
Open letter from an Android developer to the Google Play team - Sujan
https://medium.com/@tokata/how-google-play-terminated-a-developer-for-no-reason-e4d760e9f472
======
dmitrybrant
I'm the developer of a relatively popular app (50M+ on the Play Store) and
have had very disappointing experiences with the Play Store, but in a rather
opposite way from the OP:

Once an app reaches a certain level of popularity, you begin to see "knock-
off" apps, which are apps with a curiously similar name and icon (and
screenshots and description), but which in fact don't do anything except blast
the user with full-screen ads at every turn. It's literally just ads; they
don't perform any actual function; they just exploit the SEO boost to serve
ads to unsuspecting users.

I have tried "reporting" these apps numerous times (there are dozens of them),
but Google has done nothing at all to remove these apps or suspend the
accounts of these bottom-feeding "developers". The only conclusion is that the
ad revenue benefits Google as well as the bottom-feeders, so Google drags its
feet in taking any action. I would bet that if these apps were doing something
malicious _without_ a financial incentive for Google, then Google would take
them down in a heartbeat.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
Given how amazingly good Google is at filtering or identifying content when it
benefits them to do so (e.g. Content ID, and I have never seen anything
pornographic break through YouTube's filters), I must believe that it would be
extremely easy for them to implement the fix you desire.

Edit: Hmmm, assuming the app that you are talking about is freakin' Wikipedia,
I'm assuming that if the Wikimedia can't get anyone from Google to pay
attention that there is no hope for the rest of us.

~~~
Semaphor
> Given how amazingly good Google is at filtering or identifying content when
> it benefits them to do so (e.g. Content ID,

Content ID? The one where regularly stories break of it misidentifying things?

> and I have never seen anything pornographic break through YouTube's filters)

I have. But to be fair, that was 2 or 3 years ago.

~~~
pas
Could you link to such a story?

I usually read that a few seconds were claimed here or there. ContentID
probably identified the part correctly, but people want to argue fair use.

And then there are the stories where it turns out the sample used was not
cleared, etc.

------
sjwright
I keep hearing stories like this and I remain utterly bemused that the median
narrative about Android vs iOS has barely changed in response. There's a lot
to love about Android, but I think more people in the tech sector need to
realise that their mental model of the phone marketplace has more to do with
historical perception of Android being "hacker friendly" than the current
realities.

 _Android is open source!_ Oh wait— it's becoming more closed every release
cycle, to the point that a pure AOSP experience is something only a determined
geek would ever love. iOS and Android are now both blends of open and closed
source, albeit in different ratios.

 _Google 's app store is developer friendly!_ Oh wait— approvals are now
slower than Apple, they're banning developers with no explanation, yet the
store is still full of crapware and scams. At least Apple's policies seem to
have a tangible trade-off.

 _Android gives customers hardware choices!_ Oh wait— the choice is between a
cheap device that got its final software update five days after it shipped, a
mid-tier device that _might_ get updated next year, or a flagship which will
probably get next year's major update and only security fixes thereafter.

 _Android gives customers software choices!_ Oh wait— what's the current
messaging platform that Google is pushing this month? Do you, the human
reading this paragraph, _really_ care if there are eight hundred or eight
thousand camera apps in your phone's app store?

~~~
Illniyar
All those things don't really matter, the only thing that matters is that you
cannot sideload apps in iOS. As long as you can sideload apps in android, it
will always have a better reputation than somewhere you cannot.

But even those things you mention, they are all part of a scale, even if
android becomes more closed-source it's still miles more open-source than iOS,
even if it delays new app submissions it's still doesn't require a mac to
develop for, has a choice of IDEs and a dozen other development friendly
features that we often take for granted outside iOS development.

And it is ludicrous to suggest that android has the same hardware choice as
iPhones just because apple now has mid-range level priced phones. Hardware
choice means that some models have replaceable battery, physical keyboard,
bendable screens, childproof, waterproof and many more options.

