
Google terminated our start-up Google Play Publisher Account - dsr12
https://android.jlelse.eu/google-just-terminated-our-start-up-google-play-publisher-account-on-christmas-day-5cb69a454da0
======
zenexer
For those of you wondering, it appears that the company mentioned in the
article, GreenLionSoft [1], develops apps that show public transportation
schedules in Spain, at least as of 2017 [2]. Their Google Play page still
exists in some places but has been cleared of all apps [3].

I can't find Pablo A. Martinez's personal developer account; the closest match
is com.pablomartinez, which belongs (belonged?) to a law form, according to
the description on Google. (The page is no longer accessible and doesn't seem
to be archived anywhere.)

Pablo A. Martinez has additional work history publicly posted on his LinkedIn
profile [4]. I just gave it a quick skim, but I don't see anything shady. At
least on the surface, there's no clear explanation for the account
terminations.

Pablo, if you're reading this, please consider adding more info about the apps
you published, ideally with links to back up your claims. It'll make your case
stronger.

[1]: [https://www.greenlionsoft.com/](https://www.greenlionsoft.com/)

[2]:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20170428152946/https://play.goog...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170428152946/https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=5839227326909135542)

[3]:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=583922732690913554...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=5839227326909135542)

[4]:
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/pamartineza/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/pamartineza/)

~~~
sideshowb
Perhaps they consider this sort of app a direct competitor to Google maps?

~~~
zenexer
This sort of app is quite common and serves a distinct, specialized purpose,
so I doubt that. Additionally, Google doesn’t generally remove apps that
compete with their own; it’s Apple that does that.

------
athirnuaimi
As someone who has built and published apps on both major platforms, this
issue of not being able to speak to someone is a problem on the Apple platform
as well (as on Googles). As mentioned in the article, it’s heart wrenching to
receive an email saying there is a problem with your app and know that the app
or the release you worked so hard on might not get published. Having a release
rejected can also be as bad as a termination if that release has a major new
feature. The platforms price their developer accounts very low to attract
developers but those of us who make a living of it would gladly pay a bigger
price to get a higher quality of support. There are many developers who make
their living off apps and struggle with the black hole that is app approval
and the associated dispute process

~~~
tokyodude
I'd _believe_ I'd rather just have a secure platform that's open to any apps,
no gatekeepers. Kind of like the web. Almost anyone can make an website and no
gatekeeper gets in the way. We _mostly_ trust the browsers are secure (or at
least I trust Chrome to be secure, maybe Firefox too soon).

I feel like iOS in particular could already do this. They could just let users
install apps from anywhere and then do their best to keep their platform
secure.

I'm sure others disagree though but I feel like if you want a gatekeeper you
should opt in. You're free to only install apps certified by
"somecompanywhoauditsapps.com" or "apple.com" but if you want to you're also
free to just install them from anywhere.

I suppose you'd still end up with the same problem that if you choose to go
through "apple.com" they might not approve your app but hopefully with
alternatives there would be more incentive to provide better support. I can
certainly imagine Epic Games would jump at chance to offer their own iOS
store. Valve might as well.

~~~
southerndrift
On Android, you already have this since you can install apps directly. There
is no dedicated open store, but nobody is preventing developers from
publishing their Android apps on their homepage.

~~~
Semaphor
> There is no dedicated open store

For FOSS at least, there is F-Droid.

~~~
acct1771
Which even allows addition of custom repositories, if, say, Epic Games wanted
to make use of such.

------
komali2
Wow, I feel for that company. I was always skeptical of people raising alarm
bells at everything "going chrome," but now I'm starting to get it - Google
has the ability to just nuke a company from orbit on a whim, and I'm not sure
anybody can do anything about it.

Sure, that company developed a business around Google. But it still feels bad.

