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Google just deleted my nearly 10-year-old free and open-source Android app

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Re: Google just deleted my nearly 10-year-old free and open-source Android app

#251

Post by rogerdoger123 »

I have a very similar story. I had an AdMod ad running on my free app, and all of a sudden the account was deleted in a few hours just before it was time to get my earnings. Google had no responses and were unreachable and I just gave up.

After this I found this has happened to 1000s of people and I realize how massively powerful this company is and they're using AI/bots to make decisions. I've now moved away from Google as much as I can and I warn others of their monopolistic practices and lack of care toward customers.

Re: Google just deleted my nearly 10-year-old free and open-source Android app

#252

Post by yazan94 »

cbanek wrote: post #74
dollar wrote: post #3

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…

This also makes me feel even more strongly that the FTC should really clamp down on these very strict app stores. https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/amicus_briefs/app... Both the App Store and Google Play stores I think are basically illegal monopolies. I should be able to install whatever app I want, without having to jailbreak my phone and deal with warranty nonsense from the manufacturer. Just like my comp…

I don't think that Google's monopoly on the android setup is unwarranted. They both developed the OS software and host an app store where they decide what gets sold in this store - the same way that Apple does or Microsoft does on windows with its windows store.

> I should be able to install whatever app I want, without having to jailbreak my phone and deal with warranty nonsense from the manufacturer. Just like my computer, which I can also install whatever software I want on it.

I don't know too much about how the Apple/iPhone ecosystem works, but in both Android and in Windows you can generally download apps from locations other than the ones specifically sanctioned by Google/Microsoft without repercussions (android does have the setting you manually have to enable first before downloading external APK's). Google definitely does control an overwhelming share of the app download market, but that's because it has marketed itself well, it works well enough that users don't go looking for other stores, and there haven't been too many alternative stores that have sufficiently marketed themselves to general Android users (F-Droid is a cool concept, but the general Android user is more concerned with "getting an app that does x" than "getting an app that does x and the source code is available")

Re: Google just deleted my nearly 10-year-old free and open-source Android app

#253

Post by fulafel »

Macha wrote: post #132
panpanna wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. As you stated, Google forces devs to rely on presence of the Google Play Services Not forcing per se. Google just provides a convenient services that devs are happy to use.

That time has passed. There's functionality on Android that can only be reliably provided through play services these days (push notifications being the big one).

It's just an optimization/convenience to use Google services for push notifications, no?

Re: Google just deleted my nearly 10-year-old free and open-source Android app

#254

Post by eitland »

Majromax wrote: post #234
huffmsa wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happens to me all the time now too. Even when I put the phrase in quotes it still omits words or says "search for X, do your really want to search for Y" But maybe our use cases are the outliers, and the new search is what works for most people.

> But maybe our use cases are the outliers, and the new search is what works for most people. I think it's a probability problem more often expressed in terms of medical tests / false positives. If a million people search for but 1% of those make a typo and search for instead, whereas a thousand people deliberately search for , Google's observation of a search for is 90% likely to be a typo. However well-intentioned,…

The real problem here is that Google does this even when we use double quotes and the verbatim option :-/

I switched to DDG a while ago, -it is about as good as Google now, much thanks to Googles own effort ower the last decade to nerf its own search engine.

Since they are now about equal I use the one that doesn't track me and doesn't support Google.

Re: Google just deleted my nearly 10-year-old free and open-source Android app

#255

Post by non-entity »

anewguy9000 wrote: post #198
tapland wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two of the admins in our new WoW-guild got banned by Discord for inviting guild applicants (who had submitted forms asking to be invited) to our server. After a few messages there is phone verification and then after continuing to send out the accounts were banned. Contacting support was just a big 'we confirm the terms of service breach and we so not reinstate accounts'. Those accounts were in some cases the sole ad…

exactly. people are noticing it with google but its all tech companies where your only point of contact is an email address. paypal, uber, facebook, steam, etc etc -- they all deny service to innocent people on a regular basis with no recourse for them. it reminds me of pre social justice movement. isnt it the business' right to deny service to anyone they want to? like all black people? actually, no.

