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“Fewer Users” Warning Hurting Specialized and New Apps

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Re: “Fewer Users” Warning Hurting Specialized and New Apps

#61

Post by Loughla »

throwaway743 wrote: post #59
anilakar wrote: post #57

Our company just got a warning that we have sixty days to release something on Play or have our developer console account closed. The email made it pretty clear that Google wants developers to continuously push new versions to customers. We have no new features nor bug fixes in backlog. There is nothing to update. The only purpose of our software is to control hardware that our company makes. Nobody uses it for fun,…

Could you just get away with modifying something small, uploading the update, then revert the change, and reupload? Either way, it's nonsense that they force this, especially for those who made an app however long ago and just uploaded and forgot about, or that version was the only one they intended to make. It's crazy how much Google gets away with bullying us.

Change font on One letter on one screen. Revert back 60 days later. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

It's a pain in the ass, but to be honest, I've been asked to do worse with my time.

Re: “Fewer Users” Warning Hurting Specialized and New Apps

#62

Post by echelon »

anilakar wrote: post #57

Our company just got a warning that we have sixty days to release something on Play or have our developer console account closed. The email made it pretty clear that Google wants developers to continuously push new versions to customers. We have no new features nor bug fixes in backlog. There is nothing to update. The only purpose of our software is to control hardware that our company makes. Nobody uses it for fun,…

Google and Apple need to be regulated out of the app store business. They have no business doing this bullshit.

It's time. Governments need to put an end to the app store.

Re: “Fewer Users” Warning Hurting Specialized and New Apps

#63

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

throwaway743 wrote: post #59
anilakar wrote: post #57

Our company just got a warning that we have sixty days to release something on Play or have our developer console account closed. The email made it pretty clear that Google wants developers to continuously push new versions to customers. We have no new features nor bug fixes in backlog. There is nothing to update. The only purpose of our software is to control hardware that our company makes. Nobody uses it for fun,…

Could you just get away with modifying something small, uploading the update, then revert the change, and reupload? Either way, it's nonsense that they force this, especially for those who made an app however long ago and just uploaded and forgot about, or that version was the only one they intended to make. It's crazy how much Google gets away with bullying us.

Not OP, but depending on the industry, this could be enormous amounts of backend work. I have projects that needs to be validated, which effectively means a huge amount of human testing for any change. The Process is confirmed to work on version X.Y.Z and nothing else.

Re: “Fewer Users” Warning Hurting Specialized and New Apps

#64

Post by nout »

anilakar wrote: post #57

Our company just got a warning that we have sixty days to release something on Play or have our developer console account closed. The email made it pretty clear that Google wants developers to continuously push new versions to customers. We have no new features nor bug fixes in backlog. There is nothing to update. The only purpose of our software is to control hardware that our company makes. Nobody uses it for fun,…

You can update the version number and re-release. I think this may grant also adding the update note "Updated version number. Nothing else. Thank you Google".

Re: “Fewer Users” Warning Hurting Specialized and New Apps

#65

Post by anilakar »

throwaway743 wrote: post #59
anilakar wrote: post #57

Our company just got a warning that we have sixty days to release something on Play or have our developer console account closed. The email made it pretty clear that Google wants developers to continuously push new versions to customers. We have no new features nor bug fixes in backlog. There is nothing to update. The only purpose of our software is to control hardware that our company makes. Nobody uses it for fun,…

Could you just get away with modifying something small, uploading the update, then revert the change, and reupload? Either way, it's nonsense that they force this, especially for those who made an app however long ago and just uploaded and forgot about, or that version was the only one they intended to make. It's crazy how much Google gets away with bullying us.

I guess you can always change the style and location of UI controls just to mess with your users. After all, Big G does it all the time. :-)

Re: “Fewer Users” Warning Hurting Specialized and New Apps

#66

Post by saghm »

butz wrote: post #60

Very sad state of affairs on Play Store. Independent app developers are clearly not welcome there. I already pulled all my hobby apps from Play Store, just to sleep soundly at night without thinking how to pass yet another app review after update, when policies keep getting more ridiculous each time. To the point where one update finally was pushed to the store, and another got the same issue again. The biggest quest…

Based on another comment on this thread, it sounds like maybe the easiest way would have been to leave all those apps up without updating them, and then hopefully get a 60-day warning that you can ignore.