~~~
KenanSulayman
Just resign the app IPA file and you can literally drag and drop it through
Xcode onto your iOS devices. Unless you mean pirating apps with sideloading...

~~~
ajscanlan
To run an .ipa on a real device you need to sign it with an Apple developer
account, costs $99 a year.

~~~
lotsofpulp
I thought it has been free for your own device for years:

[https://www.pcworld.com/article/2933052/apple-frees-
casual-i...](https://www.pcworld.com/article/2933052/apple-frees-casual-ios-
developers-of-membership-requirement.html)

~~~
ajscanlan
Ah! I did not know that, it's been so long since I've not had a developer
account. But yes it seems you are right.

Do you still have to re-sign the .ipa every 7 days to have it run on the
device?

~~~
oefrha
You do unless you have a paid developer account.

------
tylermenezes
Guidebook, a 70+ person company, also appears to have just had their account
banned as of yesterday morning.

It's an app that tells you what's happening at conventions. Hard to see the
bad faith there, but I bet the conventions they've signed contracts with this
week will be very unhappy.

The co-founder has taken to tweeting at his network to try to find a contact.
Crazy to think a rogue algorithm might put 70 people out of work if he can't
find someone quickly enough.

~~~
aikah
It's the danger of building your entire business on someone else's platform.

Now Android is a bit more open than Apple's App store since on can install
third party apps outside Google Play, but I personally always got an answer
from Apple, even if it took 3/4 weeks, every-time there was an issue with a
deployed application.

Google? Unless you know somebody there or you are a big shot it's impossible
to contact them, and they don't want to talk to you anyway. And one can only
go so far with Twitter shaming...

Good luck to the OP, because he's going to wait a long time for an answer...

~~~
chx
> It's the danger of building your entire business on someone else's platform.

This is so often repeated but by this logic noone should write mobile apps.

~~~
space_invaders
> but by this logic noone should write mobile apps

But they shouldn't. 99% of apps out there could just be a PWA, specially in
the Android ecosystem that favours them.

~~~
icelancer
Been arguing this forever. Jobs was actually correct. He just pivoted because
he figured out that an App Store could make him billions and control end-to-
end the economy and the device, which is always what he's wanted.

Web apps are the way to go. Not mobile apps in a store.

~~~
cameronbrown
Maybe, but Apple's PWA support is still not great.

------
rladd
Google is equally horrible about adwords (and probably most other customer
service related issues).

They terminated our adwords account saying that there was something wrong with
the site it was advertising and giving a list of 12 extremely general things
which might be the problem, none of which seemed to apply.

They also provided no way to respond or get in touch with anyone at all. Their
advice was "fix whatever you think may have been the problem and try again".

This wasted a huge amount of time as we tried everything possible to fix the
issue to no avail: they never said anything had been fixed and never sent more
information.

Finally I got a contact at Google. They looked at our account, said it seemed
to be a glitch, and reenabled it.

That's no way to do customer service and is one reason why I think Google
should be broken up, if only so that each part is smaller and feels the need
to be more accountable.

~~~
ngold
An ad company middleman doesn't care about humans.

------
_nickwhite
Google is what, a 3/4 TRILLION dollar company, based on market cap! It's
absolutely unfathomable that they have such a prolific reputation of non-
customer service and inability to contact them. Any other company would suffer
massive consequences with customer service that poor. What will it take for
them to turn this around? Maybe they believe they are too big for this to
matter?

~~~
pdonis
_> they have such a prolific reputation of non-customer service_

No, they don't, because Android developers and users are not Google's
customers. Google gets no direct revenue from them so it has no incentive to
provide the kind of customer service that would be expected for a paying
customer. The only incentive they have is to provide whatever services will
get them more revenue from their actual customers: ad purchasers.