The only problem is that I don't trust a large portion of American politicians
that are seeking regulation - they seem highly motivated to force Google to
become a Chinese-style propagandic censorship machine (i.e. Republicans
complaining about "bias" because the president's picture shows up if you
Google image search for "moron.") So while articles like this make me feel
bad, I feel trapped into a need to fervently defend Google and "tech
companies" to avoid my concerns being coopted.

~~~
taneq
> Google has the ability to just nuke a company from orbit on a whim, and I'm
> not sure anybody can do anything about it.

And that's why you don't build that critical point of failure into your
product, even if it's harder and more expensive to do it another way. Which,
sadly, means don't build your company around an Android app.

They can do this to your personal Google account, too. What are the
repercussions, to most people, of being summarily banned from all Google
products? (Hint: What's the recovery email address for all of your random
online services? What's your personal contact email for work, taxation, etc.?
Do you have a local backup of your Gmail archive?) It's unlikely, sure, but if
it does happen then it's gonna suck.

~~~
PavlovsCat
> Hint: What's the recovery email address for all of your random online
> services?

hey_$service_dont_spam_me@my_domain.com

> What's your personal contact email for work, taxation

my_name@my_domain.com

I always thought of gmail like gmx.net or something, it's where people who
don't know internet things could get free email. I figured it's a good way to
test the waters, I also had free email long before I had a domain... but over
a decade later, we're actually building houses out of this duct tape? It's
duct tape, it's useful, but it's still duct tape.

I don't mean this to blame the author. (Though them making _another_ account
with Google for private stuff made me despair)

My first thought was, if companies want to be persons, and do this to other
persons, a fair response would actually be "Dear Google, stop existing. Please
don't make another company, either." I know it's not realistic, not even
desirable to me -- we don't even boycott really horrible actors on a large
scale, so why ruin Google and all the lives that hang off of that. I don't
believe in collective punishment under any circumstances, ever. But as a
response to Google (et al.) "as a company", it would be fair -- and no need to
tell them why, either.

~~~
komali2
I'd like to do this, but I'm hesitant to give up the convenience of things
like Google spam filters or the tools Google software like Inbox or Calendar
give me, specifically when they're tied to my email.

------
yulaow
Wait a second... Did I understand it bad or if my Google dev account gets
banned I cannot even create a new dev account directly linked to my person for
the rest of my life? What.

~~~
Dayshine
Further, does this mean once banned, I could maliciously join organisations to
get them shut down?

Perhaps Pablo should get a job with a high profile but small on tech company
(maybe a bank?) and watch Google change their policies immediately.

~~~
naniwaduni
If that were the case, you might find yourself having a hard time joining
organisations that care about this. It'd be something of a liability.

~~~
DelightOne
How does one check for this? Showing you currently have an app on the AppStore
which is older than a few months?

------
skilled
Still not entirely sure what kind of apps this guy is making, are they
legitimate? Otherwise, it looks like a reoccurring HN thing, where people plea
for help while they're actually involved in some shady stuff. Not trying to
accuse the author, of course.

At the same time, it drives me nuts to see these kinds of flaws in the system.
People get invested in a platform, and then one day that platform kicks you in
the nuts, and slams the door as you fall out on the pavement.

~~~
usrusr
The showcase pieces in their portfolio are urban mobility apps. Doesn't get
much less shady than that.

But the ad and in-app revenue streams mentioned in the article suggest that
they have also been active in other fields. In-app purchases that still go on
after account termination might be a hint in the right direction though: would
IAPs via Play still be going on? External ("untaxed") IAPs are the biggest sin
from the app-store's point of view. External purchases are allowed to be
handled externally (e.g. paying for physical goods in the Amazon app), but
definitions are not always clear and then it's all arbitrary judge-and-
executioner.

~~~
saalweachter
Nitpicking, there've been shady "urban mobility" apps before.

Remember that one which told you which platform your train at eg Penn Station
was likely to come in on, so you could wait on your track instead of in the
designated waiting area? To put it in clickbait terms, "station operators HATE
this", because there are a variety of safety and efficiency problens with
people waiting on the platform, even when it helped the user be the first on
the train.

