
App Submissions On Google Play Now Reviewed By Staff, Include Age-Based Ratings - kshatrea
http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/17/app-submissions-on-google-play-now-reviewed-by-staff-will-include-age-based-ratings/
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lnanek2
I've already been getting kind of ridiculous suspensions due to this. A dice
puzzle game where all you ever earned was points for making the right patterns
was banned for encouraging gambling.

So, uh, goodbye one of the few things that made developing for Google better
than developing for Apple. Really don't know how they could possibly be
bragging about this.

~~~
MichaelGG
Hey, there's still the Windows Store. While ostensibly reviewed, they really
let everything in. I've found fake Windows Updates. Fake Dropbox, Facebook
(second result, even shows up in the start menu if you type in Facebook!), and
more. Some even show "Microsoft" as the publisher. And in every case, tech
support tells you to piss off. When reporting a fake Dropbox app, the CSR told
me it seems to work and recommended installing it again. So if MS is willing
to help phish users, they'll probably let a dice game slide by.

Oh and if you get caught, just resubmit. It took Netflix at least 3 times of
back-n-forth with MS before they started permabanning fake Netflix. Other
software devs have told me that MS refuses to do anything to help them, even
when a 12 yr old could see this hurts users, the brand, and ecosystem.

~~~
mhomde
Yeah, there's certainly something rotten with Microsoft's App Store. I'd
hazard a guess that most of it is outsourced to India and there's some
internal bureaucracy putting it outside of purview of the people who could fix
it. It's hard to even search for top apps that you know the name for.

I think its one of those things when Microsoft gets around to focus on it
they'll "fix it" but for now, crappola.

~~~
MichaelGG
I'm almost definitively sure it is related to some misguided KPIs or having
someone's bonus tied to the metric "number of published apps". At one point,
MS was offering $100 or $200 per app, up to 10 or 20 apps. No one would
believe a single dev is likely to publish 20 quality apps. Instead they really
wanted shovelware. There are thousands of apps that are literally just
wrappers around a web page or YouTube channel.

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moubarak
after getting 100k active users, and over 2million sessions per week, which
was 1 year after submitting my app, google play suspended my app without
warning, and i lost all.

they were right, i didn't accurately follow their terms, but if they reviewed
my app once submitted a year ago, that could've been avoided.

it was a bitter experience for me, and i decided to port my app to iOS. i
heard iOS provides warnings atleast.

~~~
tsunamifury
If you think Apple will provide a more cooperative experience you are
mistaken. I've built apps for years and many times a short discussion with
Google allowed me to re-post an app with some modifications.

Unless you are making apple SERIOUS revenue (think high6 to 7 figures) they
will shut you down without even a response.

~~~
s73v3r
"I've builds apps for years and many times a short discussion with Google
allowed me to re-post an app with some modifications."

The vast, vast, vast majority of people are not able to find a person at
Google to have that discussion with in the first place.

"Unless you are making apple SERIOUS revenue (think high6 to 7 figures) they
will shut you down without even a response."

Apple tells you before your app goes live.

~~~
mathieuh
> Apple tells you before your app goes live.

Look at the situation with PCalc and Transmit. Both apps which offered a
killer feature, got approved by review and even featured by the editorial
team, then pulled after having been on the front page of the App Store.

~~~
lordnacho
What on earth could be wrong with a calculator app?

~~~
sp332
It put a calculator in a widget in the notifications area.
[http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/30/apple-no-longer-
rejecting-c...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/30/apple-no-longer-rejecting-
calculator-widgets-from-the-app-store/)

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ChrisClark
And they've been doing it for the past few months and no one knew. So I think
this is a good thing all around, as long as review times don't increase to
Apple levels.

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__xtrimsky
Nice. I just hope they won't be as annoying as Apple.

~~~
joshstrange
Well if you've been submitting apps in the last month or so then you used this
system. They say even with adding humans apps are approved in hours not
days/weeks as has been known to happen with Apple. Also they use a lot of
automation to reduce the number of apps and the amount of work each reviewer
has to review.

~~~
profmonocle
> days/weeks as has been known to happen with Apple.

That's understating it. Long review times are the norm, not just known to
happen. I've never had a submission take under 72 hours. Typical is 4-7 days.
(And I've done it dozens of times.)

It's incredibly frustrating when you have users (or clients) complaining about
a bug you fixed days ago. I don't understand why they're still have such a
deep approval queue after almost seven years. I guess they don't consider it a
problem. The perks of having a huge market share, I suppose.

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philip1209
Google tries to automate everything, so it amuses me that they have had to
fall back to manual reviewers instead of fully automating the process.

~~~
marinabercea
So many poor quality apps though on their marketplace, I don't think they have
any other choice but to revert to a manual review process.

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moron4hire
Wasn't the point of creating walled-garden app stores the notion that it
created checks and balances to prevent malware and bad user experiences from
getting on people's devices? Wasn't that the entire reason we were supposed to
be fine with the notion that we'd be giving up a portion of revenue to be able
to get onto users devices in pretty much the only way the vast majority of our
users understood how to do?

In other words, "you had ONE job, app stores, ONE JOB."

~~~
ceejayoz
It was hardly the only job, especially considering Google's store didn't
_have_ the review process until just now.

That cut pays for the payments infrastructure, bandwidth to deliver the app
files, etc. that you don't have to provide.

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ajjai
That's nice.. I hope, now, they will respond to developer queries also..