~~~
zaroth
Obviously, they get a cut of App Store revenue. Android is worth many billions
of dollars to Google, and having quality apps on the store is an essential
part of the ecosystem.

To be sure, this is Google failing in a way that they should care about, and
likely do care about, but _failing_ none-the-less.

The reason is because their culture will not allow them to succeed in these
types of human interactions. And there is no doubt that that culture is
poisonous and will ultimately bite them hard, on Android, on Search, and I
think most of all on YouTube.

IMO, this will eventually cost them billions of dollars, whether it is in lost
revenue due to apps that are no longer on the store, end users switching to
alternative products, or hostile legislation and fines.

~~~
mavelikara
> this will eventually cost them billions of dollars

It does - in Google Cloud. This reputation of automated customer service
played a non-trivial part in the initial lukewarm response enterprise
customers gave. The Eng teams at potential customers looked at the way Google
treated their marketing teams and steered clear from Google's - sometimes
superior - offerings.

~~~
ufmace
Yup. For whatever Amazon's other faults may be, they will do stuff like assign
actual human salespeople to your account, who have the time to listen to you
and the authority to do things. You can create problem tickets for their
services, which go to skilled engineers somewhere that have the time and
authority to run down and address any weirdness you encounter with their
services. Plus they keep even their old services online for a sort-of
ridiculous amount of time to keep up with slow-moving corporate update
processes.

~~~
wutbrodo
Is this not the case for GCP? I recently switched to a company running on GCP
and I don't have tons of exposure to our infra, but from what I've seen, GCP
reps are VERY hands-on. Even in my non-infra role, I've been exposed to
several different instances of them being hands on: in setting us up, in
discussing our resource needs (we're a very heavy GPU compute customer), in
tracking down issues (even when the problem is likely on our end).

~~~
ufmace
I don't actually know - I haven't used it myself. I've read a few comments in
various places suggesting that GCP support is as nonexistent as the support
for other Google services. I think somebody said they were hosting their whole
company's data and services on GCP, and their entire company's account was
killed because supposedly some malicious activity was detected. No details of
what the activity was or why it was thought to be malicious, just poof, all of
your servers and data gone, and nobody you can talk to about it.

It's possible that was misleading or they've improved since then, I don't
know. Your claim that they do have quality support for corporate accounts is
an interesting point on the other side though.

~~~
wutbrodo
Yea I wouldn't take my experience as too dispositive: I gather that my
relatively small company punches significantly above their weight in terms of
compute needs, and I only have relatively tangential exposure to our
interactions with GCP. It's just that those tangential data points have all
happened to point in the direction of robust and responsive support.

------
ziggity
Without knowing more about the "sophisticated anti-piracy system" employed by
the app author, it's hard to determine if Google's claim of malicious
behaviour is valid.

This could be something as simple as bytecode obfuscation, or something as
complex as scraping every bit of personal information available through
possibly-questionable means and sending to an insecure server. Copy protection
schemes are notoriously user-hostile.

~~~
kace91
Regardless of the reason, the fact that you can have your livelihood taken
away without an explanation or human contact is pretty worrying.

~~~
UncleMeat
Having a system that tells malware authors precisely what behavior triggered
an alarm is also not great. There is no solution.

~~~
baroffoos
"Your app has been removed because it was found to be malware. Please reply to
this message if you believe this to be a mistake." Doesn't help malware
authors at all.

~~~
rjvs
Isn't that basically what has already happened in this case?

~~~
baroffoos
They apparently don't offer an easy way to contact someone if there is a
mistake or get a human to check the algorithm has correctly identified malware
of it if has flagged a legitimate app.

------
ggggtez
> dynamic bytecode loading from a local app resource

I'll bet you 5 bucks it's this. Your "anti-piracy" is their "evading our
malware analyzers".

From the Terms of Service: "The following are explicitly prohibited: Apps or
SDKs that download executable code, such as dex files or native code, from a
source other than Google Play."