(I have no idea what is going on in this case.)

~~~
Quanttek
Your apps/schedules don't tell you the platform? Here (GER & NL), they always
tell you the track - be it official apps or the paper schedules - and all
waiting areas are on the platforms themselves. Utrecht is the only exception I
know, where there are still larger designated waiting areas outside the
platform (tho the building is on top of the platforms, so you basically wait
next to the escalator)

~~~
gergles
At Penn, the track is not announced until just a few moments before the train
begins to board. This is ostensibly because the platforms are too small for
people to wait on them, but it also has the side effect of keeping crowds up
in the waiting area with all the shops.

The waiting area is on top of the escalators at Penn as well, but since you
don't know which track you need to wait for, it is always a mad dash down the
corridor for your train once the track number has been posted. This is made
even worse by the fact that by the time the track number appears, there is
only 3-5 minutes before departure of the train, so there is a sense of urgency
required to get to the right place before the train leaves.

It is pretty terrible, but so is everything else about Penn.

~~~
em-bee
in china, each track has their own designated waiting area. so you do know
which track you need to be on and you can be as close as you need to be to
catch the train, and yet people are not filling the platform before it's time
to get on the train.

------
southerndrift
>Do not attempt to register a new developer account. Any new accounts will be
closed and your developer registration fee will not be refunded. We recommend
that you use an alternative method for distributing your apps in the future.

If this is a serous problem, why is there no other app store? There should be
plenty of programmers who need another method to reach their customers.

For starters, Amazon's app store should do [1]. If enough developers reach out
to their customers, it could become a viable alternative.

That said, "The Castle" [2] should be a compulsory reading for each Android
developer, or app developers in general.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Appstore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Appstore)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Castle_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Castle_\(novel\))

~~~
altfredd
"Other app stores" do exist, but Google went to great lengths to destroy them.
Publishing clients for alternative stores in Google Play/Android Market have
been prohibited by Google's ToS for years (don't know if it is still
prohibited). The "allow alternative app sources" checkbox (unchecked by
default!) has been deterring users from installing from non-Google sources
till Android 8. It still exists, but Google have ruled, that third-party
marketplace apps are better than malware-riddled piracy websites, so Android
8+ allows to whitelist specific marketplace apps while still keeping the
checkbox unchecked. And let's not forget about Google's war to banish
alternatives to their services from Android devices, while using their own
Google Services packages as leverage.

Google's overall approach to building it's walled garden is not much different
from Apple's. They give some fake "choice", because they know, that tech-
illiterate consumers won't be able to make use of alternative options.

~~~
zozbot123
If you can escape the "garden" just by checking a box, it's not much of a
walled garden. The choice is very real, e.g. there's _nothing_ like F-Droid on
iOS devices. This makes Android devices a fairly sensible choice overall,
although some devices are still more open than others (supporting e.g.
alternative, Google-free OS's like LineageOS, and perhaps the future
PostmarketOS).

------
holoduke
The once beloved company Google turned into a gigantic evil company with
absolutely no compassion towards its developers and users. Everything they do
is presented and marketed as something good, but deep under it is shady,
controversial and goes straight into our norms of a good society. Imagine if
companies like Google, Amazon, apple etc are dictating the rules. It won't be
far of a regime in China. Expelled from society based on automated bits and
false information. We shouldn't accept that kind of behaviour. We all should
standup and knock this evil thing over.