Recently, my Amazon payments account was banned from doing anything out of the blue. I called the customer service and they said they would forward my issue ot the correct people and I would receive a response on what was going on.

A day later, I receive an automated email stating that they were "unable to confirm my account information" and that "I will not be able to transact in the future". I was given absolutely zero info on why they were unable to verify me or any corrective actions I could take to fix it.

Re: Google just deleted my nearly 10-year-old free and open-source Android app

#256

Post by huffmsa »

Majromax wrote: post #234
huffmsa wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happens to me all the time now too. Even when I put the phrase in quotes it still omits words or says "search for X, do your really want to search for Y" But maybe our use cases are the outliers, and the new search is what works for most people.

> But maybe our use cases are the outliers, and the new search is what works for most people. I think it's a probability problem more often expressed in terms of medical tests / false positives. If a million people search for but 1% of those make a typo and search for instead, whereas a thousand people deliberately search for , Google's observation of a search for is 90% likely to be a typo. However well-intentioned,…

Which was their killer feature. Yahoo!™ Was great if you knew what curated content you already wanted.

But if you wanted some esoteric, bizarrely specific thing indexed on a single page on a single site, you went with Google.

They're turning into Yahoo.

Re: Google just deleted my nearly 10-year-old free and open-source Android app

#257

Post by giancarlostoro »

> Sun, Aug 25, 05:21 PM EDT: Google Play Team > After reviewing your appeal, we have confirmed our initial decision and will not be able to reinstate your developer account.

I think I might of missed it but, did they even appeal? The hell is Google doing saying they did if they didn't? I would sure hope this is some sort of grounds of defamation or some related law, claiming someone said something they didn't even say is pretty awful. I wish people would start suing the hell out of Google for their obviously ridiculous hostile behavior, looks like we have dozens upon dozens of companies that could band together too.

Re: Google just deleted my nearly 10-year-old free and open-source Android app

#258

Post by omaranto »

Fnoord wrote: post #225
FairKing wrote: post #70

F-Droid becomes more and more popular.

Came here to suggest publishing the app on F-Droid as it is FOSS. An alternative is make a PWA instead of an app. Those cannot be banned by an 'App Store' (read: walled garden with one lunatic dictator being the gardener).

PWA = Progressive Web App ---"progressive" seems to mean it uses some relatively recent additions to browsers to make the app feel more like a native app.

(In case others didn't know either.)

Re: Google just deleted my nearly 10-year-old free and open-source Android app

#259

Post by dahfizz »

Aeolun wrote: post #227
dahfizz wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. The only way of identifying a monopoly is to see if they have (very close to) 100% market share. What you're talking about is a company with market power. Incidentally, this is also what the FTC regulates. Being a monopoly is 100% legal as long as you don't abuse your market position. And you…

I do not think a market share of 90% in most markets is ‘significant competition’, especially when the markup on any non-google phone can easily be 1000%

If you created a startup that grew to take 10% of a global market, would you consider your business to be insignificant?

> especially when the markup on any non-google phone can easily be 1000%.

I'm not really sure I understand. The newest Google pixel and iPhone are similarly priced. Unless by "Google phone" you mean Android, in which case yes apple lacks choice on the low end but 10x is still a bit of an exaggeration.

iOS also has >20% market share globally, while we are arguing about numbers. This gets back to my "significant competition" remark. Are you arguing that Apple is insignificant?

Re: Google just deleted my nearly 10-year-old free and open-source Android app

#260

Post by conradfr »

cateye wrote: post #113
dollar wrote: post #3

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…

This happened more than 10 years ago to me too. Actually, my Adsense account is still in a strange way inaccessible while I'm using all other Google services like Gmail. 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…

Same here.

Still bitter about it.

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