Can't tell obviously if that's the violation, but at least it's a good bet.

~~~
supermatt
its "a local app resource" \- i.e. its not downloaded "from a source other
than google play."

------
sandGorgon
My developer account has been getting mails about "apps that are not compliant
with permission requirements". The problem is that these are 3 year old,
UNPUBLISHED apps. Turns out, you cannot delete old apps . You can only
unpublish them. Google will still keep the app up if even one phone has the
app installed.

I wrote back saying that this is a years-old app that I no longer even have
the source code to. The reply was "we can't do anything. You need to figure it
out. Or else".

After days of constant emailing, NOTHING HAPPENED. Finally I got a a notice my
apps were deleted with a warning email.

Here's my fear. I have two more apps like this. I'm pretty sure they are going
to go through the same procedure. Is my main developer account going to be
banned ?

~~~
cameronbrown
Can you just publish an empty APK (after creating the project) up to all of
them? Or is that not how this works?

~~~
sandGorgon
no. this is another violation. Its called the "minimum functionality rule"
[https://play.google.com/about/spam-min-functionality/min-
fun...](https://play.google.com/about/spam-min-functionality/min-
functionality/)

------
Mathnerd314
Previous people/companies getting banned:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19124324](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19124324)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18788450](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18788450)

It seems to be that someone else does some shady activity and then some AI at
Google over-generalizes and bans legitimate accounts. And the emails are the
same 3 form emails that say nothing.

I wonder if you can get decent support by walking into one of the Google
campuses, or if you would get in trouble with security...

------
megaremote
Apple have also gotten rejection happy. But the good thing with Apple, is that
they have a team of people, who will tell you why, and help you fix your
issues. I have had those guys help me track down bugs, and suggest UI fixes.

Apple have gotten better, and it seems Google have gotten worse.

------
point78
Google needs to be clear on what causes apps to be removed, and based on
account history should be way more lenient on what would cause account
termination...

I.e. 4 years good standing 3 strikes, 5 years good standing 4 strikes, etc

~~~
ImNotTheNSA
I think part of their reasoning is that if they publish the rulebook, then
people will find ways to misuse the services in a roundabout way. It’s easier
to find bugs in source material you can see, than that you cannot.

I don’t agree with this, but I think it’s most likely the reasoning.

~~~
pnw_hazor
Also, they like to give special privileges to favored entities. Some of these
special privileges would likely be counter to any published rules.

~~~
brokenmachine
True, I think this is likely the real reason.

~~~
tptacek
Because that sounds right, or because you have particularized knowledge to
back that claim up?

~~~
brokenmachine
Because it sounds right and seems like common-sense. I did put "I think" and
"likely" in there so I would have thought it was obvious I was speculating.

Do we need to ask everyone whether they have "particularized" knowledge for
every comment they make?

------
lvs
Google simply doesn't have any interest in customer service. It's just not
part of the culture. When new services launch, it appears as if Googlers are
running some of the interactions to give a good first impression, but soon
after the buzz dies down, there's no longer any incentive to continue doing
so. They automate as much as possible, and outsource the rest to farms abroad.
This pattern repeats across all Google products and services.

------
woofie11
This is the #1 reason I would never, ever, ever use the Google Cloud to build
a serious business.

------
robgibbons
It still amazes me the extent of BS that developers will put up with to get
their apps into users hands. The level of profit-driven gatekeeping exhibited
by both Apple and Google is fundamentally unacceptable to me, and one of the
many reasons I will likely never release an app for mobile. The web is still
the last bastion of developer freedom, albeit not the platform users have been
trained to use these days.

------
Hitton
Recently there is so many horror stories about Google support, last week
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20711508](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20711508),
now this...

I'm really glad I don't depend on business with Google.

