Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell • Hacker News Board

Re: Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell

#41

Post by jsnell » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 4:24 PM UTC

So, the relevant bit from the Play Store policy documents is probably: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...

That policy seems very reasonable. Is the policy being misapplied here? Hard to say, since it's describing the spirit of the rules rather than an exhaustive list of specific violations. It doesn't seem that anything in the title would be misleading. But the original title is kind of irrelevant; whether the app is libre or not has no bearing on its functionality.

Re: Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell

#42

Post by f137 » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 4:26 PM UTC

foxfluff wrote: post #40

Some Google engineer probably thought they were very clever when they applied "the algorithm" to translated titles. Pretty fucking draconian some of those rules, if you ask me. In games and works of art it's not uncommon to have a title longer than 30 characters. Nevermind when you have different editions or things that are related to the main title. So how does this actually work? Why is 'Life is Strange: Before the…

Until recently the limit was 35, and 50 earlier still.

Google enforces new limits on app updates, so this game was not updated recently.

Re: Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell

#43

Post by nguyenkien » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 4:26 PM UTC

billynomates wrote: post #32

tyingq wrote: post #13

Meanwhile, lots of other apps with 'Free' in the title, description, etc. https://play.google.com/store/search?q=free&c=apps Including some Google owned ones like YouTubeTV.

Yeah they only review when you make a new release, so maybe these apps just haven't been updated in a while

Nah. Probably exclude app already in store.

Re: Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell

#44

Post by tyingq » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 4:27 PM UTC

billynomates wrote: post #32

tyingq wrote: post #13

Meanwhile, lots of other apps with 'Free' in the title, description, etc. https://play.google.com/store/search?q=free&c=apps Including some Google owned ones like YouTubeTV.

Yeah they only review when you make a new release, so maybe these apps just haven't been updated in a while

"Text Free - Call and Text Now" Updated January 10, 2022

"Free Now" - Update January 11, 2022

Many other examples have recent updates too.

Re: Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell

#45

Post by justin_oaks » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 4:30 PM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #14

sourcecodeplz wrote: post #4

I’ve read the post, its just how it is with their policies being evaluated by automations and not humans. Nothing you can do but work around them sadly.

I’ve read the post, its just how it is with their policies being evaluated by automations and not humans. No, it's definitely a problem with the humans. It's just that the humans in question aren't customer support humans. It's Google's engineering humans that are to blame for shipping these poor quality experiences. They might be able to invert binary trees on whiteboards pretty well, but they suck at making an HTML…

I find it interesting that people blame the engineers when they're the bottom of the hierarchy. It's their bosses that prioritize their work, decide whether their work is good enough, and decide whether to fix something that's broken.

It's not the individual engineers who decide whether the company will have a culture of helping users and/or app developers, or treating them like resources to exploit.

It's not the individual engineers who choose to have no humans involved in the app review process.

Some engineers are incompetent, yes, but it's the bosses who keep the incompetent folks working at the company instead of finding better people.

Re: Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell

#46

Post by toyg » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 4:31 PM UTC

nguyenkien wrote: post #43

billynomates wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah they only review when you make a new release, so maybe these apps just haven't been updated in a while

Nah. Probably exclude app already in store.

Nah. Probably exclude any app under X downloads, and even then just pick a random sample every once in a while, and even then maybe the reviewer had better stuff to do that Monday and just waved everything through.

Re: Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell

#47

Post by thinkingemote » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 4:33 PM UTC

masklinn wrote: post #16

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #2

which one is more incompetent as a service company - Amazon, Google, Facebook, or Apple? I think my ranking would be Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, but that is not so much decided via any sort of logical evaluation but only due to my feeling on the matter.

Never interacted with facebook in any position, the rest is completely correct. Google is absolutely trash at support, Apple is quite bad (in store support used to be rather good, services was always shit), Amazon is competent at least.

For the record I had a simple oauth problem flagged by Facebook and emailed with a number of humans there successfully. I'm a non enterprise/paying dev. It felt reasonably okay and quick, as if they read and listened to my responses.

Re: Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell

#48

Post by notreallyserio » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 4:34 PM UTC

justin_oaks wrote: post #45

onion2k wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve read the post, its just how it is with their policies being evaluated by automations and not humans. No, it's definitely a problem with the humans. It's just that the humans in question aren't customer support humans. It's Google's engineering humans that are to blame for shipping these poor quality experiences. They might be able to invert binary trees on whiteboards pretty well, but they suck at making an HTML…

I find it interesting that people blame the engineers when they're the bottom of the hierarchy. It's their bosses that prioritize their work, decide whether their work is good enough, and decide whether to fix something that's broken. It's not the individual engineers who decide whether the company will have a culture of helping users and/or app developers, or treating them like resources to exploit. It's not the ind…

Engineers at Google can get a job anywhere. They choose to work for Google despite building and maintaining a substandard product.

Google engineers have a lot of leverage. I refuse to pretend that they can't influence product quality.

Re: Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell

#49

Post by disruptiveink » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 4:35 PM UTC

masklinn wrote: post #16

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #2

which one is more incompetent as a service company - Amazon, Google, Facebook, or Apple? I think my ranking would be Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, but that is not so much decided via any sort of logical evaluation but only due to my feeling on the matter.

Never interacted with facebook in any position, the rest is completely correct. Google is absolutely trash at support, Apple is quite bad (in store support used to be rather good, services was always shit), Amazon is competent at least.

Amazon is also in the easiest position to offer support, since for the bulk of support queries, if all else fails, they can just absorb the cost and refund the customer. The customer is usually not any worse than when they started if they do this.

The money spent on a purchase is fungible. There is no obvious monetary refund to give to someone who can't update their app, got their YouTube channel taken down or got their Instagram handle stolen.

Re: Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies: A story from hell

#50

Post by AtNightWeCode » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 4:38 PM UTC

My experience of Google Play is that it is 100% corrupted. I worked with companies that tried to get their apps back onto Google Play for YEARS without success. How do you solve something like “this app is not compliant with program X” when the app was never registered for that program for just that reason?

…and the "support".