
Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account - jacquesm
https://blog.usejournal.com/google-wrongly-terminated-our-new-business-via-our-google-play-developer-account-5f5b7b742542?gi=78a7126ab7f8
======
noonespecial
The question I always have with this stuff is this:

To attract developers, these platforms make some promises. A "review" process
for supposed violations of TOS causing cancellations is always among them. But
to me these "reviews" always seem either completely faked or some version of a
lowest-level employee simply restating that the algo has made its choice and
they are powerless.

More incriminating is that every time a story starts to go viral, it seems a
higher-up jumps in and instantly fixes it. (i.e. they _can_ deliver a "real"
review if they want to)

Since you paid them money (which they never refund) and they promised you an
actual review if something goes wrong (which they never seem to actually
deliver)...How is this any different than selling a counterfeit product? Isn't
this legally actionable fraud?

~~~
avip
So says you. This is what the ToS say:

Google may terminate this Agreement with You for any reason with thirty (30)
days' prior written notice. In addition, Google may, at any time, immediately
suspend or terminate this Agreement with You if: (a) You have breached any
provision of this Agreement, any non-disclosure agreement or other agreement
relating to Google Play or the Android platform; (b) Google is required to do
so by law; (c) You cease to be an authorised developer, a developer in good
standing, or are barred from using Android software; or (d) Google decides to
no longer provide Google Play.

[https://play.google.com/intl/ALL_uk/about/developer-
distribu...](https://play.google.com/intl/ALL_uk/about/developer-distribution-
agreement.html)

~~~
SiVal
Caprices of TOS details, reviews, algorithms, service quality, or whatever are
not the real problem. The real problem is when you can't reasonably choose to
do business with someone else and move on, as they are free to do with you.

Network effects are causing more and more important things to both expand into
great significance and to be dominated by a single company (or pair of
gatekeepers, both of whom must be appeased, as in the phone platform.) Your
business can be utterly wiped out with no realistic recourse by any of a
thousand actions that could be taken at any time by the giant, like an
elephant stepping on an ant.

I'm afraid that the only real recourse is to have certain anticompetitive
regulations automatically kick in once a business rises above a certain
percentage control of access to some market or medium that has become
significant. They lose the ability to unilaterally ban, for example, except in
narrow cases involving fraud or suspected criminal activity, which will
eventually have to be proved to some official. If they fail to prove it, the
official will order compensation without the banned party having to fight the
giant's lawyers.

~~~
reaperducer
_The real problem is when you can 't reasonably choose to do business with
someone else and move on, as they are free to do with you._

Something I learned the hard way when I first started out in business is to
never make your business dependent on a single entity.

Whether it's a supplier, or a publisher, or a telco, or whatever. They are all
single points of failure, and unless you're a huge business, one failure can
be all that's needed to take you down, too.

Yes, Google Play is effectively the only way to publish an Android program.
But it's also a single point of failure, which is why until there is no longer
a mobile program duopoly, I don't invest in app companies.

~~~
sbov
> Something I learned the hard way when I first started out in business is to
> never make your business dependent on a single entity.

Seems impossible. Assuming you're an internet business, how did you make your
business not dependent upon your domain registrar?

~~~
calabin
I can't remember the exact details of the story I read here on HN, but there
was a case of some SaaS company that had this exact issue. Fortunately they
were able to spread the word to temporarily use a backup domain on a different
registrar via social media until the issue was resolved.

If anyone reading this remembers that story, I would very much appreciate a
link.

~~~
lenomad
It was Zoho. Their registrar took down their main domain after a few phishing
reports.

[https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/24/zoho-pulled-offline-
after-...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/24/zoho-pulled-offline-after-
phishing-complaints-ceo-says/)

------
qhwudbebd
I note from the mention of £25k that you're probably in the UK.

If you don't mind burning fifty quid or so, you might find it satisfying to
use the small claims process to issue for a sensible (not super-inflated)
estimate of damages. The below is not legal advice, but is written from
personal experience.

Try to leave a clear paper trail of your reasonableness: send a clear notice
before action with a reasonable time limit for reply, offering to settle for
the estimated damages or reinstatement of your account. After this time
expires, you can file a claim online.

There are then three cases to consider:

1\. Google settle immediately in response to your notice before action, either
with damages or another action that satisfies you.

2\. You file and Google fail to turn up at the resulting hearing. You will get
default judgement and should be able to add your court fee to the judgement
against them given your offer in the notice before action.

3\. You file, Google oppose and send representation. Assume they win with
probability 1. You are down a court fee and your time to turn up and sit round
the table. They've been forced to engage properly with you and the judge to
ensure they take your complaint seriously, and you've had as good chance as
you'll get to argue that their behaviour and/or terms are unreasonable. Their
costs will be substantial and the rules do not allow them to recover them from
a non-vexatious claimant...

~~~
gerdesj
_Assume they win with probability 1_

I would not assign that probability at all. The small claims system is
actually designed to be fair! Going in all lawyered up is more likely to raise
eyebrows and could be counter productive. The whole point is a quick and easy
process with the minimum of fuss. You present your argument and they present
theirs and a general test of reasonableness is applied. More Judge
{Rinder|Judy} and less Rumpole of the Bailey.

~~~
qhwudbebd
Yes, sorry, that was badly written: it was intended as "this is what happens
in the worst case" rather than "this is guaranteed to happen".

------
bdibs
I actually just got my Google Ads account suspended because I forgot to update
my billing address before adding a new card.

The suspension was for "suspicious billing activity", tried appealing twice
with the correct billing address, and was told the suspension is final (some
automated email) both times.

They won't take my calls because the account is suspended, which leaves me not
being able to advertise on the #1 service to do so.

It's completely unacceptable, especially for a business in their position. One
tiny mistake leads you to a lifetime of suspension to a service vital to
almost any business.

~~~
Melchizedek
We really need tech monopolies like Google to be regulated, in order to stop
abuses like this.

~~~
morpheuskafka
Google Play is not a monopoly! It takes one checkbox in Settings to open the
floodgates to any app (or app store) you want, and device manufacturers (such
as Amazon) can ship their own app stores pre-enabled if they want.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
What percentage of android devices, in the world, have that box ticked?

~~~
slrz
I'd guess most of them, if you actually consider the whole world.

Probably not enough to matter, if you are only looking at the UK.

~~~
efreak
Actually, alternative app stores can make use of that as well. The installer
app needs to be installed as a system app with proper permissions, and it will
them be able to background install apps on demand just like Google play does.
The F-Droid Privileged Extension[0] does just that. While you need to be
rooted to add/register such apps, that's not a problem for device
manufacturers.

[0] [https://gitlab.com/fdroid/privileged-
extension/](https://gitlab.com/fdroid/privileged-extension/)

~~~
zifnab06
As of Oreo Google doesn't allow this for devices if they're to pass CTS
without users jumping through multiple hoops first.

------
rjknight
It sounds like the problem is with the outsourced developers responsible for
the app. It's _their_ account which has been banned - for multiple violations
of the ToS. Now, perhaps this is just over-zealous enforcement on Google's
part, but it's also possible that these developers have created shady apps
before, or are adding shady code to apps developed for others.

The OP doesn't seem to know for certain what code is in their app. Is it
possible that the outsourced developers they're using could have introduced
dangerous code, and have a track record of doing so before? Nowhere in the
post does it suggest that the author has contacted them to find out why their
account is banned, which seems a little odd given how frustrated they have
become with Google for banning them.

~~~
pizza
Google has the burden of proof to show why they are guilty by mere
association, but won't do it, likely because they don't want to reveal any
information about how they determine who is violating the ToS. There _should_
be greater transparency and a better appeals process, but there won't be.

At the very least it doesn't seem that Google has thought of a better way to
handle the scenario where an honest client relies upon a firm that has within
it one bad actor, which seems kind of short-sighted given the heavy-handed
nature of their policy - ban and delete someone else's work..

~~~
rjknight
Look at it from the other perspective - if Google doesn't police the Play
Store then users are put at risk. When bad actors are detected, they're
banned. It sucks if you've hired one of these bad actors to do development
work for you, but that can't trump the need for users to be protected from
malicious code.

In an ideal world, code review of the app would reveal whether or not there's
anything fishy going on. It doesn't seem like _anyone_ has done this - not the
OP, or Google. OP thinks their developers must be OK, and Google thinks (based
on some past evidence) that they're not. This doesn't strike me as totally
unreasonable on Google's part.

~~~
ashelmire
I’ve seen enough posts like this that end with the developers being reinstated
to doubt google here. They need to provide actual humans as resources to
developers and companies. They take a huge cut, they should provide the
service.

But really we should move away from these app stores.

~~~
tokyodude
I don't know if Google gets a huge cut now but they certainly didn't start
that way. Originally when Android shipped Google took 30% but only got 5%, the
other 25% went to the carrier. The fact that they only got 5% apparently meant
they were barely covering costs.

That maybe have changed in the last 10 years but I don't think it has. The
help on it says

> The remaining 30% goes to the distribution partner and operating fees.

In other words Google is not getting 30%

[https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-
developer/answ...](https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-
developer/answer/112622?hl=en)

> But really we should move away from these app stores.

Agreed

~~~
distances
My carrier has nothing to do with which phone I chose and use, so I highly
doubt it's true at least outside of the big US operators.

------
honkycat
Google is such a joke. They need to get their heads out of their asses.
Constant stories of bad support. Youtube is a complete horror show.

And I seriously question if their cloud offerings have actual product
designers attached.

