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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

#281

Post by dspillett »

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…

Is having 3rd party code on your pages really worth "a few pennies a day" to a lot of people? I'd rather keep a clean site.

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

#282

Post by oblio »

ceejayoz wrote: post #229
oblio wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could just not void the warranty (more or less) for installing apps from other sources. Your mom always uses the App Store, everybody else is happy.

That's basically how "your mom" got 800 different browser toolbars installed. The people who tend to "void the warranty" tend to be the least equipped to evaluate the pros/cons of doing so.

I didn't mean "your mom" as an insult, he literally said his mother did X and Y...

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

#283

Post by amyjess »

omaranto wrote: post #258
Fnoord wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

"Progressive" in this case means it uses progressive enhancement: it'll work even if your browser doesn't have those additions (though QoL won't be as nice), and it also uses responsive design such that it's just as useful on desktop as on mobile.

The new Twitter is a good example of a PWA.

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

#284

Post by GhettoMaestro »

echelon wrote: post #242
laingc wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, as an iOS user, I do not want the App Store opened up at all. Currently, I can go to the App Store, install any app, and be about 99.9% confident that the app will do me (or my technologically illiterate mother) absolutely no harm. This is something I value highly, and am happy to pay the “Apple premium” for.

I don't want to live in your locked-down Disney with the death sentence world. That's fine for you to want it, but don't impose it on me. I want freedom and liberty to do what I want with the devices I own. I want to develop without fear that these two megacorps can shut me down on a whim for developing something against their ideology. The web isn't like that. Windows wasn't like that. Today we live in a Fischer-Pri…

Your ideal state of Internet / Tech companies is definitely in the minority contrasted to overall expectations the broader population has put on these devices and services.

Yeah, we get it, you're smart. I'm smart. Most people here are smart. But protections still matter.

What you're saying is I don't want to wear a seatbelt when driving my car. Sure that is your choice - but I think it is a very foolish one.

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

#285

Post by naringas »

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,…

this behavior is worse than that.

it basically says, "I won't search for that keyword, here are some results without it"

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

#286

Post by S_A_P »

While I'm sure that buried in the TOS you can be banned at any time for any reason, and the sheer volume of apps they referee makes things difficult to have humans manage. The "right" thing to do here would be to at least provide some sort of substantiation of your assertion that it violates policy.

-App is asking for more permissions than it needs -App is violating privacy -App is direct copy of/ mimicking Core OS functionality -App is using non opensource code

etc.

They obfuscation of the reasons for the ban seem to me to be one of the following 1) laziness 2) malice 3) fear that it would somehow expose the methodology for finding the policy violations and create a cat and mouse game.

It seems like mobile development is becoming less and less an attractive platform to spend my cycles. There are basically 2 markets with millions of apps that already implement your idea in some form or fashion that are free or cheap. Meanwhile being a Luddite and writing enterprise code for business has consistently paid more each year I've done it.

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

#287

Post by huffmsa »

touristtam wrote: post #204
huffmsa wrote: post #119

Seems to me that Google is turning on a lot of deep learning models in production which aren't production ready. 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 moderat…

Funny cause I have just started to notice that as well, BUT I am mainly a DDG user that resort to using Google search in case I cannot find something satisfactory on my preferred search engine. Speaking about YouTube, I think it might be recommending through other videos that you might have watched/liked that are not related to either, but somehow other users have watched/liked as well. So instead of having a relatio…

Yeah YouTube's recommendations don't really strike me as being based on comparison of the content or themes of the videos, but based pretty heavily on what other users have watched.

To be fair, codifying video into clusterable features is a lot harder than audio. But when you have Google levels of money I'd expect a bit more progress.

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

#288

Post by jrochkind1 »

lpellis wrote: post #92

Wow the same thing happened to me[1], luckily I was awake by chance and took action after the first email, scary to think that if I was just offline for a few days my whole account could have been banned with no recourse.. [1]My app https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lpellis.se... was on the store for several years at the time, it was called 'Android Sensors'. (Google had issue with the name, I had to…

If they told you what you had done to violate policies and what you had to do to be in compliance again, you were a huge step ahead of this guy!

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

#289

Post by ilikehurdles »

laingc wrote: post #171
cbanek wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Personally, as an iOS user, I do not want the App Store opened up at all. Currently, I can go to the App Store, install any app, and be about 99.9% confident that the app will do me (or my technologically illiterate mother) absolutely no harm. This is something I value highly, and am happy to pay the “Apple premium” for.

Why are the only options for installing apps "Strict App Store" and "Open App Store"? That's a false dichotomy. Let apple have its app store but remove the restrictions on installing apps from outside of it. If I want to install an apk directly from a publisher's website I should be able to.

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

#290

Post by rchaud »

gwd wrote: post #183
oblio wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could just not void the warranty (more or less) for installing apps from other sources. Your mom always uses the App Store, everybody else is happy.

But there's more to the issue than just safety checking. The "App store tax" really is like a tax: it helps pay for developing the platform necessary for the apps to run on. Without that revenue, Apple would have to start looking for other ways of getting revenue -- for instance, selling my personal data.

They already get that with the $99/yr fee for the Apple Developer program: https://developer.apple.com/support/compare-memberships/
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