~~~
glow8
They've made sure they can't be knocked over though

------
putzdown
This is what monopolization looks and feels like. Google Play is less of a
monopoly within its ecosystem than Apple’s App Store is, but in both cases you
have a monopoly that brooks no competition and is consequently unaccountable
and, well, evil. The only way to fix this is to force Google and Apple to
allow alternative markets/stores on their platforms.

~~~
simonh
iOS user so Ive no idea, but I thought they did? Isn’t there a setting in
Android to enable sideloading, and lots of phone manufacturers include their
own app stores, notably Samsung. Or is this comment a sarcastic ‘why don’t
they just do X’, when everyone knows they already do X? In which case what
dies the ‘brooks no competition’ comment mean? Honest question.

------
klgt
This is not new, the Android developer community need to do something to raise
more voice against this bad policy.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/9n88wv/the_futu...](https://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/9n88wv/the_future_of_android_development/)

------
pamartineza
Hi Zenexer,

I just get aware of the existence of this thread.

I still don't know if our "GreenLionSoft" account is going to be
reinstantiated but I've got more info from the review team.

Our company account hasn't violated any policy but it was "associated" with my
personal account that hadn't violated any policy but was "associated" to a
third account from which I had console access in the past and that was
terminated due "IP violation and Trademark" months before personal mine. The
owner of this account appealed denying any IP violation but was ignored and
the termination cascaded from one account to another.

The point here is not whether this first termination was fair or not, the
point is that now anybody that shares wifi, hardware or console access with
anybody that suffers a termination will be terminated too.

It is quite usual that developers working for a start-up, have also their own
personal GP account just for publishing their pet projects or just testing new
API's or features. If any of your employees while or before working for you
have their account terminated the company account risks to be terminated too.

I have now sent back to the review team extra info to demonstrate that my
personal account and company accounts were not created to impersonate this
terminated account, nor republish any suspended app.

Still waiting an answer...

------
ashelmire
Google, shutting down a service, replying with bots pretending to be humans,
and a total lack of customer service? Say it ain’t so.

The only Google services I rely on are email and search, and even in those
cases I’m looking for alternatives.

~~~
bad_user
Relying on them for email isn’t a small dependency since that’s your online
identity, being linked to all your other online accounts.

Pay for your own domain and if you can’t live without Gmail, at least go with
GSuite.

Personally I think Gmail sucks for delivering email and I got off it based on
technical limitations too.

~~~
ashelmire
It’s on my todo list.

------
ilamont
Here is one of the developer's websites:

[https://www.greenlionsoft.com](https://www.greenlionsoft.com)

It's a bit out of date, but it looks like they were working on commuting apps
for metro bus lines, etc.

------
acd10j
Any Google employee reading here willing to help, Also if possible please ask
your leadership to fix your company's customer support.

~~~
ganeshkrishnan
I don't think any google employee can help. I reached out to Chris the VP of
engineering via reddit google_take_action account and even he couldn't do much
to our then startup which was terminated because one of the devs had a banned
google account.

------
gaius
We also have this story on HN today
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18781473](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18781473)

Imagine a world in which Google Pay is dominant, and your Google Play account
is terminated, and nowhere takes cash, and you can't buy food now, or ever.

~~~
jsty
Considering the reputed prevalence of WeChat in much of China for everyday
transactions, this may be moving close to reality for people banned from that
platform

------
PavlovsCat
Aaaand flagged of the front page, what just by score and would would probably
still sit firmly at the #1 spot it shot to.

What's a valid reason to do that, rather than clicking "hide" and just ignore
the story if you personally don't care about it? Sure, I'd also prefer an
article, that maybe contains this and other things as examples. But the
discussion can be in that spirit regardless -- and who who will that article,
or have such a discussion, when stuff like this is actively being hidden from
sight?

Once again it turns out that most people are way better than the manipulated
results make it seem like. I think of that whenever someone says "the market
decided that "$shitty_thing is okay".

edit: answer the 2 questions, and we'll see who's contributing and thinking,
and who isn't.

~~~
Induane
I wonder if Google (and most large companies) has PR employees whose job it is
to flag stuff like this.

~~~
parrellel
You wonder? I thought that was just common knowledge?