One great example:

If you are using Google CloudSQL, you are one command away from losing
everything:

> gcloud sql instances delete prod-instance-name

When you delete a CloudSQL instance, it also deletes the back-ups associated
with that instance along with it. So if you accidentally delete your
production database: Your backups? Poof. Gone.

It says this in the fine print of the on-demand backups documentation:
[https://cloud.google.com/sql/docs/mysql/backup-
recovery/back...](https://cloud.google.com/sql/docs/mysql/backup-
recovery/backups#about_on-demand_backups)

> They persist until you delete them or until their instance is deleted.

There is also no way to mark a CloudSQL instance as "protected" so one bad CLI
command can lose you your production database and all backups.

In order to get an actual backup workflow that will not affect production
traffic, you have to script your own database dumps.

For me, Google CloudSQL does not do enough to protect my production data from
accidental deletion. I would argue it is unclear how your production backups
are being handled. I would argue their product treats your production data and
backups irresponsibly.

~~~
toomuchtodo
With RDS instances in AWS, it’s the same behavior: destroying a database
instance removes all of the automated backups that were made. Make sure to
take a final snapshot!

~~~
bribroder
In just the last few months they've made it possible to preserve these
snapshots after destroying the database: [https://aws.amazon.com/about-
aws/whats-new/2018/11/amazon-rd...](https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-
new/2018/11/amazon-rds-automated-backups-can-now-be-retained/)

~~~
mcbain
And there is also delete protection by default for new prod databases:
[https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2018/09/amazon-
rd...](https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2018/09/amazon-rds-now-
provides-database-deletion-protection/)

~~~
toomuchtodo
TIL! Thank you!

------
heptathorp
> I had created a Google Developer Account simply so I could pass on the login
> details to my app developers who uploaded and updated the app via my account
> each time.

Sounds like one of those developers was previously banned for violating ToS
and Google suspects the author is the same person with a new account trying to
evade the ban. Instead of sharing login details, the correct thing to do is
add a user and give them permission to upload. Not let them pretend to be you.

The situation sucks but Google's action seems reasonable? Like they can't just
let people create new accounts to evade bans.

~~~
on_and_off
It seems reasonable to me as well.

So far 99% of the people I have seen complaining about their account being
suspended were unwilling to read the ToS, even less to try to comply with
them.

I am pretty sure that the review process does mistakes as well, but as always
bad actors spoil everything for everybody.

FWIW, I had 2 apps removed from the play store earlier this month. They were
all based on the same codebase (different flavors) and were banned for using a
forbidden permission (after asking it to the user of course).

I was super surprised since when I coded the feature using that permission, it
was legal to use it. The rules have changed since then and I had pushed an
update to remove the use of that permission (to be honest it was not that
necessary, it just made the UX a bit smoother in one case).

BUT I did not realize that for these 2 apps, I had retained apks in the play
store for lower api levels with the faulty code :///

(I use an upload script to gain some time .. multiple apks take a long time to
upload for each update otherwise; so I don't see the play store console often)

Still; I was clearly in the wrong.

I just removed the faulty retained apps and was again in the play store a
couple of hours later.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
> unwilling to read the ToS, even less to try to comply with them.

So... a sane human being? Someone who can't afford to spend literally hours
reading legalese and trying to figure out what it means?

~~~
qwertox
This is in a business context. If you think you don't have to read the TOS,
then you better have your lawyers doing that for you.

~~~
dmix
Now back to the real world...

~~~
Operyl
How is reading a legally binding contract with regards to your business not a
real world expectation?

~~~
pas
In a lot of jurisdictions a contract that you were not able to negotiate
properly is simply void.

Sure, a ToS is different, and there's basically an implicit contract when you
buy a service, but that doesn't mean that the ToS is all powerful. It can be
still unfair practice. (Some jurisdictions have that too.)

Now of course courts can't really force G to do business with you, but as
others mentioned they can be sued for damages.

~~~
netheril96
Still, you have to read TOS first to understand which part is definitely
enforceable and which part isn’t. Ignoring it completely is foolish for a
business.

~~~
zaarn
In my jurisdiction it is assumed people do not read the ToS and any part of
the ToS that is not generic boilerplate must be shown separately or otherwise
highlighted, otherwise it might as well be food for the shredder.

That plus business can certainly not terminate your business relationship for
any reason they like.

------
zmmmmm
This is awful and I feel terrible for them, but a lot of alarm bells went off
when I read this:

    
    
        I then attempted to login to my ‘Google Developer Account’ for 
        the first time. Previous to this our app developers were the 
        only ones to access our account to upload and update our app for us
    

It sounds like they violated probably one of the first requirements of the ToS
not to share account credentials. From there ... really anything goes as to
what that developer could have done with those credentials intentionally or
otherwise.

Google _definitely_ needs to up their game here. Lifetime bans that are
completely irrevocable are a completely unacceptable system for the #2 or #1
app distribution platform in the world. Such a ban should be a last resort
after many, many transgressions and a result of extensive manual review, not
handed out on an automatic basis. Nonetheless, developers need to do their
part and also read and take serious the ToS of the developer agreements too.

~~~
BEEdwards
"From there ... really anything goes as to what that developer could have done
with those credentials intentionally or otherwise."

They paid them to make the app though, they could put literally anything in
there and even with them sending them builds that they uploaded themselves it
would have been just as easy to be nefarious so this justification is thin at
best.

Are there shared accounts in the google app scene or is giving your
credentials to the developer the only way to give them access?

~~~
mevile
You can share account access with other accounts. There is a Users &
Permissions panel in the Google Play Console you can use to invite new
members. There's no need to share your password with other people.

------
Animats
The real threat to Google will come when someone sues over this behavior as an
antitrust case. This is part of "supply chain" antitrust law. It's sometimes
called a "refusal to supply", where a manufacturer refuses to sell to a
retailer. That's legal if it is not "part of a predatory or exclusionary
strategy to acquire or maintain a monopoly."[1] If you're the only supplier of
something, antitrust law starts to apply. That's basic monopoly law.

That's a can of worms Google would not want opened.

[1] [https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-
guidance/guide-a...](https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-
guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/dealings-supply-chain)

~~~
docker_up
Why hasn't this happened yet? It seems like Google has been behaving this way
for a very long time.

~~~
Operyl
The people big enough to do so, with the pockets to do so, aren’t subject to
the problems faced here.

------
makecheck
Even in systems with automated processes, the _bare minimum for communication_
should be a log of activities that is visible to all parties (e.g. account
owner and company). The log should remain visible for quite awhile even after
a severe action such as a ban.

And in such a log, every action taken by an employee should be marked with an
employee number, even if it is a number that only means something inside the
company; and every action taken by an algorithm should be marked with an
identifier for that program.

It would be a lot easier for everyone involved to understand what the hell is
going on if you could see entries like:

\- <YYYY-MM-DD> algorithm XYZ flagged account due to suspicious activity
[link] \- <YYYY-MM-DD> employee 123456 verified accuracy of terms violation
[link] \- <YYYY-MM-DD> algorithm ABC notified account owner via E-mail of
violation [link] \- <YYYY-MM-DD> algorithm ABC auto-banned account

Instead, it seems for a lot of tech companies the communication amounts to ONE
E-mail basically listing all the lazy non-effort they went to before ruining
everything for you with no recourse.

~~~
crazygringo
The piece of the puzzle that you're missing is that people use accounts for
fraud, and if they find out why an account got banned, they'll know which
behavior triggered it and will learn to avoid that behavior in the rest of
their accounts and future accounts.

It sucks, but automating sharing reasons for flagged actions will be self-
defeating.

Ultimately it needs to be reviewed by a person at the company who is equipped
to judge the situation with more intelligence and discretion to determine if
it's really fraud or not.

~~~
megous
> The piece of the puzzle that you're missing is that people use accounts for
> fraud, and if they find out why an account got banned, they'll know which
> behavior triggered it and will learn to avoid that behavior in the rest of
> their accounts and future accounts.

Compliance is the goal, no? How's it self-defeating if you ban non-compliant
behavior and only way around it is to basically get more compliant with the
rules?

How will you get compliance if you don't share details with clueless
violators, so they can avoid the mistakes in the future? That seems self-
defeating, because this gets rid of clueless, but potentially valuable
developers.

------
wand3r
I imagine the comments will be either: its your fault, dont trust google and
have a strategy that totally relies on a party out of your control, & in this
day and age you have to do this and this happened to me with
google/apple/paypal/microsoft etc.

While i think relying on google (or a single platform) is dangerous, these
platforms really need to address these issues. While their isn’t much
competition, they are really eroding developer trust. Developers may decide to
build for an entirely different platform or work on a different idea that is
outside mobile. This ultimately hurts app stores and this these platforms.

Short term a small amount of discontent doesnt matter, but it could reach a
tipping point.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
> Dont trust google and [don't] have a strategy that totally relies on a party
> out of your control

Last week, much of Google and Facebook were brought to a halt after Apple
revoked their enterprise certificates. While the circumstances justified
Apple's actions in this case, the fact remains that even Google and Facebook
are largely reliant on another large company. If Apple completely banned all
Facebook apps from the app store tomorrow... well, Facebook would probably
survive, but it would be a serious blow.

I don't see how you can _not_ be reliant on Apple/Google.

~~~
coliveira
> I don't see how you can not be reliant on Apple/Google.

This is the very definition of a monopoly, isn't it? If the government was
working properly, it would be ready to break up these companies, as well in
other areas of oligopoly such as oil and banking.

~~~
j88439h84
Well, there's two of them.