------
winter_blue
Although I'm generally not a big fan of regulation, this is one area where
regulation might be appropriate. The two marketplaces run by Google and Apple
are _so large and substantial_ in their size and outsize economic influence
that there should (ideally) be laws granting developers of apps on these
platforms some set of rights, and some form of fair due process if they're
accused of ToS violations.

We'd have to either have Congress enact something (a long shot), or have
individual states grant such protections to developers or companies based in
the state. The most crucial state in this matter is likely Delaware, since
many companies are incorporated there.

------
argaba
This feels like an awfully familiar story. I do wonder if there aren't enough
resources allocated at google to handle these types of cases. Instead we have
them ending up on HN to reach some type of fix/closure from the google team.

------
rkagerer
Google is starting to look like a case study in how not to do customer
service.

~~~
bigiain
"starting"???

You must be new here...

~~~
rkagerer
I knew someone would say that :-)

------
Causality1
Reminds me of the issue an HN poster had several months ago trying to cancel
his Google Fi subscription. Google just does not have the company culture to
handle things out of the norm or the interest in developing one. They and
their customers live and die on the word of software, which for me is
unacceptable. My mission-critical providers all have a person in the loop
somewhere, a human being to whom I can give our name and support account
password, who can just reach right in and fix an issue no matter what the
algorithm or the database says. Computers are just too goddamn stupid
sometimes.

Google doesn't do that. If they can't automate it they won't do it. That works
fine for being a search engine. It doesn't work at all for being, for
instance, a telephone service provider or an ISP.

------
m-p-3
Like many said, at some point it's your livelihood that is one the line, and
Google taking actions without providing any details is downright malicious,
and I expect someone to get their financial life ruined.

Sometimes, a deep-rooted issue is unfixable through technological or verbal
mean, and litigation would be the only way to get your life back and I sure
hope that Google will get hit at some point.

------
oscargrouch
I think it´s funny with that much comments, none of them are really on the
core issue here.

Just imagine if Tim Berners-Lee banded together with Mark Andreessen to create
a closed and centralized platform, were they could centrally control
everything.

Thats why i think the mobile phone plataforms are a real danger to a world
were the information flows freely and were no government or company can
control.

People are giving to much power to those companies, and when they do what a
lot of people know they would do, they just wip, and try to contact his
digital lord to just have mercy.

Dont neal, dont help them kill the spirit behind a world were people can
access the things they want without any sort of centralized control.

Its beyond me how many people are so worried about government controlling
their freedom, but are ok with companies doing it.

We do not need to accept this. The problem is in the app store model.. (they
could create it, as long other could compete, but they could NEVER choose what
you can access) and guess what, now our governments are too are weak to
regulate them.

They can spy on us, know what we are doing, help shady government agencies,
control what you see, listen, access and in the end shape what you think
(Remember all the mess the simple 'like' Facebook algorithm did to the world..
its too dumb. It reminds me "Donnie Darko" with that shady coaching of
"everything should be on the hate-or-love axis").

The despotic government of the future for me is a bunch of big tech companies
who control information, and the lives of all of us united to have a world
were they will be all powerful and always relevant.

People dont seem to know the dangers we are facing. This is very serious, and
its a glimpse of the future. Think how much of what you understand as your
right will be suddenly terminated by despotic tech companies who are too
powerful to be controled or regulated.

It´s even worse, if you think we are in the dawn of the AI and what a very
powerful player can do to keep the control.

You can think im exagerating, and i really hope im wrong, but its a real
possibility, and we should not let this awful future be materialized because
we did not see how this could be possible.

