers. But I don't think that option is open to them at this point, and it might not be open to anyone without a huge disruption of the entire industry.

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

#36

Post by mflare »

kevingadd wrote: post #15
noarchy wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don’t think it’s spiteful or childish to suggest breaking up a monopoly in these circumstances although I would say less drastic options should be tried first. You've shown your hand here, in a way, by suggesting that Google is a monopoly in this instance. Android devices can install apps via other sources, like F-Droid or Amazon, or even just by side loading. There's no denying that out of the box , most Android…

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…

Although it is possible to distribute Android apps through other channels, you should not forget that for some applications you are still bound to Google. Due to the changes in Android Oreo regarding background services, you need Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) for a Messenger or other communication app to get the device out of Doze mode and to deliver push notifications without delay. If Google closes your account, you can still distribute the app through other stores, but FCM won't work anymore and there's no replacement for it.

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

#37

Post by beached_whale »

noarchy wrote: post #9
jarym wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google’s dominant position in the market is enabling it to abuse its position by treating customers unfairly and not as one might be treated if there was more competition. I don’t think it’s spiteful or childish to suggest breaking up a monopoly in these circumstances although I would say less drastic options should be tried first.

>I don’t think it’s spiteful or childish to suggest breaking up a monopoly in these circumstances although I would say less drastic options should be tried first. You've shown your hand here, in a way, by suggesting that Google is a monopoly in this instance. Android devices can install apps via other sources, like F-Droid or Amazon, or even just by side loading. There's no denying that out of the box , most Android…

monopoly doesn't mean that you cannot go elsewhere, it has to do with the reality that when an entity has such a dominant position in the market they are not the same as if they wouldn't have been. Often this comes with extra constraints on how they are allowed to behave, such as using their dominance in one market to buy their way into others, or how they charge for services.

As far as units sold, iOS makes up about 14% of the market, Android makes up 85% and a majority of apps sold are via Googles App Store.

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

#38

Post by cameronbrown »

HillaryBriss wrote: post #23

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

Who are you to say what's ethical or not?

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

#39

Post by mavelikara »

zaroth wrote: post #31
pdonis wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Obviously, they get a cut of App Store revenue. Android is worth many billions of dollars to Google, and having quality apps on the store is an essential part of the ecosystem. To be sure, this is Google failing in a way that they should care about, and likely do care about, but failing none-the-less. The reason is because their culture will not allow them to succeed in these types of human interactions. And there is…

> this will eventually cost them billions of dollars

It does - in Google Cloud. This reputation of automated customer service played a non-trivial part in the initial lukewarm response enterprise customers gave. The Eng teams at potential customers looked at the way Google treated their marketing teams and steered clear from Google's - sometimes superior - offerings.

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

#40

Post by HillaryBriss »

cameronbrown wrote: post #38
HillaryBriss wrote: post #23

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

Who are you to say what's ethical or not?

it's just my opinion. everybody has one.
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