~~~
sundvor
Duopoly, then ogliopoly after that.

------
danpalmer
This is terrible and I feel for the developers. I trust that they are honest
in their description of their side. I also acknowledge that Google have a long
way to go in terms of communication.

That said, I’ll offer an alternative history...

The author hired developers who have previously uploaded malicious code to the
Play store, or actively tried to circumvent restrictions on it. That developer
uploaded an app, Google banned their account and all accounts that they have
been contributors to.

This is a reasonable action for Google to take. It’s not like the Play store
account had a long history of playing by the rules, with 1 developer being
added right at the end and behaving badly. This is an account that is
essentially fully tainted.

When appealed, the reviewer looked at these facts, and upheld the closure, as
I believe would have been the right action.

In terms of getting further information, I would guess that Google are vague
for 2 reasons: to provide more information may open them up to being sued more
easily (rather like how most companies won’t say why someone was fired, or
give performance information in referrals), and secondly in Google’s mind this
developer is malicious, so they don’t want to provide any information that
could be used to further circumvent the ban.

Now, this does put the developer who has been essentially scammed but is
acting honestly in a tough position. My advice to them would be to push hard
on the developer advocate and marketing side of things. Ideally they’d have
done this from well before release and had a good working relationship with
someone on the inside throughout the process. People say Google are bad at
support, but this does happen, Google can be great at developer engagement, as
can Apple, etc. I’d frame it in terms of getting a new account set up,
guaranteeing that the account will not be delegated to any external entities,
and probably pushing hard on the fact that the app is out and doing well on
iOS. I’d push for building a relationship and being open with communication,
as these are exactly what the hypothetical bad actor that Google believes in
would avoid. It might take some time and perseverance, but I reckon that might
be enough.

~~~
holoduke
You clearly have no knowledge or experience in this field at all. Because of
you did you would have known that creating a new account after suspension
immediately results into another suspension. Google is just a shit company. I
don't need 50 sentences for that to explain. "A reasonable action by Google"
Come on man. Do you have any idea what's going on here. You whole story sounds
like big pile of crap.

~~~
danpalmer
I work at a small-ish company, we're ~70 people, and Google have been nothing
but accommodating, offering help and support where we've needed it. Maybe this
is because we're bigger than a 2 person company, I don't know.

My "story" was intended to be a hypothetical. I don't know if that's what
happened, but to me it sounds like a possible option.

To be honest, I also think you could be more constructive in your tone and
present your arguments in a better way. You have a useful opinion to add, but
the way you do so is inflammatory.

------
kerng
This is typical Google behaviour unfortunately. With GCP there have been
countless similar stories. Unless you have a dedicated account manager
(meaning you spend millions) there is basically no human support.

~~~
Bahamut
Yep, Google is by far the company with the worst customer support I've ever
seen - they sucked up $500 without telling me and then when I found out, they
hid behind a smoke screen as to why they couldn't refund it.

I also have another friend who has been banned for life by Google for the Play
Store as well by association. Google refused to reconsider on appeal, and
offers no recourse for him, a professor who teaches Android dev.

Google's lesson is clear here - don't use their services if you can help it
because you expose tremendous liability due to Google's unwillingness to take
any.

------
fareesh
Is it unfair to form a poor opinion of Google because it's typical for people
to only ever share bad experiences? Anecdotally I feel like I have come across
so many of these stories, and each of them sound terrible / symptomatic of a
broken/apathetic company.

It feels like the money keeps rolling in through ad revenues, and then spent
on developing projects like Inbox, Reader, and 5 chat apps, all of which get
discontinued.

Is Google (the company & team) turning into a Dilbert Comic?

~~~
munchbunny
I think it's interesting to note that Google seems to come up much more often
for Kafkaesque customer support problems.

That's not a rigorous scientific statement, but it's fairly consistent with my
own experience dealing with Google as a startup. Unless you have a back
channel via an employee you know, it's next to impossible to get any non-
automated, human judgement on your situation.

The part I don't get is... where in Google leadership does this issue get lost
on the company's priorities? Of all of the rational explanations I can come up
with, it feels like someone looks at the data and either says "nah we don't
lose much money from this" or "nah it's not a real problem". Is that actually
true?

~~~
fareesh
> The part I don't get is... where in Google leadership does this issue get
> lost on the company's priorities? Of all of the rational explanations I can
> come up with, it feels like someone looks at the data and either says "nah
> we don't lose much money from this" or "nah it's not a real problem". Is
> that actually true?

Could it be something to do with company culture? Something like "if we solve
a hard problem by assigning a human to it then we have admitted failure as a
technology company". It's a lofty goal but it comes at the cost of betraying
the trust of partners/customers when things break, and they seem to break
often. Someone in management really ought to be weighing those two things side
by side (assuming the cultural thing I mentioned even exists).

~~~
catach
Human-based support at Google-scale is also insanely expensive.

~~~
sam_goody
If they weren't taking mone from each of their app developers, that might be
an argument. But when you are making Google scale profits, which are INSANELY
high, than you can afford the humans to provide support.

And if you don't, than your monopoly should be broken by the government. And
Apple's high end garden barely scratches Google's monopoly.

------
technics256
This also happened to me, and I have no idea why. I'm making a Healthcare app
using react native, and got banned spontaneously as well. No recourse,
nothing. No ability to change anything.

I'm making sure all of my resources are spent on AWS and Microsoft services.
Never again for Google.

And thankfully, physicians prefer iPhones over Android by a large margin.

~~~
quickthrower2
Sounds like a PWA is the way to go as well.

------
quink
And just for anyone who's crazy enough (edit: and I can see they’ve come out
already in the comments here) to say that he deserved it because he associated
with some non-reputable people...

My Google account was entered as a recovery email address by someone else.
Most likely because it was a single letter removed from an abbreviation of
their real legal name. I got an email informing me of that fact and instantly
disavowed any association with the link right there in the email.

What should happen but a year later but Google letting me know that "your
Google account [other email] was deleted due to a violation of our Terms of
Service that was left unresolved.".

I tried to contact Google, I tried to disavow the account again, no reply and
a dead page. My account isn't dead, but I seem to be irreversibly linked (the
hypothetical Google term would be 'avowed' I guess, given that the opposite
'disavowal' was in the URI to reverse the process) to a ToS violation severe
enough to warrant account deletion through no fault of my own. Simply because
a random person signing up for a new account on the other side of the world
typoed i instead of u.

For all I know my reputation with Google is so bad that a single click on the
wrong YouTube video or a new algorithm with marginally different scoring
running on my account will delete it all. I have zero certainty through no
fault of my own.

Edit: Could hypothetically be a great way of shutting up political dissidents
(and their YouTube accounts) or anyone you don't like. List their email as a
recovery address on ten new accounts, get ToS violations on all of them before
they get a chance to disavow them (do it while they're likely sleeping maybe)
and you're done.

~~~
blihp
I presume my comment was one of the ones you were referring to. You just did
what I was suggesting: you explain how your account was inappropriately (IMO,
based on your explanation) shut down. These types of stories should be shared
when Google/Apple are in the wrong. However, notice the complete lack of
detail in the linked story re: the associated account that resulted in the
termination. If one is going to claim that an account termination was
inappropriate, doesn't it seem reasonable to provide details to support the
claim? (i.e. it doesn't seem crazy to me to expect an author of such a story
to at least make an effort to show that they aren't a bad actor crying foul)

~~~
quink
Seems you read neither the link, nor my comment.

The author of the story said he doesn’t know what the third party may or may
not have done and Google didn’t provide an explanation. And I never said my
account was shut down.

------
daniel-levin
What kind of an agreement did you sign with your developers?

IANAL. You might be able to invoke some legal means to limit your losses. The
associated-account story wasn’t an act of God. You might argue the developers
should have known better. I’d suggest buying an hour of a lawyer’s time to see
what can be done.

~~~
system2
What agreement. They hire offshore developers. They do not know who these
people are, if it is a person, or a group of scammers.

He asks for an app, but lets the offshore "developers" do everything including
store deployments. He could take the codes, and take care of the accounts.
Heck, he could even study a few hours to understand what's going on the app
before submitting.

He just depended on some random company he found on a freelancer website,
dumped all the money, then got punished because he let those people take 100%
of control.

Good luck with lawyers.

------
mproud
I don’t buy the guy’s analogy of crime and association.

If you willingly lend the keys to your truck to someone else, and he or she
commits a crime while using the vehicle, it might get impounded.

Know the people whom you work with, or just do the work yourself.

~~~
eeeeeeeeeeeee
That is a bit of a silly comparison. Even if you let a criminal borrow your
car and they do something bad, there is some sort of legal apparatus to get
your car back if it's clear that you were not involved in that criminal
activity. The impound lot doesn't simply say "sorry, we saw your appeal, but
we're gonna go ahead and keep the car forever."

~~~
jjeaff
You would think. But civil forfeiture doesn't care who owns what they take,
only whether it was used in a crime.

You may be stuck paying court costs to defend your property and get it back.
Which is why we have tons of ridiculous court cases like: "Bag full of hundred
dollar bills V. US Government."

~~~
behringer
There's a lot of people that think civil forfeiture is also fundamentally
wrong.

------
WalterGR
For years there’s been a manual penalty in Google search results against the
website I created that would - were the penalty _not_ in place - let me afford
to be self-employed. It was put into place during Matt Cutts' tenure at Google
- before his quiet exit from the company. I actually pressed him on the issue
in a thread here on HN and he lied about it.