And to help you figure it out, if you travelled back in time to tell your 2010
self how the world would be in 2019, do you think he would believe it? We are
living in idiocracy all over the world, and we use to laugh to those sort of
movies. (Dr. Strangelove will soon look a lot like a documentary of the modern
days)

------
bfrog
Monopolies and walled gardens are wonderful, not. Anti consumer and anti
competitive at every level. Google is like a black hole, there’s no escaping
it.

~~~
microcolonel
They build the escape hatch right in to the platform. Epic games distributes
their APK directly from their website, and so can you.

It's fun being on the Play Store while it works for you, but ultimately your
access to it is conditional, and somewhat arbitrary.

At least you have the option though. Apple's platform is not like that.

------
bArray
Can we just get a proper Linux phone already? I could whip up a (rough) GUI
for a WiFi phone in no time and all the software I want to use is already
there - or could be developed relatively easily. Hell, Ubuntu's Gnome is
almost a tablet OS anyway at this point, has relatively good drivers,
stability, etc.

The WiPhone is so unbelievably close to what I want [1] (+). I really wish it
had a web browser though (which would likely require a beefier processor). I
think the Pi compute module is asking to become a mobile device with the
possibility of a good upgrade path too [2] (++).

(+) Still waiting to ship it seems although I think they are acting in good
faith.

(++) The idea of using the DDR2 laptop RAM connector is genius IMO. They can
also borrow the DDR3 and DDR4 connectors when the time comes for more pins.

[1] [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2103809433/wiphone-a-
ph...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2103809433/wiphone-a-phone-for-
hackers-and-makers)

[2] [https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-compute-
module...](https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-compute-module-new-
product/)

~~~
vfclists
Purism phone
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20555463](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20555463)

You may have to wait for it to come down in price

Pine Phone
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19592588](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19592588)

~~~
bArray
Thanks for the links! The Purism phone is a lot more than I would want to pay,
but I imagine the trade-off there is for the polished experience. Part of the
fun for me would be the hack-ability.

The Pine phone on the other hand looks great (at ~$150), hopefully they do a
better job than what they did with their netbooks (I believe they had issues
with the keyboards and the displays had dead pixels). There's even talk about
porting Ubuntu phone, which is awesome! My guess is that it's still a long way
off though, if the project doesn't die in the meantime (as a lot of these open
source projects do).

------
edandersen
Whilst good for developers and probably bad for Microsoft (reduces app
numbers), I haven't seen any automated, recompiled clones on the Windows App
Store, likely due to the native compilation. Despite being .NET apps it's not
just a case of running ILSpy or something to get the source.

------
morpheuskafka
Google seems to have missed the fact that they, unlike Apple, are not a
monopoly. All it will take is for a few major players to start doing APK
downloads OR someone to start an alternative, developer-friendly store with
lower IAP margins, and they will quickly lose business.

------
tomohawk
Open letter to FTC: please break up this monopoly and allow competition in
this space again.

------
axilmar
multiple knock - offs = more adds for google, it's that simple.

------
HillaryBriss
IMHO, an ethical course of action for Google employees is:

1\. quit your job

2\. apologize to the global community of users and developers

3\. give half your money to a charity

~~~
cameronbrown
Who are you to say what's ethical or not?

~~~
justin66
We have not yet delegated that task to machines.

(You've asked an extraordinarily odd question. There's a context in which such
a question might imply that the OP should look to God and religious texts for
guidance rather than rely on their own reason, but I'm going to go out on a
limb and guess that you're not suggesting that the bible/Koran/Baghavad
Gita/whatever offers words on the matter of _Google employees and their
relationship with their employer_ that supersede human judgement.)

~~~
cameronbrown
I'm more uncomfortable with the implication that Google employees need to
apologise on behalf of their company and they're somehow complicit if they
don't. Many people just want to do their 9-5 and leave.

~~~
HillaryBriss
> they're somehow complicit if they don't

i've noticed over the last several years that thousands of Google employees at
least _seem_ to feel complicit for the corporation's choices (e.g. giving a
big cash payout to someone who was suspected of sexual harassment, trying to
start project dragonfly, working with the US DOD, etc). these employees
protest, walk out, demand change.

IMHO, these employees should also be critical of the poor customer service the
OP documents. this sort of behavior hurts the public too. and Google seems
committed to continuing it.