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pasta_2
Ironic given how the rhetoric suggested the "walled garden" was an evil to be
avoided. Over time Apple is being proven right.

~~~
stinkytaco
I can still sideload apps onto my android device, no? I don't view a monitored
app store as a "walled garden", I consider it a convenience. I view limiting
what I can install as a "walled garden" and Apple definitely falls into that
category.

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pluma
This seems like a surprising deviation from their traditional stance of
"throwing more people at a problem is never an acceptable answer" (which is
almost literally their justification for off-loading the bulk of their support
to an online manual and a "users helping users" forum with "actual humans"
being a scarce resource even paying customers are usually allowed to tap
into).

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avinassh
Now, will there be any increase in developer program fee? Since reviewing
requires resources and will cost more money to Google now onwards.

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blingojames
Two companies and possibly very few people decide what apps will reach a
billion people. Sure wish we could elect those people.

~~~
pnathan
Why should they even control this? It should be an open system by default....

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supabill
And why is that?

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cpb
I believe pnathan is implying they would prefer to buy and own a device to use
as they choose.

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speeder
I noticed they are working with ClassInd but are not clear how.

I really hope this won't open the door to censorship on Android, one of the
reasons why I make mobile games is exactly to circunvent ClassInd (as the
article calls it).

Here in Brazil, to release any entertainment product (even live Circus Shows
are included on this), you must first ask the Ministry of Justice to give you
a rating, the process, specially for things that aren't a Circus Show, is very
long, slow and cumbersome (example: you need to do it again every time you
make an official update of your software, and the process involves writing
lots of paperwork, sending the physical papers to the Ministry, and waiting AT
LEAST 30 days).

Although officially they claim it is NOT censorship, the process is mandatory
for all entertainment, even if free, the law allow them to punish (with 2
years in prison and fines) anyone that are distributing, storing, selling,
buying or creating things without ratings, and they can deny rating you
(meaning that even if you ask, if they deny the rating, you are de-facto
censored).

This does have an obvious effect here:

People here create fake US accounts to buy stuff on Xbox Live and PSN, because
the local versions of XBL and PSN follow the law, and has much less content.

Steam don't have official Brazillian offices, although recently they stated to
charge in BRL, and have portuguese translations, the charging part is handled
by Brazillian companies and credit card processors, in a way that if Brazil
government go ater Steam, Steam can just cut-off Brazil (and let the CC
processors take the blame and the lawsuit).

Apple for a while, got in conflict with the government here, the Ministry of
Justice threatened to sue Apple for 2000 BRL for each unrated app, back then
300.000 unrated apps already existed, Apple in response just set entire
categories to be hidden from iTunes users with Brazillian IPs or accounts
(leading to lots of fake accounts, sometimes using stolen CCs, and iTunes
access using proxies).

Eventually, some merciful judge ruled that since Apple don't have offices
here, they don't have to follow our law, opening access again.

Also, like I said, I make mobile apps to avoid that law, what I do is that I
have a Brazil company, a Swiss company, and then I make the Swiss company,
hire the Brazil company to create software for hire, then the Swiss company
that "create" the completed entertainment software, and sells it (including to
Brazillian users, that frequently pay with international CC, of course this
leads to lots of inefficiency, since I have to pay taxes on exchanging CHF to
BRL, after users already paid taxes on exchanging BRL to CHF, beside the
exchange fees, the sale tax from Brazil to Switzerland, and the income taxes
on both Brazil and Switzerland).

~~~
outworlder
> also, like I said, I make mobile apps to avoid that law, what I do is that I
> have a Brazil company, a Swiss company, and then I make the Swiss company,
> hire the Brazil company to create software for hire, then the Swiss company
> that "create" the completed entertainment software, and sells it

Why do it in Switzerland, instead of say, US Delaware?

~~~
speeder
1) Some of the investing co-founders already lived in Switzerland

2) Some of the non-investing co-founders lived in Switzerland before, or would
not mind living there in the future.

3) Switzerland, as bizarrely my phrase might sound, is more free than US, with
laws regarding corporations easier to understand, and less crazy problems, for
example no extremely stupid patent and copyright laws like US have.

So, in case US corporations get sue-happy against us (like they always do
against each other), the best they can do is sue us in Switzerland, and there
the law will be usually in our side (instead of siding with
copyright/patent/whatever trolls)

Also we did check how much would cost us, including hiring the appropriate
lawyers and accountants, to setup our stuff in Delaware vs Switzerland, and
Switzerland was cheaper.

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tomjen3
If they want to make the appstore a better place, why not spend some time to
make search work? I dunno, an eigen-vector algorithm of some sort.

Copying Apples mistakes are not the way to go.

~~~
nemothekid
I believe the top search engine in world with 100s of search engineers have
thought of an eigen-vector algorithm of some sort".

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solomatov
These are very good news. We have enough malware and spyware in play store.

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killdill
I always wonder how big a staff they would need to review so many apps
uploaded every day.

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Galactigon
I like the Apps, Games, Utilities method of organization.

I didn't see any word on judging 'content'.

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emsy
As an Android and iOS user, I think this is a step in the right direction. As
a player I'd rather have a curated games store that allows me to discover new
games easily.

~~~
s73v3r
Wouldn't the Humble Bundle store fall in that category?

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emsy
Yeah, I didn't even think of that. But Humble Bundle is only known to a core
audience and if Google did something like HB, I think they could leverage
Android as a serious gaming platform (Apple too, but I don't think this will
ever happen. They just don't "get" games).

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sergiotapia
I'm glad Google got the funding necessary to hire more -people- to review
submissions. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