Forget procedures, guidelines, terms of service. Individual Google employees
can and do destroy businesses, with impunity, and with no accountability.

It’s always difficult to distinguish incompetence from malice. But Google is
the worst of all possible universes: both incompetent and malicious - and
completely uncaring about that fact.

------
edoo
My adwords account was terminated after 7 years of inactivity for some
violation regarding how I used my original $100 free credit to experiment with
click metrics. I got a similar letter when I appealed. I didn't realize it
until a couple years after it was terminated when I wanted to promote a self
made product. I have to use someone else's account now to run my ads. It feels
excessive.

~~~
tjungblut
I have the same issue and it happened already more than 10 years (!) ago by
now. Indeed there is no possible way to get adwords enabled again after such a
termination.

~~~
Andrex
Same, was over 10 years ago for me as well. Still banned.

------
aspectmin
Not commenting on the specific merits of this case (as I would want to hear
both sides), but a few general thoughts:

a) Maybe it's just the nature of social media, but I think we're seeing a
massive uptick in issues like this being brought to Hacker News and their ilk.
Not just Developer Accounts, but DMCA fraud and Adwords account issues as
well.

b) An incumbent like Google can be built entirely on automated algorithms for
all they do (I think this is one of their core precepts), but at some point
(like now) this breaks down. This sets the stage for a rapidly building
snowball of first small/minor litigation (e.g. Small Claims) and then catches
fire until much larger litigation starts happening.

c) As evidenced over and over in tech / large corporate history, often issues
like this (that snowball), open up opportunities for new upstart players who
come up with effective solutions to these problems, to displace the
incumbents. (Cracks in the corporate armor.) As such, it wouldn't surprise me
to see upstarts using this as an opportunity to chip away at Google's market
share.

d) Small claims court can be a very effective way to get matters resolved, and
I've found them to very much not be biased towards any party and to consider
the merits of the case. With that said, there are some restrictions -
including the amount of judgment, and the kinds of judgment that can be
issued. One of the most interesting aspects here is that: "Unless a judge
grants permission, Attorneys and paralegals are excluded from appearing or
participating with the plaintiff or defendant in a small claims suit." This
makes it really interesting when the defendant is a company like Google (or
really any large entity).

e) I attribute some percentage of success to building a good cadre of
attorneys who work for me, or with me. As much as I cringe when I think back
to some of the invoices, it is my humble opinion that they've been worth every
dollar paid out for their services, especially in cases just such as these.

Best of luck resolving your issue.

------
bitL
So Google is learning from Amazon that was doing this for ages, terminating
accounts of their sellers if they e.g. resided in the same building as
somebody that was banned from their platform already or if they created
multiple accounts, with no recourse.

We really need an open mobile platform, "Personal Mobile" like what "Personal
Computer" used to be, even if only by an accident.

------
tfha
This is why people get excited about decentralization. Exactly stuff like
this. What if you had an app platform that would never shut out your business?

We're not there yet, but fixing things like this is the future of the
decentralization technology being built today.

------
banned_before
I had this happen to me. My android developer business account got banned. I
was making a fair amount of money and my account was unexpectedly terminated.
I got a canned response and could not get in contact from anyone from Google
to resolve the issue.

Ultimately, I gave up trying to get the verdict overturned. Instead, I used my
personal gmail account and created another developer account. I re-published
my app and it has been in the play store for the last three years.

------
coupdejarnac
I saw this recently on r/Androiddev:
[https://github.com/SimonMarquis/InternalAppStore](https://github.com/SimonMarquis/InternalAppStore)

If I ever release another Android app, I'll probably self release and skip the
Play store.

------
mpranjic
People here assume it's developers' fault. This is just a speculation (at
least, OP only mentioned it as a possibility). It could be, for example, that
developers previously used one of their client's accounts (to deploy an app),
which was later banned (could be even for a different app they have no
connection to). Some information is missing here (developers' side of story?)

~~~
system2
Nothing is missing, from Google's perspective, the 3rd party took care of
everything, and the investor (the writer in this case) was just a name in the
account.

------
andrewstuart
As I suggested recently, these companies need an ombudsman to escape the crazy
when the normal processes lead to crazy outcomes.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19092039](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19092039)

A $50 payment to the ombudsman, refundable if the ombudsman decides in the
customers favor, would discourage the obmudsman being overused.

~~~
hopler
You are describing mandatory binding arbitration, eh?

~~~
andrewstuart
No, this is an internal ombudsman - Google's own ombudsman who rescues
customers when the Google processes frustrate.

Lots of companies need an ombudsman because they provide no way out when the
normal processes let customers down.

It's like a backstop for customer satisfaction. A internal "court of appeal"
to help customers out.

Kind of like having "a friend in the business", but available to any customer
who needs it.

~~~
brianwawok
So right now they have an appeal form. It didn't work in the case above.

The difference after your change, is now you lose $50 and STILL have to post
to twitter to try and get your problem solved.

~~~
6nf
The appeal form is not an actual person, the ombudsman would have a name and a
face

~~~
brianwawok
What evidence do you have that the name and face would give you a different
answer? Somehow paying $50 changes something?

~~~
6nf
Ombudsmen in other organisations seem to help?

What do you suggest we do?

------
flibble
Sounds like a bad situation. If I were you I would simply change the app ID,
create a new Play account and publish it there. If there problem is with the
connection to a banned account and not the app, then this removes that
problem/connection.

~~~
ganeshkrishnan
Do NOT do this. Google will then ban all your accounts including Gmail, drive
and ads as creating an account to circumvent their ban is really dangerous.

This ban is lifetime unfortunately and you or related accounts are not allowed
on Google ever.

~~~
givinguflac
If this meant they would stop tracking me and advertising to me, I’d do it in
a heartbeat.

~~~
ganeshkrishnan
No they will neither delete your tracking id or delete your billing
information/ credit card info.

------
walterbell
Do we need a github repo with "precedent law" and machine+human correspondence
for account terminations and appeals at GAFA companies?

There's a historical reading list for law students at
[http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/library/2013/06/27/AMK...](http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/library/2013/06/27/AMK_ReadingList_20130625.pdf):

 _> Understanding Freedom's Heritage: How to Keep and Defend Liberty. This
list, prepared for young people by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, includes some
acknowledged classics and some idiosyncratic choices._

------
foxly
If you really want this to go viral, take Google to small claims court for
your fees, and live tweet it.

Examples: [https://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/why-i-sued-
go...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/why-i-sued-google-and-
won_b_172403.html) [https://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/why-google-
bo...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/why-google-bothered-to-
ap_b_213176.html)

------
cnfernandes
This is why I am building a terms of service rating system. Companies need to
pay an economic price for their broad, one-sides terms of service. This is the
op-Ed I wrote in the Financial Times:
[https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/40e558ce-158...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/40e558ce-158a-11e9-a168-d45595ad076d)

------
cm2187
PWA can't come fast enought to get rid of stores and walled gardens (and
reduce cross platform development costs).

------
jshowa3
This is why I've never liked curated app stores and I hate the whole app store
concept in the first place. I mean, what did people expect when you can't
develop apps for devices unless they're "registered" by some company. The same
goes with stores like Steam. They all write the ToS so they can do anything
regardless of whether its enforceable or not and it requires a long list of
legal battles just to fix it.

------
system2
This is what you get for using offshore developers, without knowing who they
are, what they do, what they did.

I understand people want to get rich by releasing apps and other stuff, but if
you depend on other people to do this, you will fail miserably. There is a
very small percentage of apps being successful with this method.

Do marketing or something else. Do not depend on random companies (especially
offshore) for the entire project. The OP had the idea, not the solution. It is
really not surprising to see these type of issues. What if the developers
disappear next month and you have a major bug? You can't fix it and will fail.
It is their code and your company on the line.

Find local real developers, work with them, or learn to do it yourself. Do not
work with offshore especially $5 an hour. I understand google did something
harsh, but this is the owners fault, not googles. Use your own credentials, do
the most important things such as deployment and source control. You gave the
master key to offshore people and get shocked when things go sideways. When
will people learn?

------
paganel
Stories like this make me wonder how come SMEs still use Google's other
products like their cloud solution. You could have your entire business on
Google Cloud and suddenly everything becomes out of your reach with no valid
response or action coming back from Google. It's crazy how some people still
put their trust in this company's business-related products.

------
magnetic
Can he not create a new account for his company, not the developers, and be
the one to publish the app? It's not like he has a history to preserve
(ratings, reviews, etc).

I imagine he has a contract with the devs so he can get the app in some form
(hopefully access to source too) and publish it himself. Of course, publishing
to mobile phone stores can be difficult for non technical people, but if that
is the case he can request "over the shoulder" assistance with screen sharing
so he ends up being the one logging in and doing the actions.

In the iTunesConnect portal, you can assign roles to various parties,
including roles that have permissions to publish apps, without having to give
the admin's account credentials.

I don't remember if the Play Store has similar features.

~~~
arbuge
Look at the screenshots in the article of the messages from Google. Those may
be generic rejection letters, but they seem to be threatening him specifically
to avoid creating new accounts as a workaround...

------
swagonomixxx
Another one of these aspiring app developers bites the dust. I have some
advice to such developers - work on making a good web app. You automatically
reach more platforms than just the two big ones, and you won’t have to deal
with too big to fail corporations taking you down.

~~~
manigandham
Most consumers want real apps, not webapps, and mobile browsers don't make
webapps easy to launch and use either.

~~~
ohiovr
Except on Reddit. People constantly complain about ads for the better than the
web page app.

