Slightly different topic, but Google also suspended our company's adwords account, I believe for using keywords related to COVID-19. The business is an American manufacturer that added capacity to manufacture PPE to make up for the lack of Chinese supply. Since we were supplying direct to the market, the prices of the PPE were in-market from before COVID times, or cheaper. We weren't out to make a killing, just to fi…
Google bans my events app for referencing Covid-19, or related terms
121–130 of 219 posts
Re: Google bans my events app for referencing Covid-19, or related terms
#122Simple solution is to just stop writing apps for Google's platform. There are other avenues that aren't dependent on the corp whims of entities you can't really talk to.
Not really. The only other option is to limit your service to only desktop PCs/websites which is not super helpful to normal people that just use their phones for everything. Google has a monopoly on phone apps. If they don't like your app then you pretty much don't exist. You don't have many options.
Re: Google bans my events app for referencing Covid-19, or related terms
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple created the app store because they wanted to avoid having people install malware. Google copied them because they wanted a piece of the app store tax.
So Apple's motivations were solely altruistic, whereas mean old Google is just a money grubbing copycat? I'm being snarky, but it seems a little naive to think either of these companies wasn't eager to capitalize on the lucrative mobile software market. Aren't you also prevented from buying subscriptions or making other in-app purchases within iOS apps (but not through the app store's integrated system)? Seems like t…
Apple's motivations for continuing to charge outrageous fees are, of course, that they want to keep the free money rolling in. And they must have hoped to generate a revenue stream. But establishing tight control had lots of other motivations.
By contrast Google was deliberately creating an open platform on open sourced software. Their decision to lock down this piece was opposite the rest of the product direction. And it is hard to believe that they weren't looking at the demonstration of what happened with the iPhone and were trying to replicate the revenue model.
Re: Google bans my events app for referencing Covid-19, or related terms
#124And how long before Google decides that all detected side-loaded apps are harmful and automatically removed?
I mean, at least they allow sideloading at all, which is more than can be said for that other App Store ecosystem. Still hoping the EU will force Apple to allow sideloading on iPhones, but I’m not super optimistic.
I sometimes find it difficult understanding all the complaining about Google and all the love for Apple, with regard to doing what's right.
Re: Google bans my events app for referencing Covid-19, or related terms
#125Why do you want to advertise that to your future users?
From your description, your app appears to be an event finder that started out for only physical events, and you later expanded that to include online events.
The app itself does not appear to have anything to do with COVID. COVID was simply what personally motivated you to add online events, and so it's not clear to me that including COVID related words in the description will actually help anyone find or understand your app on the store.
Re: Google bans my events app for referencing Covid-19, or related terms
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
On Android you can sideload apps easily but nobody does it. According to Google, less than 0.5% of Android devices do it.
Exactly. Imagine how much criticism Apple could avoid if they allowed side loading. Heck, make it complicated and require a Mac desktop/laptop. Even then at least power users would be happy. At least I could load up apps that aren’t approved without having to jailbreak.
The problem with side loading us social engineering attacks.
Imagine how many iPhone users could be persuaded to sideload ‘corona 5g bioshield app detunes the software radio in your phone away from the harmful frequencies the NWO is trying to expose us to’.
Re: Google bans my events app for referencing Covid-19, or related terms
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple created the app store because they wanted to avoid having people install malware. Google copied them because they wanted a piece of the app store tax.
So Apple's motivations were solely altruistic, whereas mean old Google is just a money grubbing copycat? I'm being snarky, but it seems a little naive to think either of these companies wasn't eager to capitalize on the lucrative mobile software market. Aren't you also prevented from buying subscriptions or making other in-app purchases within iOS apps (but not through the app store's integrated system)? Seems like t…
Re: Google bans my events app for referencing Covid-19, or related terms
#128Re: Google bans my events app for referencing Covid-19, or related terms
#129Since Google is taking such a strong position against what they view as COVID19 misinformation, are they liable if I get sick as a result of some misinformation that managed to get through their filters? I might not try to go after some small time app developer or other rando on the Internet, but if Google is willing to stand behind their guarantee with those wonderfully deep pockets...
Re: Google bans my events app for referencing Covid-19, or related terms
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can someone remind me why there is an "app store" that is run by the phone OS maker? Aside from the anti-trust/monopoly type issue, should there be a more market healthy de-coupling between the place I buy my apps and the OS maker? Monopolies are almost always bad for consumers. I kind of chuckle when I think about how Microsoft had such a huge battle over IE being integrated into Windows, and now we sort of accept a…
The why is that there was a huge solution/market gap. Finding software for Palm and Windows phones was often a trek through random forums and websites to download garbage that didn't work. There needed to be a central registry before smartphones would be adopted by the average person, and the registry needed some quality assurance so that the average person would have a good experience. Tucows wasn't going to cut it,…
And also at the time, the company (Lindows/Linspire) that created an app store based on that foundation caught hell for doing so (my first job out of high school was doing QA on that app store).
So even if it was necessary to have app stores for consumers it wasn't an easy transition to make.