~~~
Induane
I guess I hate to beso cynical but.. yea I kinda figured :-/

------
0xfaded
Is online Office 365 (I'm using Firefox on Linux) comparable to gdocs?

My account's payment method has been flagged twice for some reason, and
reading this makes me think how screwed I'd be if my startup's gapps account
gets flagged.

~~~
mtnGoat
Yes it is. Honestly I prefer o365 because I can use the desktop versions of
their applications to edit my cloud stored docs/spreadsheets, etc.

------
supernes
This has been going on for years, I've experienced it firsthand and have read
dozens of reports from other people in the same situation.

If this was an error, it would have been fixed long ago. At this point in time
I'm convinced it's a deliberate tactic - terminate an account once they start
to get popular and see if they can pull enough strings or raise enough of a
stink to have a human look at it.

Blaming an "algorithm" is becoming a very convenient way to abdicate from any
responsibility for shitty business practices and biases against certain groups
of people.

------
n_e
What I found the most infuriating is this:

> We recommend that you use an alternative method for distributing your apps
> in the future.

There is no reasonable alternative method for distributing commercial apps on
android. The app store is a monopoly.

~~~
yellowapple
There's always F-Droid (+ a custom repo if you're unable to FOSSify your app)
or Amazon's app store. Those may or may not be "reasonable" for everyone (in
particular since they're not typically preinstalled on phones), but it's a
start.

~~~
shakna
That's only reasonable if the _target audience_ is likely to make use of
F-Droid.

If your target audience will only use Play, then the only reasonable target
store _is_ Play.

I'm in the F-Droid target audience, so you could target me.

However, as they appear to be publishing transport/mapping tools for Spain...
It's unlikely they can reach their target audience any more.

------
dgudkov
Google, Apple, PayPal and other platforms that can cause a major disruption to
a business by terminating its account must offer a service of auditing on
demand in order to mitigate and control the risk of sudden deactivation. Such
service can be paid, no problem. Customers should be able to request the
auditing in order to understand what they look like from the platform's point
of view and estimate possible risks. Shutting down established business
accounts without a notice is absolutely not acceptable.

------
ranrub
Most shocking to me was that the whole process plus the super creepy text ‘Do
not attempt to open another developer account’ hasn’t changed in 5 years

------
kayoone
I just watched a couple of Black Mirror episodes and reading this feels eerie
from that perspective.

------
viewpoint92
Am from India ....This newYear2019 goes very difficult to me...Because same
email am also received about the Google Play console account termination ...if
some buddy has answer for that please reply me...am waiting for you all
answer.

skype id : viewpoint92

------
supermatt
These app stores need to be made accountable for their decisions to do this. A
sympathetic judge setting a precedent is all thats needed for this process to
be more transparent.

------
sbr464
Besides the point/argument laid out in the article, could you mention any
possible reasons you think this may have happened? Would help to hear.

~~~
cdmckay
Exactly.

From the wording of the email, it sounds like his previous ventures might have
been doing something shady and those accounts are linked to the startup
account.

~~~
livueta
> My “personal publisher account”, was terminated last August 1th. I probably
> will never know why. It was mostly abandoned, I had just a few old apps just
> for testing features or make experiments.

That's distressingly vague, especially when he provides screenshots of the
recent termination emails. If there wasn't more to this, you'd expect the
history of that other account, which is pretty clearly relevant here, to be
laid out in a lot more detail.

I agree that Google is prone to arbitrary and Kafkaesque behavior, but this
instance smells fishy.

------
ryanlol
>If I have a problem with Google Ads, I can just make a phone call and have
direct customer support.

hahahahahhahahaha

no

~~~
chillydawg
As with all things like this, it depends on entirely who you are and how much
you spend.

~~~
ryanlol
The same certainly applies to play store, “hahahaha no” still accurately
reflects the general case for both platforms.

~~~
mtnGoat
And then you get so big they want to call and chat you up every week or
two(ads that is) .

Pay to play? I guess so.