~~~
anoncake
Complaints about the ads are not complaints about the app.

------
backtoyoujim
"I have no idea how Google can terminate accounts without fully checking the
reasons behind the termination."

I never read the TOS or EULA, either.

------
duxup
We all thought it would be some massive AI that takes over the world and makes
arbitrary decisions without a sufficient explanation and no recourse to do
anything beyond that.

Google just does it as a process.

/dev/null/goog

------
franciscop
I am the creator of one of the more-and-more popular npm libraries
(`translate`) and I cannot test it with Google Translate anymore, since I am
_scared_ of signing up for GCloud for this exact reason. One small mistake and
all my accounts get blocked without appeal. Better not to stake your
life/career on that!

I'm also in the process of moving away from my gmail for this reason,
specially with Inbox going away now.

------
ursa000
Had been there. In my case, they mistook our play money trading tournament app
with real money tournament and removed our app. We appealed the decision a few
times and got it reinstated after more than a month. It was a really horrible
experience and we got no apologies whatsoever even if it was 100% their fault.
They were like "You are lucky because we are reinstating your app."

------
xhruso00
And now imagine your photos stored in Google Photos are lost! Never trust
GOOGLE.

------
tjpnz
Situations like these (and others mentioned here) make me nervous to publish
to Google Play and are making me reconsider use of their other services namely
Google Cloud. A lot of the issues being highlighted here are not simple ToS
violations, they have far more to do with psycho automation coupled with an
arrogant company culture that is actively dismissive of their customers.

------
mrhappyunhappy
I used to run ads on google and made a living on it. One day google decided to
disallow ads for this particular niche and I could no longer make any money.
While I am not against their decision to disallow ads in this niche, I learned
a very important lesson not to start any business that depends on google ads
for survival. Sooner or later they screw you over.

------
WheelsAtLarge
I'm surprised how few of these problems show up in HN and most of the time the
ones I've read the developer has been at fault. The resolution is to push for
third-party arbitration as an option for resolution. Arbitration will give
developers a chance against the giant that Google is.

------
mark_l_watson
It is well understood what the benefits and potential problems of using Google
Services are. Being an Android developer, like the company in this article,
seems most problematic because unless you want to sell digital assets outside
of the Play store, there is no alternative.

For individuals and other companies, it is easy enough to place an abstraction
layer around using Google Services: have your own domain temporarily or
perhaps permanently attached to a G Suite account. Be systematic about
creating Google Takeaway data dumps and saving them yourself. When using GCP,
write your own or use standard library wrappers around GCP APIs.

Then you get the advantages of using Google, protected against low probability
of occurrence problems.

I also like to use Amazon and Microsoft services and I take similar
precautions.

------
Zenst
This does add more fuel to the fire about app store monopolies upon platforms.

I forsee the EU eventually fining Google (nice revenue stream with fines
recently) and they have to do what Microsoft had to do with the IE Browser and
offer the users a choice which lists the alternatives and allow the user to
chose and change as they wish.

Which would be nice, and will eventually happen. Though these things will
take...time. Though I wonder if Microsoft will have an android app store by
then, the poetic irony of history will sing come the possibility of Google
having to offer users of Android an option to select which store they wish to
use instead of the Google default, with Microsoft as an option. Browser
selection parallels are abound here.

------
wyldfire
> To put into perspective the situation we are in, imagine one of your
> neighbours commits a crime and is arrested by the police. You don’t know
> which neighbour has committed the crime but you are linked to each other by
> the street you live on and therefore you are ‘associated’ to that neighbour.

More like you handed over keys to your car to a neighbor and the next morning
there's blood on the bumper and the cops are knocking on your door. You _do_
bear some responsibility but since it's Google's store it's their rules and
the analogy kinda breaks down because Google cuts off access in order to
mitigate the impact of a Sybil attack.

------
alxlaz
I sympathize with this guy, and I feel sad and awful every time I read about
something like this, because all I can think is man, this could happen to me
any day.

It also serves as a very unfortunate reminder of a couple of things:

1\. Just how incredibly important it is for us to be able to use the platforms
of the future as we see fit. We look at app stores and think well, this is
good, right, applications are vetted and you can be sure that everything you
install from one is fine. Except malicious applications still get through (see
e.g. [https://threatpost.com/google-play-removes-22-malicious-
ligh...](https://threatpost.com/google-play-removes-22-malicious-lightsout-
apps-from-marketplace/129328/) \- not a singular incident), it's applications
that could be a threat to Google's position or its business don't.

If users could download and install applications as they wish, as it was the
norm twenty years ago, having a developer account removed wouldn't be much of
a problem. Curating and reviewing applications may be a good way to keep
malicious ones away from non-technical users, but _who_ we trust to do the
reviewing is equally important, and Google is about as shady as it gets.

2\. Google's abysmal support (which is not limited to this particular case!)
is no coincidence: small developers are too small to count, and, as
applications became commoditized and got cheaper and cheaper, there are too
many of them for the loss of one to be important in any way. Sure, Google's PR
may insist they value every developer but their actions speak for themselves.
Customer support, for any branch of their business, is so bad it makes PayPal
look helpful by comparison.

3\. Ultimately, that the standards of every company are the standards that its
users hold it to. It speaks for itself that Google's "appeal" process (if one
can call it that way) is so incredibly useless that the only way to _actually_
appeal it is to produce enough rage that -- out of fear of bad PR, not because
that's how you work with customers! -- someone will actually look at this.

I hope this gets sorted out real soon -- and that we all think twice about
which platforms we support through our work. Both Google and Apple are what
they are because mobile developers publish their applications there and not
somewhere else -- both of them would be nothing were it not for the app
developers' work, as seen in, say, Windows Phone. Granted, Android and iPhone
are where the most users are, so it's where the big money is -- I'm sure no
one writes Android apps because they're evil (ok, some people do; but not
everyone). But most companies in this space could _afford_ to invest in more
free platforms, like the Librem 5, which would work in their own benefit, even
if not _right now_.

Edit: oh yeah, one more thing.

I've seen Google trying to wiggle out of situations like these by saying that
well, this was outsourced, so maybe the guys this was outsourced to did some
shady stuff, it's definitely not Google's fault, they have no control over
that.

Yeah, well, the outsourcing industry is older than Google is, and it's also
responsible for virtually 90% of the applications on the Play Store (how else
do you think applications end up costing 99 cents?). If a company can't come
up with a review process that can accommodate the software outsourcing
industry, in 2019, that's beyond laughable.

~~~
ilaksh
Google is not just an ordinary company though. It is so dominant that its
basically like Google is effectively its own government but with no public
oversight or legal recourse.

I think instead of relying on these giant monopolies we should built open
platforms on decentralized technopolies.

------
vzaliva
The author should be more careful when hiring remote developers and giving
them full access to his account. It looks like he hired some people with the
previous history of Play store fraught and Google caught up with them.

I run a consulting company myself. When we develop mobile apps for our
customers we usually recommend them to assign one of their employees to manage
App/Play store accounts and publish new versions. The company responsibilities
under online store TOS are not necessarily covered by the development
agreement they signed with us and if they want to ensure the compliance they
should do it themselves.

------
smadurange
In some ways, I feel that this is a systemic problem with mobile app
developers. Most these guys have barely any interest in technogy or
innovation. As long as they can code something up and make a quick bug they
are happy. They should have seen this coming when all their apps had to go
through the playstore if they were serious about it.

If they are half as serious about this as usual opensource community they
would have built a reasonable alternative to it. It's a disgrace that Android,
something paraded as opensource, has taken away the very things it promises to
give the community: choice and liberty.

