by lubomir on 7/28/14, 10:34 AM with 285 comments
by _petronius on 7/28/14, 11:29 AM
This article admits that he ignored all of the warnings he was given, and now accuses Google of unfair business practice. I don't buy it.
There's a lot of logical contortion going on to dump the blame for this back on Google. "The suspension email stated that I was trying to impersonate another company" is followed quickly by "Well since Google was silent about the exact reason for suspension..."; he even admits to intentionally ignoring the warnings he was given because "if I thought a human at Google was giving me the warning, I might have listened more carefully."
That is, at best, negligently poor reasoning. At worst, it's a contemptuous disrespect for the other party you're engaging in business with, which is pretty good grounds for them exercising their option to terminate that business relationship.
Google, Amazon, etc., are for-profit commercial service providers. If you're going to violate their policies, they will stop working with you, regardless of the impact on your business. Anyone who depends on a third party supplier for anything, in any business context, should keep that in mind -- they have no duty to you beyond whatever contract you have signed (if, of course, you have signed one).
by JamesMcMinn on 7/28/14, 11:34 AM
Honestly, it just sounds like Google were doing the right thing and protecting it's users from low quality spam apps.
by ripb on 7/28/14, 11:53 AM
>So I was using the app store as my beta testing platform.
>I was planning on taking all these apps down in a few weeks anyway.
>I thought I could get maybe 20-30 apps suspended without repercussions
>In this age of Google, it’s now “obey or face an instant lifetime ban.” This is progress? What does the future hold if we are forced to strictly obey and understand every legal gotcha in Google’s terms of service? I believe in freedom, not blind obedience. I made some mistakes and would have removed all my apps if I had known the true consequences.
He spammed the Google Play store with multiple unfinished versions of the same applications for "beta testing", received warnings which he chose to ignore and then got banned for his gross abuse of the service.
Instead of "I messed up, here's a warning to others" it's a case of "why don't Google let me mess around with their service as much as I like? This is oppression, this is America goddamnit, where's muh freedom?!?"
Zero sympathy. Well done to Google on taking down one of the many people spamming the Play store with junk.
by Cthulhu_ on 7/28/14, 12:28 PM
A silly assumption that both generalizes the audience and is ignorant of copyright laws, imo. Not a valid argument in a court situation either. I could make the crappiest Geocities site out there, but as soon as I put a Google logo somewhere, people may assume it is an official Google site or affiliated with it.
> One of my apps contained the channel id for Vice.com. Since the length of the app name is so limited I decided on “Vice TV”
Yup, there you go. Using a brand name, showing a brand's video - intent isn't the issue here, the author was impersonating Vice.com there.
The author is guilty of being naive and lax about copyright and trademark laws, imo.
by jpwagner on 7/28/14, 11:55 AM
I emailed Google back and asked them to tell me exactly what I need to change to be compliant with the rules. Is it the icon? The name? The disclaimer? What? Google refused to give me any additional information.
But if his story is true, he makes good faith efforts to be compliant. What, if any, is the social responsibility a company has that owns half the market of mobile development platforms to people that could potentially make a living using their platform? Monopolies/duopolies throw a wrench in the invisible hand, and I'm not sure there's a clear answer.
by oskarth on 7/28/14, 11:46 AM
by justinpaulson on 7/28/14, 12:33 PM
And yet you still put the bag over your head and took a deep breath! Why not just remove the ten apps and use common sense to determine that naming your apps after another company's product is a bad idea??
by mimog on 7/28/14, 12:16 PM
by VLM on 7/28/14, 12:10 PM
They have a different revenue generation business model for gmail.
My son's account was blocked, couldn't figure out why, and they wouldn't say. I suspect some kind of data mining thing where watching more than 5000 blitzwinger videos on youtube "proves" you're a kid or a teen. He does like his video games...
He falls into that gap between being old enough to have an account per google's rules, but young enough to not have his own credit card or a drivers license (they'd accept a scanned copy of his DL, but he's not 16 yet) so the only option to reinstate his account was to get Dad (me) to charge 50 cents on his CC to "prove" he's of legal age.
So part of the gmail business model is to hold kids (teens) accounts hostage with a threat of permanent deletion until Dad pays 50 cents. I'm not annoyed at the 50 cents, gmail is worth a large multiple of that. I am annoyed that at a random time long after BAU was initiated, they felt like charging us for fun.
It is possible the gmail biz model of randomly applied fees could be applied to play store / wallet accounts.
Not sure if OP would have flown off into as much of a rage for a $50 reinstatement fee, or if he'd be like me, pissed off at the "business agreement" being unilaterally rewritten at a later date. Either way, the gmail biz model does appear to be superior to the play/wallet/app store biz model, at least GOOG would get some revenue, however little.
I assume based on evidence Google dropped the "don't be evil" motto a long time ago.
by M4v3R on 7/28/14, 11:48 AM
> Now my Google play account and Google Wallet account are both banned for life. I’m no longer able to write Android apps ever again, and my family and I can’t even use Google wallet to purchase from Google Play.
