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My app just got removed with no prior warning

javierantonsblog.blogspot.com

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Re: My app just got removed with no prior warning

#61

Post by ceejayoz »

atatatat wrote: post #39
candiodari wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it wouldn't. Have the bad functionality behind a DNS lookup. It fails, app behaves. Developer can change flag and there's little Google/Apple/Amazon can do about it.

Apple and Google only review the code that runs.......?!

Apps are allowed to load remote resources.

Your app can be rejected for talking about off-app payment, but how is a reviewer going to find that if it's talked about in a helpdesk document that's fetched via a HTTP call to a remote server and is temporarily edited to remove that paragraph?

Re: My app just got removed with no prior warning

#62

Post by collaborative »

Sebb767 wrote: post #27
malwarebytess wrote: post #11

> 1) Unexpectedly pulling an app with no warning and then imposing a 7-day review period is not reasonable. OK, my app only has tens of thousands of downloads. No, no. Don't apologize. Would you expect Google to remove twitter's app with no prior notice? How about a U.S. government app? Why should you expect different treatment from Google than Twitter et al.? Google has to provide a consistent and responsive experie…

> Why should you expect different treatment from Google than Twitter et al.? Twitter and the US government are well known and are very unlikely to turn rogue (i.e. cash out or sell the app to a shady advertising company). This base trust does not exist for a small, unknown developer. I can see why this is a bit unfair, but having the same treatment for well-known, trusted entities and first time submitters will lead…

Just want to clarify that it had been on the Play Store for 3 to 4 years before they did this and had reached a couple dozen thousand downloads

Re: My app just got removed with no prior warning

#63

Post by breakfastduck »

tacker2000 wrote: post #23

People need to realize that these walled garden lock ins are the worst thing ever in our industry. To be honest, I would think twice nowadays if I wanted to do invest my precious life in developing an iOS app and have my income derived from that. If the gatekeeper is unhappy, they can kill my livelihood without any recourse. Same thing is happening in the ecommerce space with Amazon: they can ban your seller account…

Ah yes, the famous walled garden of Android.

What?

Re: My app just got removed with no prior warning

#64

Post by rchaud »

gameswithgo wrote: post #12

A lot of hackernews seems really dedicated to the idea that Google and Apple should decide what software we get to make and sell. Why are people so gung ho to be under the corporate boot like this?

A lot of people agreed with that Steve Jobs letter about Flash in 2010. Some of that feeling may still linger.

In retrospect, that darn letter and the usual Jobs media fawning was probably the first domino that led to the web being completely marginalized on iOS in favour of Apple-approved apps.

Re: My app just got removed with no prior warning

#65

Post by indymike »

rchaud wrote: post #59
nixpulvis wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please sir can I have some more? Demanding some level of fairness in specific well thought out regulation is exactly the solution to a lot of these problems. It's a tried and true method of reeling in bad actors and imposing some checks and balances. Realistically, no you can't expect to get the attention of Twitter, but officially it must be the case that they have to at least give real effort to maintaining some me…

> The actual question is why Google or Apple's App Store is special? Why can a bank pick and choose who they give loans to but the app walled gardens are in the wrong. I think we probably have the same general idea about this question, but I don't have a really solid answer. Because they have spent untold millions since 2008 buying ads telling consumers that apps are the only way. Flash is dangerous. PWAs are dangero…

> PWAs are dangerous.

I've never seen that one from Google, and both iOS, Android and Chrome have pretty good support for PWAs. Source: we discontinued our mobile apps for a PWA. It's been great.

Re: My app just got removed with no prior warning

#66

Post by collaborative »

throwaway7721 wrote: post #49
phdelightful wrote: post #7

The author should consider removing their blog from the Google-owned property they are currently using, lest it also get removed with no prior warning.

> The author should consider removing their blog from the Google-owned property they are currently using, lest it also get removed with no prior warning. I don't think Google has a reputation for deleting critical blog posts -- can you reference any stories? Don't get me wrong, there are many reasons to host your own blog. But fear that Google will remove content critical of Google seems pretty far fetched to me. On…

Yep, unfortunate

I usually rank Google higher than Apple in terms of developer friendliness but funny enough something similar happened on my iOS version and Apple did give me the chance to fix it before they took any further action

Back when I moved websites I forgot to change the priv. policy's link on their iOS App Store. They pointed this out to me and I immediately fixed it.

Fingers crossed that this will be resolved soon

Re: My app just got removed with no prior warning

#68

Post by kortex »

pinkybanana wrote: post #25
malwarebytess wrote: post #11

> 1) Unexpectedly pulling an app with no warning and then imposing a 7-day review period is not reasonable. OK, my app only has tens of thousands of downloads. No, no. Don't apologize. Would you expect Google to remove twitter's app with no prior notice? How about a U.S. government app? Why should you expect different treatment from Google than Twitter et al.? Google has to provide a consistent and responsive experie…

> Why should you expect different treatment from Google than Twitter et al.? Well, because you aren't twitter. Expecting google to treat indie dev the same as multibillion dollar corporations would be stupid. World isn't fair place and crying after fairness is often waste of time. This kind of blog post might affect the situation and I think it makes sense to make it in polite way. However my default assumption would…

I think this is reasonable. The bigger the entity is, the more likely it is to act predictably like a corporation, with fleets of lawyers and boards of directors and general risk-aversion. Smaller corps and indie devs have different risk tolerances, and thus act differently.

But also, bigger corps are bigger revenue streams for Google. Google has less to lose by alienating indie devs than Twitter.

Re: My app just got removed with no prior warning

#69

Post by realusername »

rimliu wrote: post #51
realusername wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't complain about the fee, I just don't want to hear about the app store at all and distribute my software freely without unwanted middleware which don't add value.

For me as a user it adds a lot of value.

If there's really some value added, you have nothing to worry about, it should survive by itself.

Re: My app just got removed with no prior warning

#70

Post by otrahuevada »

Just wantend to ask, in light of Google pulling an Apple in a couple months and preventing users from installing random APKs, is anyone working on a sideloading mechanism of some sort? I'd like my apps to remain out of their capricious, purposefully labyrinthic and failure prone stewardship for as long as possible
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