~~~
holoduke
What a pile of crap you are saying. Generalizing entire groups. Very offending
to some of us. The mobile dev industry is filled with talented and motivated
Devs. What you say is not right. I would be the same as declaring you to the
group of nerdy usually ugly developers working in dark rooms with pizza boxes
everywhere. No interest for business and no interest for girls because they
are all porn addicted.

~~~
smadurange
I'm not trying to offend any dev in particular. If you think you are a
competent dev good for you and I'm not disputing that. My point is as far as I
can see Android as a development platform is in a pile of mess. Get together
and build a reliable, secure Playstore. Android is opensource right? So take
back some control.

Do you hear Linux community whining about Redhat or IBM?

------
guytv
Google and Apple are a duopoly in the huge app market. Governments should
force their process to become transparent. Until this happens, countless
number of developers will go through ordeals like that.

------
najtsirk
This is why Google should get hit with many more anti-monopoly penalties.

------
superkuh
Don't use walled gardens. Don't use servcies with shitty ToS. Problem solved.
If you can't get by without this this means you're part of the problem of
providing services to those contributing to the problem.

That isn't to say this isn't an unethical and jerk policy of Google's. It's
just that you knew they, and most other centralized companies with rent models
are incentived by profit to behave this way.

So many people are slapping their hands down a burner and then acting shocked
when they get burnt.

------
osrec
A few days ago there was a discussion about Google listing PWAs in the play
store. I would hate if they were somehow able to exercise this level of
control on webapps/webpages...

------
sandov
Another proof that centralized closed services are not a good way to conduct
our digital life.

Try to depend as little as possible on 3rd parties. Use free software that
runs on your machine instead of proprietary services that depend on a server,
store your data on your own physical hard drives instead of anyone else's
cloud. Sure, concessions can be made when its too impractical to do your own
thing, but have in mind that {Google | Apple | Amazon | Facebook} doesn't care
about you.

------
75dvtwin
Why the mobile providers (Eg Orange, ATT, China Telecom) could not cooperate
and create a 'Provider Store'

That's governed by their consortium (And if Google fusses at that, create a
fork of Android and make a ProvidersDroid OS)?

A consortium of consumer oriented connectivity and device providers (that are
also competing with each other) -- have to be able to stand up to this
MonsterG, that's waging a war on small-sized-businesses and individuals.

------
kurczynski
"You don’t know which neighbour has committed the crime but you are linked to
each other by the street you live on and therefore you are ‘associated’ to
that neighbour. As a result, you are also arrested for the crime and you are
guilty by default! There is no unbiased court case or appeals procedure
because the decision is final and you cannot find anybody to contact to get
your case re-heard!"

That kind of shit happens all the time.

------
Torwald
One of the things you could do to avoid this kind of abuse by quasi-monopolies
would be to not post on Medium. But that's just me I guess and that guy:
[https://brooksreview.net/2018/05/medium-keeps-killing-off-
bl...](https://brooksreview.net/2018/05/medium-keeps-killing-off-blogs-in-the-
name-of-saving-the-internet/)

------
AstroRock
This is why I didn't even blink when Apple cancelled Google's Fisherprice
Certificate. Google cancels accounts on a whim daily, and in a lot of cases
don't even have the decency to tell you why they cancelled your account and
'destroyed' your business; they deserve no sympathy. At least here they gave
something resembling a faint reason. I hope the authors find a solution soon.

------
deanclatworthy
There has to be legislation against these huge companies, who hold so much
commercial power.

I had my Adsense account terminated a few years ago and since then I can’t do
anything commercial on Google’s platform. My appeal wasn’t heard and I wasn’t
given any info on what happened. I expect a competitor did something.

I can’t make YouTube video and add ads, and I can’t add ads to any new website
businesses I may want to put online.

------
olaf
Chances of getting decent customer support by Google seems to me like a
lottery. Please act accordingly and don‘t make business with such an entity.

------
ohiovr
I would be interested in knowing what app you made. Completely agree that
Google is heavy handed and they treat developers (and really anyone that
depends on them) as bugs they don’t care about squashing. Only if your story
goes viral will the beast wake up and put out the fire in the kitchen.

Don’t forget that there are other markets for apks such as it is. Play revenue
is dismal compared to Apple App Store anyway.

~~~
aembleton
Loyalty app for small retailers
[https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/hoopapployalty/id1287914039?...](https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/hoopapployalty/id1287914039?mt=8)

------
homero
New platform, same issue. Adsense has tens of thousands of these horror
stories. One click can end a business and destroy someone's life.

~~~
PerilousD
and yet the lemmings continue to flock to the adsense cliff and follow each
other over it. I dropped adsense ten? years ago - I dont have an FB account
and I'm not tart now. It may not seem that way to the lemmings but Google and
FB are NOT the internet (they just very very good at exploiting it).

------
mark-r
Google is all about scale. The one thing that doesn't scale is personal
service, so they don't offer it - it's not part of their DNA. Getting a human
to make a judgement call on any decision is near impossible, because that's
the way Google designed their company.

It has been that way from the start and probably will be that way forever.
Stories like this go back ages.

------
L1quid
Years ago, when Google kicked our browser extension out of their store, we
were in a similar situation.

Fortunately, I knew more than one person who worked there and begged them to
ask around. Eventually, we were told something to the effect of, Google
outsources management of the store. Once an actual Google employee got their
eyes on it, we were reinstated.

------
jay_kyburz
Can they just distribute the app outside the play store like Fortnight?

I don't imagine there is much "discoverability" there anyhow.

~~~
Mirioron
Yes, but most people don't install apps that aren't on the PlayStore.

------
benmcnelly
We got one of our app taken down and a strike on our account, warning that
further strikes are going to mean no more developer account. We wanted to re-
upload and try to find what the problem was but with no human contact ever
able to be made, we had to settle for not doing the app over losing all of our
other ones.

------
blago
A lot of the comments seem to defend Google on the grounds of fighting bad
actors and protecting users from malicious code.

This post is not disputing Google's right, some would say duty, to counter
fraud. It's simply stating that this shouldn't result in irreversible damage
to good faith actors.

I am inclined to agree.

------
arkitaip
I am going to assume that the problem is Google once again using an automated,
AI powered system that's designed to prevent abuse. Only it's too draconian -
if not downright faulty - and punishes innocent devs but that Google has
decided that's an ok trade-off because the system prevents enough abuse and is
much cheaper than employing more human beings for their abuse prevention
efforts. So what if 10% of all abuse patterns are false positives - they have
millions of devs lining up to be part of the Google Play ecosystem.

Google has similar problems with automated, AI powered systems at Adsense,
Adwords, Youtube, GCP etc, and the constant abuse and total lack of
communication they've put their customers through has had many of them
abandoning these platforms.

Meanwhile, their poor treatment of customers keep reinforcing the notion that
Google simply cannot offer the level of customer service people need to run
their businesses, and that's one problem they can't code or AI themselves out
of.

------
mrhappyunhappy
Isn’t it about time we have a review of the legality of tos agreements? It
seems anyone can put anything into this thing nobody reads and just point
their finger at it “see, says here you agree you’re an idiot”.

There should be some limits as to what you can and cannot put into TOS.

~~~
Pocketknife
Ah, but you forget the age old problem of government regulation:

Regulatory capture

I guarantee if you got such a law passed, Google, Apple, and Microsoft will be
the ones actually writing the law, and running whatever organization is
supposed to enforce it.

And I guarantee they will make it extremely hard to comply with simply to
drive up costs to competitors.

It won't actually do anything useful, or there will be one good aspect left in
as a fig leaf. It will, effectively, be a very expensive to comply with pile
of empty words.

------
twirlock
We should all start doing everything we can to economically harm google and
reduce their power.

------
skookumchuck
> I have no idea how Google can terminate accounts without fully checking the
> reasons behind the termination.

The moral is never invest money in a platform where an algorithm can terminate
you.

The same applies to payment processors. Always have more than one for your
online business.

------
ezoe
The moral of the story is, don't relies on monopolized software distribution
platform.

~~~
BucketSort
How can you not rely on these platforms if you are building an app? You cannot
expect anyone to go download .apk's manually. Users are too coddled to do
anything different when downloading/installing the app. The real moral of the
story is that we are just peasants on these platforms and can be washed away
with a flick of a finger. In the end, become Zuck or get zucked.

~~~
userbinator
_How can you not rely on these platforms if you are building an app? You
cannot expect anyone to go download .apk 's manually. Users are too coddled to
do anything different when downloading/installing the app._

Then maybe we should start educating users in the other direction. There
wasn't this problem before app stores and walled gardens became common.

~~~
BucketSort
Educating users? Users follow the path of least resistance. Make anything more
complicated, and they will switch to something more convenient. Do you expect
users to really be sensitive to the plight of devs?

------
fiatjaf
Why do we need an "app store"? Don't we have the web? And Google the search
engine itself? Wouldn't it be better to developers to distribute their APKs
and other people to make curated lists of apps?

------
otachack
If the app is not to blame then I believe OP can just make a new Google Play
Dev account, change the bundle ID of the app, and upload as a new app.

OP if you need help let me know. As long as you have the source code it should
be simple.

------
pavelromashkin
It seems to be easier to upload malware to Google Play then legit content

------
tedmcory77
If someone can snap their fingers and turn off your business,it’s not your
business. Porters five forces (and ubderstanding the sixth force) is one of
the most important lessons in business.

------
ykevinator
I was expecting a fraud app or something but the app looks legit. I wonder if
Google doesn't want you to store you're loyalty cards. Btw $25k seems like a
lot for this app.

~~~
system2
Hey, let the writer get rich with his "own app" he used freelancers to
"develop" and published under their accounts. I am surprised he didn't price
it $1,000.

------
stefek99
Why not create another account and publish the app again?

They may have a decompiler somethign thingy and block the new account too, as
associated with another account that terminated LOL :)

------
luord
Funny, even after reading everything about privacy and people as the product
and whatnot, _this_ might be the thing that gets me to stop using google
products

------
ddtaylor
> I am in utter shock at the lack of customer support from Google.

It's very common now and I think these experiences are kind of a 'coming of
age' for newer users.

------
Dyermarker
Yikes! A former business associate wanted my username and password for
administering my info.

I told him no and ended the relationship. Guy needs to read the terms he’s
agreeing to.

------
vagab0nd
I would acquire the source code from the developer, audit it, and then release
it under a new account. It's better than trusting Google to do the right
thing.

------
burtonator
We need a way to unionize across all these properties.

YouTube contributors, Android developers, etc.

Unless we have collective action these companies will simply not care about
us.

------
ccnafr
Find a non-profit and sue Google in Europe. You'll be surprised how quickly
they'll reinstate your account. Happened to a friend.

------
sgjohnson
If Google ceased to exist, the only service that they provide that I would
miss, is YouTube.

Plague to them. That monopoly should have never been created.

------
megaman8
we as users, need to start finding alternatives to Google and Youtube. Not to
stop using google/youtube but to diversify. Sure, today, the vast majority of
users of Google and Youtube might be treated fairly. But this sort of thing
can happen to anyone. No one company should have so much power, the potential
for abuse is too large.

------
Keverw
Pretty scary they associate accounts like that.

I know some web developers that have to login to client's Google accounts...
For example, using Gmail to download/send mail via their hosting account.
Convenience to have it all in one place but some clients who are small
business owners don't really want to or know how to deal with things like
setting up their email putting in the IMAP and POP details.

Then if you make apps for example, if the company isn't a tech startup you'd
be the one uploading the app too. Say they are a small restaurant chain and
you wrote them an app.

Also there's local seo companies where companies will manage small businesses
Google Business page listings for them too.

There was a story posted about an entire company that got their GSuite banned,
and employee's personal accounts unrelated to work got deleted too.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/8kvias/tifu_by_gettin...](https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/8kvias/tifu_by_getting_google_to_ban_our_entire_company/)

I like many other people use Google services daily, and a fan of some of their
products. However support seems like a blackhole from many other stories
online, other's that made it to HN too.

Not sure I'd want to use them for anything business related (Domains, Hosting,
Internet, Phone, etc), other than publishing to the Play Store if I ever made
an app since you are kinda forced to if you want a popular app that's cross
platform. I forget the post but a few days ago people on HN was talking about
Google's Cloud offerings and recommended not using any cloud specific APIs. I
haven't really been following Google's cloud offerings but I know AWS offers a
lot of APIs for databases, etc - but the idea is to use tools and programs
that can run on any cloud so it's easy to switch if you wanted or needed too
without being locked in. Good general advice no matter who the provider is
though.

Google Fi interests me but I remember on the top page of HN someone had a
billing problem, and not sure if that was solved.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18886804](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18886804)

Google Fi is supposed to be really useful for people who travel
internationally for example, with iPhone support recently added but visual
voicemail, etc isn't supported yet... If they add visual voicemail in the
future I'd be more interested in switching but support is a concern for me.

Also YouTube other people talk about, don't have that as your only income
stream is one of the points. However if you are popular enough I've heard you
get like some sort of account manager assigned to you, so maybe they get
higher priority for support issues.

