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Google now requires and lists phone number in Play Store listings

android-developers.googleblog.com

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Re: Google now requires and lists phone number in Play Store listings

#41

Post by Aeolun »

lucb1e wrote: post #20

There's more Play news, unfortunately... Two days ago, I updated Stellarium Mobile. On launch, it now requires that you are logged into the Play Store. No more anonymous Android usage. I emailed the developer with what I saw in adb logcat, they came back yesterday with this: > I see your point. The new google verification code requires a google play account it seems. It works with some third party stores, but you nee…

I don’t follow. Can’t you bill things without signing into Google? How would they even enforce that?

Re: Google now requires and lists phone number in Play Store listings

#42

Post by kccqzy »

MBCook wrote: post #10

The page isn’t clear on if the info has to be shown or can be shown. I get doing more to verify developers (ignoring what I think of DUNS). But acting as an individual developer if I were to think of creating an app for Android and saw that I had to publicly post my phone number that would be an absolute dead stop to development.

Just create a virtual phone number (say Google Voice) and put that up.

Re: Google now requires and lists phone number in Play Store listings

#43

Post by voakbasda »

nicolas_17 wrote: post #21
voakbasda wrote: post #17

Alternate headline: Google decides to dox app developers.

Where in the article (or the documentation[1]) does it say it will dox individual app developers? [1] https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...

From the link you posted:

Google will display your legal name, your country (as per your legal address), and developer email address on Google Play. If you decide to monetize on Google Play then Google will display your full address.

Re: Google now requires and lists phone number in Play Store listings

#44

Post by Beached »

kyrra wrote: post #11
emestifs wrote: post #8

Now only if it were that easy to get a phone number to speak to a human at Google

Depends on the product. If it's something you pay for, you can get a phone number. For example, GPay and Play store for billing issues has an accessible phone numbers. Any place where scaling customer support to the revenue vs number of users tends to lead to a lack of phone numbers. (Googler, opinions are my own)

it has been my experience that this isn't true. I worked at a fortune 100 that dumped millions into GCP, and they did not offer any type of support for GCP. we had to purchase support through a third party.

Re: Google now requires and lists phone number in Play Store listings

#45

Post by kccqzy »

emestifs wrote: post #8

Now only if it were that easy to get a phone number to speak to a human at Google

But Google doesn't require you to provide a phone number that reaches a human. It just needs a phone number. It could be voicemail only. It's the equivalent of Google providing a generic phone number like 6502530000 on their own business listing. Is there any expectation that this number leads to a human customer support agent that can actually help you? No.

Re: Google now requires and lists phone number in Play Store listings

#47

Post by Dalewyn »

MBCook wrote: post #10

The page isn’t clear on if the info has to be shown or can be shown. I get doing more to verify developers (ignoring what I think of DUNS). But acting as an individual developer if I were to think of creating an app for Android and saw that I had to publicly post my phone number that would be an absolute dead stop to development.

1. As a customer, knowing I can call you goes a long way towards establishing your legitimacy in this day and age of overflowing junk devs and junkware. It's a way of demonstrating and establishing liability, FSVO liability.

2. If you don't want your personal phone number published, which is perfectly justifiable, provide your business phone number. Don't own a business? Go and register one at your local government office. It's probably better for you to publish software under a business instead of your personal name anyway.

Re: Google now requires and lists phone number in Play Store listings

#48

Post by el-salvador »

estebarb wrote: post #26

Those numbers can be easily obtained by people outside USA?

It’s doable from my region, but it has to be done via a partner company that upsells additional services during the onboarding process. If I recall correctly there is a fee for creating the number and an extra free for updating the records.

As someone who is not from the U.S, it was surprising to learn that so many businesses rely on a number issued by a private company instead of a government issued Company ID or Tax numbers like the ones in other countries.

Re: Google now requires and lists phone number in Play Store listings

#49

Post by ineedasername »

westurner wrote: post #7

What percentage of existing app developers on the Play Store do not have a DUNS number? Do they need to incorporate an LLC in order to get a DUNS number for their open source project? Google decided to take the first 15% of app developers' first $1M in revenue instead of 30% in 2021. Google decided to take a 30% cut from all Play Store app and in-app revenue, and you may only use Google Payments in your app (just lik…

>Shopping malls don't even demand a 15%-30% cut of revenue.

Shopping malls charged rent, and if you look up typical rent-to-revenue ratios you'll find that ~10% is in the range of average, ~20% around the the top end of the range, so not far off the 15% but yes, a bargain compared to 30%. But then again shopping malls don't scan a store's products for basic problems or defects.

On balance, if malls & rent are the comparison point, they roughly balance.

Sure a mall can't, in theory, prevent another group of investors from building a mall #2 next door. In practice though? Local township and city boards can be subverted through regulatory capture such that the people behind the financial interests of mall #1 will make it difficult for mall #2 to get local zoning approvals etc. And really most franchises aren't going to want to setup a competing location within two or three miles of an existing location anyway, but getting in geolocation stretches the metaphor so we can put that aside, as rent is the relevant aspect of the comparison.

Re: Google now requires and lists phone number in Play Store listings

#50

Post by lucb1e »

Aeolun wrote: post #41
lucb1e wrote: post #20

There's more Play news, unfortunately... Two days ago, I updated Stellarium Mobile. On launch, it now requires that you are logged into the Play Store. No more anonymous Android usage. I emailed the developer with what I saw in adb logcat, they came back yesterday with this: > I see your point. The new google verification code requires a google play account it seems. It works with some third party stores, but you nee…

I don’t follow. Can’t you bill things without signing into Google? How would they even enforce that?

The app needs to check whether I bought the Plus edition via Google in-app purchases (IAPs) because that's what the developer uses to accept payments. I did not¹ so there is nothing to be billed, but it does the license check of course.

As I understand the developer's response, my being kicked into the Play Store and being told to sign in, with no way of using the app until I've done so, is apparently Google's new requirement for using Google's IAP mechanism at all

¹ I'd love to pay for my use, but rather by something like liberapay or just IBAN transfer, so the developer gets 100% of the money and I don't have to give banking information to Google. With my email to the developer, I also asked for an IBAN in case they can accept payment in that way, as I now had to pirate the apk to use it while signed out of Google, but haven't gotten a response to that yet.

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