Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–279 of 279 posts

Re: Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

#271

Post by exadeci »

heavyset_go wrote: post #218
paxys wrote: post #181

The fact that this guy didn't even say the name of his apps or what they do makes me pretty suspicious of the whole thing. There are enough developers who don't add any value but instead rely on spam, malware or piracy/copyright infringement to get big. I have zero sympathy in those cases, and support Google and Apple taking action against them.

The assumption that the engineer who was banned did something wrong is a bit misguided when there's no evidence for it, but there are countless examples of Google banning users who did nothing wrong. There are even some of those engineers in this thread posting their experiences of being banned by Google. The opaque and capricious nature of Google's ban hammer, and the special type of an ML-driven bureaucratic nightm…

If you google "roberto carreño avengers apps" (name of the guy and name of his business which probably causes trademark issues)

You'll find a bunch of screenshots of random cheap looking apps that find wallpapers, phrases to tell to girls, spanish radios search.

So they most definitely rely on ads on their apps and not on building good ones.

Re: Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

#273

Post by oliwarner »

pdonis wrote: post #187
lisper wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > They will have to respond to this > Why? They don't have to respond to the demand letter, but they do have to respond if a lawsuit if one is filed. If they don't, it's a default judgement for the plaintiff. (This is one of the things that is broken in the American legal system. You can force someone to spend a lot of money by suing them even if your complaint has no merit.) So while they don't have to respond to…

> they do have to respond if a lawsuit if one is filed. If they don't, it's a default judgement for the plaintiff. Google's response will be very cheap for them, compared to the cost for the plaintiff (meaning, as a percentage of their respective incomes): that they have no legal obligation to provide the plaintiff any services whatever, and that the terms of service for the Google service the plaintiff was using cle…

I agree.

These aren't the first people Google has denied service to. They have defended this right before. They're not going up lose.

And Google has a salaried team of lawyers. This is a sunk cost. This case will cost them no more.

Re: Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

#274

Post by igordebatur »

Google blocked our payment profile for Riders App (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.whitescape...). After 2 months of providing all of the required docs and getting auto-declines, I've talked to their support and they just answered (quote):

"I have consulted our specialist about your account. Our specialist team has determined that this profile must stay suspended due to violations of our Terms of Service. We’re unable to discuss the specific circumstances of this or any suspensions.

Our Google Payments Terms of Service states that Google Payments Corp. reserves the right to change, suspend, or discontinue any aspect of the Services at any time, including availability of the Services, or any Service feature, without notice or liability."

The app has nearly 25k of positive ratings and currently one of the most popular apps for action sport participants.

I frankly don't have any idea what to do, that's super sad.

Re: Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

#275

Post by igordebatur »

igordebatur wrote: post #274

Google blocked our payment profile for Riders App ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.whitescape... ). After 2 months of providing all of the required docs and getting auto-declines, I've talked to their support and they just answered (quote): "I have consulted our specialist about your account. Our specialist team has determined that this profile must stay suspended due to violations of our Terms of…

And the real reason is: we've closed our previous bank account to open a new one. Google tried to send a payment to our previous bank account, it has returned, they instantly locked our payments profile and that's it, the whole story.

Re: Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

#276

Post by oliwarner »

oliwarner wrote: post #265
rsync wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's not prudent unless it's likely to both happen and succeed." No, that is incorrect - there is an asymmetry here which is (oddly) in the ops favor. Paying my lawyer (for instance) to create and send a letter like this, etc., might cost me $3-800. Properly responding to it and covering all the bases and carrying out ones legal duties vis a vis google might cost 5x that. ... and the letter writer will be dealing wi…

Costs aside, you're still weighing up "the case", like it's a definite, or that by responding to a legal letter, that it's definitely not. In real life it's neither of those things. Very few people actually litigate unless they have very strong grounds on well trodden rights. I'm trying to establish any grounds in other comments, but any lawyer looking to litigate this is going to have to warn to their clients that t…

And as I was recently reminded, Google's legal cost is sunk. Those lawyers are salaried Google employees. The cost to put them on this case for the ten minutes it'd take to defend is only measurable in what else they could be doing for Google.

Re: Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

#277

Post by BeetleB »

tiahura wrote: post #235
BeetleB wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because an innocent person can be bankrupted by repeatedly having to respond to frivolous lawsuits.

Can anyone find an example of that actually happening?

Not bankruptcy but this type of abuse? Sure:

https://dailyillini.com/news-stories/2013/04/26/suburban-exp...

He would intentionally file lawsuits in another county because he knew it's too much of a burden for many students to travel there for court hearings. Students just settle even if they think they're completely innocent.

Re: Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

#278

Post by dchftcs »

janto wrote: post #254
jgod wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Customer support is provided for sub $20 items from e commerce sites who don't have Google's market cap. Not to mention that a customer support agent's time isn't exactly worth hundreds of dollars an hour.

It depends on how narrowly focused Google's strategy and commitment to reliable income is. Linearly scaling up on human support agents doesn't look aligned with an AI driven strategy to enable income that is only coming from their advertising services . From https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/020515/busin... Google Services generated $69.4 billion, or about 92% of total revenue, in Q4 FY 2021. Advertisin…

Various sources indicate that Google play made >10 billion in revenue, much of that being profit: https://www.thurrott.com/mobile/android/254978/google-play-h...

These horror stories would mostly come from publishers that rely on the source of income, from whom the yearly Google play is likely to be at least a few thousands. There's no excuse to not involve a human in a decision as drastic as account termination.

Re: Google cancels Google Play publisher account and ends family’s source of income

#279

Post by janto »

dchftcs wrote: post #278
janto wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on how narrowly focused Google's strategy and commitment to reliable income is. Linearly scaling up on human support agents doesn't look aligned with an AI driven strategy to enable income that is only coming from their advertising services . From https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/020515/busin... Google Services generated $69.4 billion, or about 92% of total revenue, in Q4 FY 2021. Advertisin…

Various sources indicate that Google play made >10 billion in revenue, much of that being profit: https://www.thurrott.com/mobile/android/254978/google-play-h... These horror stories would mostly come from publishers that rely on the source of income, from whom the yearly Google play is likely to be at least a few thousands. There's no excuse to not involve a human in a decision as drastic as account termination.

Following to the original Reuters article

  The figures include sales of apps, in-app purchase and *app store ads*.
I would also prefer that Google have more tolerable support for publishers (and users), but it looks like those at the helm might be thinking it's irresponsible to see publishers as important customers. The publishers are not the ones providing the vast majority of the revenue - that seems to be advertiser.

The attention economy is addictive for those pushing it as well.

Post reply on HN