~~~
creato
That story is suspicious, Google's response:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/8l231x/google_banne...](https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/8l231x/google_banned_an_entire_company_gsuite_accounts/)

------
trumped
If those walled gardens could end, everybody would be better off. They don't
even filter apps that abuse users, anyways.

------
auslander
People are still using Google in 2019 ?

------
a_imho
OTOH I can't even delete my developer account and stop Google spamming my
inbox.

------
c22
People always complain when they get kicked out of these walled gardens. Of
course it's the same people who have dedicated significant effort and
resources into making these walled gardens attractive enough to out compete
general purpose computing, so I can't feel that sorry for them.

------
kebman
I'm quite fed up with Google's monopoly. Antitrust thank you please!

------
Cyclone_
At the very least this story should have Google's attention by now

------
nightsd01
I hate to say it, but Jesus, this is one of the worst apps I’ve ever seen.
I’ve seen bootcamp coders create better apps after just a month in bootcamp. I
can’t believe you spent $25K on this, did you use one of those Indian app
shops...? It kinda shows.

------
tyler33
Thats the problem of monopoly. Also depend 100% on a single company.

------
cannam
Does the GDPR give companies (as opposed to individuals) any right to query
the factual basis of something like this?

------
qrbLPHiKpiux
> I am in utter shock at the lack of customer support from Google.

I'm not.

~~~
benologist
I don't understand how anyone can be surprised. Companies like AT&T and
Comcast budget to support 100m people by phone, while Google has
$100,000,000,000+ in the bank. This kind of expense evasion is just a dirty
accounting trick to spend less. It would barely even eat into their revenue to
provide Comcast-level shitty support. Google's massive profits could even
absorb the occasional tax, unfortunately it's much more profitable to just
abstain from support, taxes etc.

------
gesman
The real problem is betting your business on someone's platform that you
absolutely cannot control.

I think we have these "OMG (Google|Youtube|Adsense|Paypal|eBay) terminated my
account and it's a disaster!" \- once a week at least.

~~~
arduinomancer
What's the alternative? Never develop any mobile apps?

~~~
gesman
It's up to developer to weigh the risks and make an informed decision.

------
networkimprov
Never launch a mobile app before you have launched a website.

------
towaway1138
I don't understand why anyone has to do with Google in 2019, with all that's
come to light. The only trace of them I have left is my Chromebook, which
admittedly is hard to match. (Any suggestions?)

~~~
WalterSear
That there might be plenty more traces you have missed.

[https://gizmodo.com/i-cut-google-out-of-my-life-it-
screwed-u...](https://gizmodo.com/i-cut-google-out-of-my-life-it-screwed-up-
everything-1830565500)

------
z3t4
Just create a new account and reupload the app!?

------
ducklingslicks
Google must be punished. Brutally. It must hurt.

------
hartator
> HoopApp Loyalty

I thought you can’t use “app” in an app name?

~~~
feikname
> I thought you can’t use “app” in an app name?

WhatsApp seems like a fairly strong counter-argument

------
NoblePublius
This is a great ad for Firebase and Flutter.

------
jwildeboer
Correct me if I’m wrong, but is the TL;dr „I gave full access to my developer
account to a third party and only checked that account when things went
wrong“?

------
xtat
app stores ruin everything

------
CodyToombs
I did a little looking around HoopApp's details and I'm finding it all a bit
suspect.

We've heard this story hundreds of times — Google Play's aggressive banning,
automated responses that stonewall progress, and general inability to get
things fixed even when people get involved — so there's nothing about it that
isn't believable. But I have a feeling that some or all of this may not have
actually happened to this particular developer account.

The first thing I checked was the history on the app itself. AppBrain shows
that the app was originally released almost exactly 1 year ago, and in the 11
months it was available, it had still only reached the 100-500 install count.
Apple's App Store doesn't show download numbers, but the listing has zero
reviews, which is a fairly good indicator that download numbers are virtually
non-existent.
[https://www.appbrain.com/app/com.hoopapp](https://www.appbrain.com/app/com.hoopapp)
[https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/hoopapployalty/id1287914039](https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/hoopapployalty/id1287914039)

I also then looked into their website, curious if this might still be
newsworthy. [https://www.hoopapp.co.uk/](https://www.hoopapp.co.uk/)

It's a proprietary digital loyalty card that requires that businesses pay a
subscription fee and either rent or buy hardware from HoopApp, and customers
will need the apps on their phones. On a personal note, I think the business
idea was bad and doomed to fail, but who am I to judge...

This is when I started to consider the app may not have been delisted by
Google, but could have actually been done intentionally by the HoopApp people.
After all, the download numbers were abysmal, and the only way a business like
this can succeed is if there are a ton of customers interested in using it,
which would be incentive for businesses to pay a fee for it.

Their post makes a point to say that they had put some effort into hyping up
the product prior to its launch, which was supposedly about to happen, so I
looked at their social accounts.
[https://www.facebook.com/HoopLoyalty/](https://www.facebook.com/HoopLoyalty/)
[https://twitter.com/hoopapployalty](https://twitter.com/hoopapployalty)

Both have posts from 12 months ago that say the app already launched, and some
from only a few months earlier that claim the app was just about to launch. To
me, this doesn't really line up with the timeline they presented in their
post, even taking into account the claims about server troubles. I don't think
server troubles should take nearly a year to resolve. Regardless, both apps
have been _publicly_ accessible for a year.

[https://twitter.com/HoopAppLoyalty/status/928166469136814080](https://twitter.com/HoopAppLoyalty/status/928166469136814080)
[https://twitter.com/JNights2/status/967074426272575488](https://twitter.com/JNights2/status/967074426272575488)
[https://twitter.com/HoopAppLoyalty/status/967723452957208576](https://twitter.com/HoopAppLoyalty/status/967723452957208576)

[https://www.facebook.com/HoopLoyalty/posts/880998315392883?_...](https://www.facebook.com/HoopLoyalty/posts/880998315392883?__tn__=-R)
[https://www.facebook.com/HoopLoyalty/photos/a.80383775977560...](https://www.facebook.com/HoopLoyalty/photos/a.803837759775606/899397676886280/?type=3&theater)
[https://www.facebook.com/HoopLoyalty/photos/a.80383775977560...](https://www.facebook.com/HoopLoyalty/photos/a.803837759775606/900521846773863/?type=3&theater)
[https://www.facebook.com/HoopLoyalty/photos/a.80383775977560...](https://www.facebook.com/HoopLoyalty/photos/a.803837759775606/902825549876826/?type=3&theater)
[https://www.facebook.com/HoopLoyalty/photos/a.80383775977560...](https://www.facebook.com/HoopLoyalty/photos/a.803837759775606/903646939794687/?type=3&theater)
[https://www.facebook.com/HoopLoyalty/photos/a.80383775977560...](https://www.facebook.com/HoopLoyalty/photos/a.803837759775606/918234621669252/?type=3&theater)

Both accounts have been mostly silent for the better part of the last year,
only popping up with a few generic reposts, some stuff about a video, plus a
post on each account when they were anticipating an award. Evidently they won
a local business award 8 months ago for a service that hadn't officially
launched yet?

[https://twitter.com/HoopAppLoyalty/status/100990469131517542...](https://twitter.com/HoopAppLoyalty/status/1009904691315175424)
[https://www.facebook.com/HoopLoyalty/photos/a.80383775977560...](https://www.facebook.com/HoopLoyalty/photos/a.803837759775606/970077759818271/?type=3&theater)

There's still room to dig, but once all of these pieces come together, it
looks a lot like they're trying to stir up a mob to get attention for a
business that had basically failed. It's not hard to pretend to be a victim of
Google's famously bad management of developer accounts, there are screenshots
and identical stories all over HN and reddit, all of which are easy to copy
and modify.

I'm skeptical of story elements like an investment of only £25,000 (about
$33,000 US). The way it's described, it sounds like this is for both the
Android and iOS apps, plus server development, and an interface for the
business owners. To say that's on the low side would be an understatement. Are
there investors, and why aren't they doing something about this? They've
supposedly sunk time and effort into promoting the service and making videos,
but most of that happened over a year ago over a couple months, then abruptly
slowed to very rare posts. This doesn't sound ambitious enough for a startup.

One other thing I noticed is that the HoopApp social accounts don't even point
to this post, and the site still links to the Google Play listing even though
it has been down for a month. You'd think they would have at least added a
note to explain the app would be returning shortly. I'm not going to speculate
on this or try to track down details, but I did briefly ponder the possibility
that the post wasn't even written by somebody with a connection to the
company.

Regardless, the tl;dr is that this whole thing smells a bit like a publicity
stunt based on an all too familiar story. Raising the pitchforks for hundreds
of other legitimate developers is more than justified, but I think this
particular story should be scrutinized quite a bit more before it becomes the
poster child for a call to action.

------
gammateam
I’m really glad Im not suppporting and advocating for that destructive
ecosystem anymore.

While making a living off of it you are only incentivized to defend android
and what it COULD be.

Being an android app developer is basically scamming entrepreneurs, especially
North American ones as their ideas dont typically leverage any good or
monetization related ideas that apply to North American Android users and they
are completely tied to Google services.

All while developing for a venture on the Asian continent just wont pay you,
the developer, as much.

Good thing developing for yourself is free.

------
glitchc
Would love to sympathize but I can’t agree with their “neighbour” analogy. A
more apt analogy is this: If someone has illegal dealings in the past, and you
conduct business with them in the present, the authorities are well within
their rights to investigate you. If you didn’t know beforehand, the
investigation should convince you to cease further activities. If you did know
and still proceeded, it’s your own damn fault.

Tl;dr: Cut ties with the app developer, create a fresh google play dev account
and deploy your app.

I do agree that Google’s customer support is sorely lacking. If they’re
collecting 30% of every purchase, they need to hire real people to deal with
these issues. That’s a big chunk of change to collect and not provide any
service against.

Edit: While it’s tempting to play the victim, business in the real world also
works this way. Businesses can end up tainted by association with sketchy
parties or other businesses that act poorly. A good chunk of business is word
of mouth and trusting the other party. No one wants to do business with
someone untrustworthy.

