111–120 of 607 posts
The nasty part with those sudden removal/bans from AppStore’s/ services is that they say: You’ve violated something. You’re blocked. You know why! Imagine going with that approach to a child... Without explaining or suggesting the rationale it’s closer to very dark dictatorship instead of providing something closer to a decent legal system where you can appeal and a system that should make justice. With those compani…
We were banned from the Play Store for violation of their Impersonation policy in mid July after publishing an update. We just got reinstated last week. During the course of the lengthy appeal I had an unshakable feeling I was up against The System™. I still believe I was communicating with a bot and not an actual human being — I refuse to accept a rational human being will behave the way Bob from Google did. It's su…
>When did thing go so horribly wrong? When every company and their dog decided their content needs an app. Instead of using the nicely standardized thing called http and web browsers. That moved us from http straight to corporate technical fiefdoms with no control.
Certainly I've heard the question "why don't we do an iOS app and an Android app?" in respect of conference schedules. Usually after people saw the Google IO schedule app.
My response was, now we have HTTP push notifications, we can do everything we need on a website. Most people just want the now-and-next information. And as a bonus, hook an old PC up to a TV and we've got now-and-next on a conveniently located display (the lobby, main conference hall, etc). Not to mention the ease of maintenance.
The easiest way to identify a monopoly is to look at how badly a company can treat its customers and still get away with it. My company has a half dozen stories like this about Google in the last year alone. Know what Google is doing to its AdSense partners on a massive scale? They wait until your site has just under the earnings when they have to write you a check, then they terminate your AdSense account for “polic…
I tried in all ways to get an explanation why my account was locked down and what I could do to resolve it: without any success.
The whole situation is just depressing because there is literally no way to discuss it in a reasonable manner other than automated canned answers or being ignored.
It was actually for me a mind changing event because it illustrated how the whole "internet is freedom" idea was a really stupid logical construct.
The easiest way to identify a monopoly is to look at how badly a company can treat its customers and still get away with it. My company has a half dozen stories like this about Google in the last year alone. Know what Google is doing to its AdSense partners on a massive scale? They wait until your site has just under the earnings when they have to write you a check, then they terminate your AdSense account for “polic…
I think Google's sh*tty ways came to light long ago. And they are still doing it. I'm one of the many, many people that got screwed by Google in a similar way with their Adsense program. A long time ago it was. Back then there were actually people who communicated with you about it, at least that was my experience. But it was still stupid. I was running Adsense on a website and got a message that I was not in complia…
Half-serious question, did all those replies come from actual human beings?
Reading the original blog post of this story and other comments here, including yours, I get a vague feeling that the communications on google's part are being done either by some kind of a machine, or by humans that can act like a machine, albeit of rather limited capabilities.
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On Android, you do have the freedom to install whatever app you want without having to root. You can also install alternative app stores.
You do have to fight through some dark patterns that discourage side-loading. But at least you can do it on Android. Also, it is getting harder to avoid using Google Play Services in your apps since they are putting more Android features behind that iron curtain as well.
The Google Play Services moves are unfortunate, but required. Most device manufacturers do not provide updates for Android on time, so any code that is part of Android itself becomes harder to update.
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It's true that Google, Apple, and Facebook are now getting the treatment that Microsoft got a long time ago. But I'm not sure I agree that everyone would go free software if it didn't happen. If anything, I think another company would just come along and build something slightly less crappy but no more open. These days you don't even own the software anymore, it's just a subscription or SaaS. > Software companies mak…
In the U.S., phone providers are protected by the government. You can't compete with them. The government has basically granted them fiefs. I feel like cars are great. I don't know where the complaint is there. There is an enormous amount of variety in cars. It's really amazing. Definitely a triumph of capitalism. I also don't really have a problem with banks. There seems to be plenty of options. People mostly just c…
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Downvotes incoming! Other explanations from Google programmers: "the work is interesting"
Just because the company is doing shitty things doesn't mean that every engineer does. Plus, imagine how it could work in reality. You finally got your place at Google. You know what the company is doing. And at some point you are asked to work on one of these grey things. What do you say, that it's immoral? If so, where exactly do you draw the line? Who is to decide what's still acceptable and what not? You've known…
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You do have to fight through some dark patterns that discourage side-loading. But at least you can do it on Android. Also, it is getting harder to avoid using Google Play Services in your apps since they are putting more Android features behind that iron curtain as well.
What you call dark patterns are ways to ensure users don't accidentally load malware onto their device. They can definitely do better though - I think a good first step would a dialog to choose trusted alternative app stores such that installing apps does not require a separate confirmation step (as is currently the case.) The Google Play Services moves are unfortunate, but required. Most device manufacturers do not…
Only because Google lets the device manufacturers off the hook. It's a problem of Googles own invention. Trading away customer security for market share.
Adding: very successfully too, this isn't the first time I hear how you should almost feel sorry for Google that they have to put so much into google services instead of Android, all because of the evil device manufacturers! Nothing can be done no... wrings hands
Maybe it will change a little but now that Huawei happened.
Search has gone to shit recently.
Image search is hot garbage for anything but images with well known people / places / things.
You can't reliably filter or sort news results by date.
YouTube is filtering pro LGBT content but allowing weird Eastern European pedo videos.
The play store is apparently moderated by bots and doesn't have rules or policies in place about giving devs time to respond.
Something has changed dramatically at the company in the last 5 years. Would be interesting to zero in on it.
My money is on the gaming battery life thing triggering some automated test Sorry to hear mate. Seems quite unreasonable
That does not explain why Goog doesn't treat people like humans. If the app developer has been in good standing for years, and has a popular app, why not send them more information as to why they are in violation? And give them some time to fix it.
But those humans are probably undertrained, underpaid and have zero context for each of their 1k cases, so they default to accepting the bots judgement. Which in turn feedback to the bot, justifying it's actions.