Re: “Fewer Users” Warning Hurting Specialized and New Apps

#67

Post by Lammy »

skizm wrote: post #42
rockyj wrote: post #37

All this just confirms for me the fact that how important the web is, thankfully it is still open / neutral and a good mobile web app is important for smaller devs. Thankfully the web has always been neutral, which has allowed all these monopolies to thrive and exploit it, otherwise who knows which proprietary app hell we would be in.

Nothing stopping Google or Apple from adding warnings to websites. They do control chrome / safari.

They already do if you dare to try to host a web page without TLS. Hit http://httpforever.com/ for example and it will say “Not Secure” next to the URL bar.

Re: “Fewer Users” Warning Hurting Specialized and New Apps

#68

Post by p_ing »

pk97 wrote: post #58
p_ing wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand.... https://chromewebstore.google.com/search/ublock As a user who suddenly knows nothing about uBlock the ad blocker, are you going to trust an addin with 2k installs and 4.3 stars, or an addin with 30m installs and 4.7 stars? Install base can be informative when choosing.... anything, really. In many people's minds something that is used more is better in some metric, be it performance, reliability…

I agree with what you have said. It's what you mentioned at the end about people judging based on metrics - it should be up to people to judge for themselves, not the platform! The platform should present data, not try to sway opinions. Besides the message itself is so hand wavy if I am using the phrase correctly, what is Google trying to convey through the message? If something is a legit scam, they should either no…

> it should be up to people to judge for themselves, not the platform!

If you download an App using MSFT Edge on Windows, it will warn you (MoTW). If you download an App using any browser on macOS, it will warn you (also MoTW). But if you grab apps via the App Store, there's no warning.

Is that also unfair?

While it's been many years since I did hands on end user support, or even worse, support for family friends back in the 9x days, people still have little clue about what they're doing without a big flashing warning sitting in front of them..., which even that sometimes does not work.

Even I'll often choose an extension for Firefox that has more installs. If I'm going to get a SAML decoder, I want the least phishy SAML decoder available.

Re: “Fewer Users” Warning Hurting Specialized and New Apps

#69

Post by saghm »

p_ing wrote: post #53
pk97 wrote: post #2

I noticed this banner on one of my own apps while installing it for my mom on a new phone. The banner said "This app has fewer users than others...", almost as if they are discouraging users from installing it without even informing me. I looked it up online and it seems like many people have begun seeing this. I am linking a thread. If anyone from Google is reading this, such opaque policies are not appreciated!

On the other hand.... https://chromewebstore.google.com/search/ublock As a user who suddenly knows nothing about uBlock the ad blocker, are you going to trust an addin with 2k installs and 4.3 stars, or an addin with 30m installs and 4.7 stars? Install base can be informative when choosing.... anything, really. In many people's minds something that is used more is better in some metric, be it performance, reliability…

It sounds like showing those numbers already conveys the information you find useful; the question isn't whether the number of users is informative, but whether it's reasonable for Google to bucket apps into groups of competitors and then choose a threshold of minimum number of users to avoid actively discouraging additional users. I'm not opposed to the idea of owners of app marketplaces taking a more active step in curating things to try to help users, but this way of doing it seems pretty dubious.

Re: “Fewer Users” Warning Hurting Specialized and New Apps

#70

Post by snowwrestler »

> It feels like Google is unfairly punishing smaller, specialized developers in favor of mass-market apps.

This seems like a problem across Google generally. Search seems like it has been tuned toward the mass market in almost every query, which buries high-quality content, which is by its nature rare, specialized, and less well-known.

They have also tuned the features of Search in this direction, for example replacing queries with similar but more common text strings, and applying “did you mean” redirection more often, instead of just executing the search as typed. They now do this even if you quote the search string!

Google tests and tunes its algorithm updates. If an algorithm update results in lower prominence for sites they consider popular, they tune the algorithm to “fix” it. As a friend said, the modern Google would never release an algorithm update if it doesn’t put Home Depot on the first page for “buy power saw.” Result: a generous in-kind marketing subsidy for whoever is already popular. I’m convinced this is why Fandom and Quora still hang around polluting SERPs. They’re well-known because they’re well-known, like the Kardashians.

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