~~~
cm2187
In this case they are not being "investigated" but "convicted".

~~~
glitchc
Please. This is not a court of law. Google, as a business, is cutting ties
with your business because your business has toes to someone who shat in their
backyard. It’s not your fault if you didn’t know, that’s unfair, but they are
entitled to protect themselves too. Sometimes life is unfair and bad breaks
happen.

------
deanmoriarty
Slightly off topic, but:

My main problem in getting away from Google is: who will protect my
email/phone accounts as well as Google does with GMail and Google Voice?
Sadly, those are the main means of authentication for my multiple financial
accounts (for most banks phone and emails are the only 2FA methods available).

I am not worried about the privacy issues, I'm mostly worried about Google
deciding to terminate my account for some reason, like in this case. I'm also
not worried about getting locked out due to losing my 2FA secrets, since I
backup them in multiple places.

The obvious solution would be: buy my own domain and then connect it to
another email provider or G Suite, right? However, now I have a point of
failure that is my domain registrar and my DNS provider, and I'm sure that
even the ones that offer strong security (e.g. Gandi with U2F) are more prone
to getting successfully hacked than @gmail.com, from both a technical point of
view (e.g. attackers violating their systems and change the DNS records for my
domain) and social engineering point of view (e.g. crafted support requests
pretending to be me and begging to reset my 2FA).

~~~
elorant
Realistically speaking a hacker has more incentives to attack GMail than any
domainer. I'm not saying that Gandi or whoever is more secure than GMail, just
that there are more chances that something goes south with the latter rather
than the former.

~~~
deanmoriarty
Following your logic, I would expect my bank to be hacked way more than the
few careless customers of the bank itself who leak their credentials via
stupid phishing attacks, since the returns are many orders of magnitude
higher?

I’m not sure it works that way, incentives are always balanced by the
practical effort required to achieve the goal, and the effort of breaking
google is massive compared to the effort of violating a DNS registrar.

------
mnm1
I feel lucky to have had this experience with a regular Amazon account. It has
made me realize that this is a regular part of doing business with such
companies and is to be expected. Internet accounts can all be closed at any
time for no reason and they will be. I would never in a million years invest
in iOS or Android apps whose success depends on these stores ran by artificial
intelligence aka human stupidity. I feel bad for people that do like this
couple, but I hope the more stories like this come out, the more people will
be aware of this situation, a situation unlikely to change soon. This is the
Internet we've allowed to be built because we value profits over anything
else. Imagine if the power company just shut off the power for no reason
despite you paying the bill or the mortgage company came and took your house
away by force despite you being paid up. We have laws against such things
because we know they would happen if we didn't. Yet we allow these Internet
companies to do whatever they want. This is what they will do without
regulation. At this point it's so widely known that it shouldn't be a
surprise. These two owners failed to do a proper risk analysis for their
business and they got burned. I hate to blame them when it's our lack of laws
and regulations that allow this, but in the known absence of such laws and
regulations the ultimate responsibility rests with them: they trusted an
untrustworthy company and got burned. Welcome to the club. Next time, they
should spend a few million dollars (just enough to outspend the big tech
companies) greasing palms in Washington and getting regulations changed in
their favor before starting a business. That's the American way, after all.

~~~
arkitaip
There's a pettiness and cruelty to this comment and those like in in this post
that I don't understand. What is it about HN that consistently encourages
people to be callous to the suffering of others and defeatist in the face of
challenges created by corporations?

~~~
mnm1
It's not callous, it's being realistic and trying to help others stay out of
this miserable spot. If someone else is trying to do the same and the comment
saves them months of work and thousands of dollars that would have been thrown
out by Google/Apple/Amazon etc., that seems like a good thing to me. Having
experienced essentially the same thing as the couple in the article and
knowing it is futile to do anything about it might change your perspective
too. Even they realize that at this point, their only hope is going viral. Yet
an actual business analysis of where they went wrong is petty and cruel? You
know what's petty and cruel? Shutting someone's account automatically using an
algorithm and not allowing any human review of the situation whatsoever.
That's what's petty and cruel. Trying to help people avoid this situation is
anything but. It's too late for the couple in the article, but others might be
wise enough to learn from this couple's (and many others') mistakes and save
their time and money before opening such a risky business as app development
for an app store.

------
DiabloD3
This is why PWA is important: Google cannot ban a website!

Also, the author should make sure to publish their app on non-Google App
Stores and remind users that they still have a choice.

And for those questioning on why the author is upset if they're still on the
iOS store: Android is about 85% of the global market, and about 2/3rds of the
US devices.

iOS is this weird dying phone OS that Apple is keeping alive even though there
really aren't that many users.

~~~
solarkraft
> iOS is this weird dying phone OS that Apple is keeping alive even though
> there really aren't that many users

I don't think it should be given the priority developers give it, but 15%
globally and 30% in the US are a lot of people.

They're also far more eager to spend than Android users.

~~~
Pocketknife
yeah, but Apple has always been it's own worst enemy. Jobs and it had this co-
dependent relationship, and I think they are in long term decline now that he
isn't there to rein in their worst excesses and insist on certain things.

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PerilousD
Sorry for the bad Karma but seriously this is 2019. If the OP hasn't seen a
zillion other stories like this about Apple, Google, Facebook et al the they
clearly have $25,000 to burn so sorry OP but why bother posting this?

If your business model is dependent on someone else's
service/store/website/slients then YOU DONT HAVE A BUSINESS you have AT BEST a
franchise.

~~~
raesene2
“Why bother posting this?” - that’s easy, because it might hit the front page
of HN and someone from Google might see it and actually apply human reasoning
to the problem.

And then it might get resolved well...

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blihp
Being shocked about this happening in 2019 in either Apple's or Google's app
store represents an incredible lack of even cursory research on the author's
part. Unless the author shares specific details showing that the ban of the
associated account was inappropriate, my reaction is: good, glad you got
booted.

If one of the people you chose to associate your account with was previously a
bad actor or involved with one, there's no reason to give you the benefit of
the doubt because you have at least demonstrated bad judgement. For years
people have been playing a game of whack-a-mole where when one account gets
terminated they pop up with another. Since your entire business apparently
depended on the app stores (a bad idea to begin with) being in good standing
with them is therefore vital and it was incumbent on you to vet the people you
were in business with. (i.e. sure, be in business with them if you choose. But
if you decide to associate your single point of failure business account with
them and they fail to disclose that they were associated with something shady
in the past, your beef is with them not the app store)

~~~
jpambrun
You are asking people, possibly non-technical people, to do thorough
background check on each prospective associates and past associates of
prospective associates. The not feasible nor reasonable.

~~~
blihp
I'm suggesting a business person conduct themselves like a business person.
While I understand that they might have been enthusiastic and inexperienced,
there is a reason things like contracts and due diligence exist in the world.
Businesses of all sorts, generally run by very non-technical people, need to
do background checks on people in key positions all the time to avoid exactly
these sorts of issues. For an app store based business, anyone associated with
the app's account is in a key position.

What is it about an app store-based business that is supposed to make them
immune from these realities?

