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Open letter from an Android developer to the Google Play team

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121–130 of 244 posts

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

#121
I think it´s funny with that much comments, none of them are really on the core issue here.

Just imagine if Tim Berners-Lee banded together with Mark Andreessen to create a closed and centralized platform, were they could centrally control everything.

Thats why i think the mobile phone plataforms are a real danger to a world were the information flows freely and were no government or company can control.

People are giving to much power to those companies, and when they do what a lot of people know they would do, they just wip, and try to contact his digital lord to just have mercy.

Dont neal, dont help them kill the spirit behind a world were people can access the things they want without any sort of centralized control.

Its beyond me how many people are so worried about government controlling their freedom, but are ok with companies doing it.

We do not need to accept this. The problem is in the app store model.. (they could create it, as long other could compete, but they could NEVER choose what you can access) and guess what, now our governments are too are weak to regulate them.

They can spy on us, know what we are doing, help shady government agencies, control what you see, listen, access and in the end shape what you think (Remember all the mess the simple 'like' Facebook algorithm did to the world.. its too dumb. It reminds me "Donnie Darko" with that shady coaching of "everything should be on the hate-or-love axis").

The despotic government of the future for me is a bunch of big tech companies who control information, and the lives of all of us united to have a world were they will be all powerful and always relevant.

People dont seem to know the dangers we are facing. This is very serious, and its a glimpse of the future. Think how much of what you understand as your right will be suddenly terminated by despotic tech companies who are too powerful to be controled or regulated.

It´s even worse, if you think we are in the dawn of the AI and what a very powerful player can do to keep the control.

You can think im exagerating, and i really hope im wrong, but its a real possibility, and we should not let this awful future be materialized because we did not see how this could be possible.

And to help you figure it out, if you travelled back in time to tell your 2010 self how the world would be in 2019, do you think he would believe it? We are living in idiocracy all over the world, and we use to laugh to those sort of movies. (Dr. Strangelove will soon look a lot like a documentary of the modern days)

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

#122

I'm the developer of a relatively popular app (50M+ on the Play Store) and have had very disappointing experiences with the Play Store, but in a rather opposite way from the OP: Once an app reaches a certain level of popularity, you begin to see "knock-off" apps, which are apps with a curiously similar name and icon (and screenshots and description), but which in fact don't do anything except blast the user with full…

Google wins when users see ads, that's their whole reason to exist. They're not on your side in this battle as those ad impressions are cash in the bank.

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

#123

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?

> Google is what, a 3/4 TRILLION dollar company, based on market cap!

Their market cap is about 800 billion...I don't think 3 trillion dollar companies exist yet

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

#124

I keep hearing stories like this and I remain utterly bemused that the median narrative about Android vs iOS has barely changed in response. There's a lot to love about Android, but I think more people in the tech sector need to realise that their mental model of the phone marketplace has more to do with historical perception of Android being "hacker friendly" than the current realities. Android is open source! Oh wa…

Yes everyone should be rich enough to buy a 1000 dollar Apple phone. Also, you get to decide if I want more than one camera app or not ? Stop imposing your world view on others. Android made smartphones accessible to many people across the globe. You won't mention that would you ? Won't fit your narrative.

> Yes everyone should be rich enough to buy a 1000 dollar Apple phone.

I bought an iPhone 7 from Net10 about 5 months ago for $220 shipped. It requires a minimum $20 a month plan for 12 months before I can unlock it. About 2 years ago I got my mom an iPhone SE for $140 with similar plan/unlock. Both brand new.

They’re not everyday prices and not the newest model but it is possible to go iOS without breaking the bank.

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

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is incorrect. I have rented a movie from Google. I am their customer in every sense of the word. I cannot get customer service for my rental. Whether something is free or not has almost nothing to do with the service you get unless your account is in the tens of millions of dollars.

It was probably worth more to them to know you watched it, than to rent it to you.

You may be grossly overestimating ad prices. A datum is damn near worthless, but data in the aggregate is valuable because of the scale of these companies.

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

#126

I keep hearing stories like this and I remain utterly bemused that the median narrative about Android vs iOS has barely changed in response. There's a lot to love about Android, but I think more people in the tech sector need to realise that their mental model of the phone marketplace has more to do with historical perception of Android being "hacker friendly" than the current realities. Android is open source! Oh wa…

I personally like that my phone has expandable memory and iPhone features 3 years before the iPhone.

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

#127
Can we just get a proper Linux phone already? I could whip up a (rough) GUI for a WiFi phone in no time and all the software I want to use is already there - or could be developed relatively easily. Hell, Ubuntu's Gnome is almost a tablet OS anyway at this point, has relatively good drivers, stability, etc.

The WiPhone is so unbelievably close to what I want [1] (+). I really wish it had a web browser though (which would likely require a beefier processor). I think the Pi compute module is asking to become a mobile device with the possibility of a good upgrade path too [2] (++).

(+) Still waiting to ship it seems although I think they are acting in good faith.

(++) The idea of using the DDR2 laptop RAM connector is genius IMO. They can also borrow the DDR3 and DDR4 connectors when the time comes for more pins.

[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2103809433/wiphone-a-ph...

[2] https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-compute-module...

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

#128
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yup. For whatever Amazon's other faults may be, they will do stuff like assign actual human salespeople to your account, who have the time to listen to you and the authority to do things. You can create problem tickets for their services, which go to skilled engineers somewhere that have the time and authority to run down and address any weirdness you encounter with their services. Plus they keep even their old servi…

Is this not the case for GCP? I recently switched to a company running on GCP and I don't have tons of exposure to our infra, but from what I've seen, GCP reps are VERY hands-on. Even in my non-infra role, I've been exposed to several different instances of them being hands on: in setting us up, in discussing our resource needs (we're a very heavy GPU compute customer), in tracking down issues (even when the problem is likely on our end).

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

#129

I keep hearing stories like this and I remain utterly bemused that the median narrative about Android vs iOS has barely changed in response. There's a lot to love about Android, but I think more people in the tech sector need to realise that their mental model of the phone marketplace has more to do with historical perception of Android being "hacker friendly" than the current realities. Android is open source! Oh wa…

Yes everyone should be rich enough to buy a 1000 dollar Apple phone. Also, you get to decide if I want more than one camera app or not ? Stop imposing your world view on others. Android made smartphones accessible to many people across the globe. You won't mention that would you ? Won't fit your narrative.

An iPhone SE is $238 in India, $299-449 in the US. Similar pricing exists for the iPhone 6 & 6s, and the iPhone 7 is quite good while still well under $1000 most places.

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

#130

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?

> Google is what, a 3/4 TRILLION dollar company, based on market cap! Their market cap is about 800 billion...I don't think 3 trillion dollar companies exist yet

3/4 = 0.75 ~$750-800B
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