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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

#201

Post by cmsj »

chx wrote: post #55
aikah wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the danger of building your entire business on someone else's platform. Now Android is a bit more open than Apple's App store since on can install third party apps outside Google Play, but I personally always got an answer from Apple, even if it took 3/4 weeks, every-time there was an issue with a deployed application. Google? Unless you know somebody there or you are a big shot it's impossible to contact them,…

> It's the danger of building your entire business on someone else's platform. This is so often repeated but by this logic noone should write mobile apps.

I'd say that's incomplete logic. Nobody should write exclusively mobile apps.

Write your service as a web site, and have native apps for a better and more integrated user experience.

I see this as an extension of the way the web is supposed to degrade gracefully.

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

#202

Post by ajscanlan »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #187
ajscanlan wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To run an .ipa on a real device you need to sign it with an Apple developer account, costs $99 a year.

I thought it has been free for your own device for years: https://www.pcworld.com/article/2933052/apple-frees-casual-i...

Ah! I did not know that, it's been so long since I've not had a developer account. But yes it seems you are right.

Do you still have to re-sign the .ipa every 7 days to have it run on the device?

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

#203

Post by Shaddox »

wutbrodo wrote: post #125
fourthark wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

User tracking seems to be far more valuable than ads. I'm currently subcontracting for a specific large media trust. Ad contracts are in total about 6 figure numbers. User tracking, sponsored content and skins (custom stylesheets with a sponsor's branding and tracking) are very substantial 7 or 8 digit contracts.

While it's true his own activity isn't worth much, it's still a piece of a very lucrative pie. There are services already oriented specifically around user tracking.

I guess they're oing by the principle of individual behavior is unpredictable, but mass behavior is.

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

#204

Post by Fnoord »

peterwwillis wrote: post #104
gwbas1c wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Class action lawsuit

In theory yes, but I can't imagine what the claim would be; "They won't let me make a business out of selling apps on their platform" ? It feels like monopoly would be easier to prove: "There is no other competitor to provide an app on these devices and people depend on them for critical tasks". In a way, this mimics the breakup of Ma Bell. AT&T controlled all the phone service, and they also created all the hardware…

> In theory yes, but I can't imagine what the claim would be; "They won't let me make a business out of selling apps on their platform" ?

The narrative is that they killed the business without a fair due process. Then they wouldn't listen to the "customer"'s complaint or questions for clarification. It is bad "customer" service.

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

#205

Post by cmsj »

mayankkaizen wrote: post #109
lern_too_spel wrote: post #89

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.

You are still more of a product than a customer. Renting a movie vs giving your data. Guess which is more important to google? If Google were purely in a business of renting movies, it would have give you some customer service. But it isn't in that business, so it won't give you a damn.

Google rarely gives good customer service to any of their customers. Good customer service requires lots of humans, which, in the Google hivemind, "doesn't scale" and is therefore not worth doing.

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

#206

Post by cmsj »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #188
UncleMeat wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a system that tells malware authors precisely what behavior triggered an alarm is also not great. There is no solution.

There is a very simple solution. Have a competetent reviewer look at the code and decide whether the intent is malicious or not. If the intent is clearly not malicious and no rules were broken, the reviewer should file a bug report to fix the virus scanner and reinstate the developer account. No further explanation required. If rules were breached but it may have been done in good faith, issue a warning to the develo…

"Have a competent reviewer" - requires humans, humans don't scale, proposed solution is not Googley.

(this is sarcasm, but from talking to Googler friends over the years, I doubt it's far from the truth)

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

#207

Post by [deleted] »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #187
ajscanlan wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To run an .ipa on a real device you need to sign it with an Apple developer account, costs $99 a year.

I thought it has been free for your own device for years: https://www.pcworld.com/article/2933052/apple-frees-casual-i...

[deleted]

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

#208

Post by rahimnathwani »

KenanSulayman wrote: post #161
Illniyar wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All those things don't really matter, the only thing that matters is that you cannot sideload apps in iOS. As long as you can sideload apps in android, it will always have a better reputation than somewhere you cannot. But even those things you mention, they are all part of a scale, even if android becomes more closed-source it's still miles more open-source than iOS, even if it delays new app submissions it's still…

Just resign the app IPA file and you can literally drag and drop it through Xcode onto your iOS devices. Unless you mean pirating apps with sideloading...

This only works if you:

- Sign up for a free developer account, and

- Are willing to re-install the app every week

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

#209

Post by Yizahi »

mprev wrote: post #159
Illniyar wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All those things don't really matter, the only thing that matters is that you cannot sideload apps in iOS. As long as you can sideload apps in android, it will always have a better reputation than somewhere you cannot. But even those things you mention, they are all part of a scale, even if android becomes more closed-source it's still miles more open-source than iOS, even if it delays new app submissions it's still…

Sideloading of apps is, at best, a niche interest.

Until you discover that for example Android Auto is banned in your whole country, while being completely functional after sideloading the apk. And the only reason why there aren't hundreds of millions people sideloading apps (yet) is relatively slow rate of car upgrades. This is only one example.

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

#210

Post by fauigerzigerk »

cmsj wrote: post #206
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a very simple solution. Have a competetent reviewer look at the code and decide whether the intent is malicious or not. If the intent is clearly not malicious and no rules were broken, the reviewer should file a bug report to fix the virus scanner and reinstate the developer account. No further explanation required. If rules were breached but it may have been done in good faith, issue a warning to the develo…

"Have a competent reviewer" - requires humans, humans don't scale, proposed solution is not Googley. (this is sarcasm, but from talking to Googler friends over the years, I doubt it's far from the truth)

It scales just fine if they charge enough to discourage abuse. Also, the law should frankly require them to offer proper conflict resolution if they run one of two commercially viable app stores.
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