So much for programmer freedom. Apple is at least very explicit about its rules. Google seemingly lets you do whatever you want, but then bans you if you do something that they don't like. Now of course one can say that the ban is justified, as author clearly misused the Play store and didn't follow the guidelines.
If he did try to do that on the App Store his apps would be probably instantly rejected, but he would not be banned. The funny thing is that there's a big chance that he would then write a blog post about how App Store is a "walled garden" and that on Play store that would be OK.
by danielweber on 7/28/14, 12:13 PM
I didn’t think they would mind, I thought I was doing them a favor. Pointing people to their great content. It’s free advertising
then stop. Other people don't want your "free" advertising.
by IanDrake on 7/28/14, 1:34 PM
Google has decided to automate everything. There is no way to get actual help across their entire product line. Having problems with your adwords account? It doesn't matter if you spend $20K month, you get automatic email responses to your queries with obnoxious links to the help system that you've already read.
While I agree that author did more wrong than he realizes, he also asked Google for an explanation to their objection, to which he received no response. I guess the Borg NLP engine was down that day and couldn't find the appropriate form letter.
Whatever you think about this author, you can't deny the danger of relying on one ecosystem so heavily. Google is the worst. At least Apple would have denied his app with a reason which he could have corrected.
by neil_s on 7/28/14, 12:11 PM
by baldfat on 7/28/14, 11:33 AM
Here is hi github page: https://github.com/sgehrman He is still developing. I am wondering what the updated status is on this? Seems that if he is still developing he isn't banned for life?
There already were some petition at https://www.change.org/petitions/sergey-brin-respect-the-eff...
by aaronem on 7/28/14, 12:24 PM
by arsalanb on 7/28/14, 11:52 AM
I'm afraid the actions taken by Google in this case can be justified, since publishing 10 apps a day is a dubious figure. However, I'll give it to you, they could've made the regulations regarding this a little more explicit and visible.
by true_religion on 7/28/14, 12:59 PM
> http://blog.hutber.com/how-my-google-devlopers-account-got-t...
This guy here writes an app called "Sex Diaries Alpha", and has it rejected because of pornographic purpose. He then assumes that its because he used a picture a cartoon donkey as the icon, so he reploads "Sex Diaries Test" with a picture of a cartoon girl instead.
More repetitions follow. He never once thinks its perhaps the name 'sex diaries' or the stated purpose of the app. Nope, maybe its the fact that this picture has a nipple, or this is cartoon bondage.
> http://andrewpearson.org/?p=681
This guy writes an app and stuffs it with 100s of keywords (as one could see by checking the same app in the 3rd party app store), then he complains he isn't in violation because you could play all those artists through his generic music player, and google didn't cap the number of keywords you could use. So he's not in violation. He knows this for sure, because he's an attorney.
> https://groups.google.com/forum/#%21searchin/android-develop...
This guy says that Google transfered $4000 of android sales into his adsense account so they could pay him for non-US sales, but they failed to verify his account since he didn't have $10 worth of adsense budget. Then they disabled the entire account due to invalid clicks on a dead-end blog. If his story is actually true, he should get a lawyer and I feel this is really the time that Google customer service would be nice.
by TuringTest on 7/28/14, 12:00 PM
It was all love and rainbows while the gold rush held it promise of instant richness and fame, wasn't it?
by mikehall314 on 7/28/14, 12:15 PM
by fishnchips on 7/28/14, 12:12 PM
by tomordonez on 7/28/14, 12:18 PM
by joshdance on 7/28/14, 2:19 PM
"There is a guide and it's pretty clear: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ... - For example, if your app displays the brand, icon, or title from another app [...] your apps can be suspended and your developer account terminated."
by ericfrederich on 7/28/14, 1:26 PM
You were a die hard Apple fan boy since '85 even during their darkest times... then you can't provide your users updates within hours so you...
"threw out my macs, smashed my iPhones, switched my whole family to Ubuntu and Android."
http://www.reactiongifs.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/dont_b...
by yonran on 7/28/14, 4:53 PM
I think this is a growing problem that more people need to be aware of. We do not have the right to use modern marketplaces (such as the Google Play Store, Apple App Store, Google Adwords, AirBnB, Ebay, Uber, etc.) Instead, we have permission from corporations to use them. If an individual bases his livelihood on sales through one of these and then makes a mistake, the company is likely to ban him, destroying his income. There is currently no guarantee of due process or proportional punishment. When you are banned from the majority marketplace, one often has no real alternative. Can anyone make a living selling his goods on the second most popular auction site?
I think we need to fight for the right to due process and fair punishment online.
by api on 7/28/14, 3:45 PM
Regardless of the merits of this particular authors' case, I'm frankly astounded that more people don't seem to care about this aspect of mobile platforms. I remember the uproar the Microsoft caused in the 1990s with their "trusted computing" trial balloon, and the uproar that locked PC BIOSes continue to create today. Yet you change the form factor a little and nobody cares. Wow.
by pessimizer on 7/28/14, 3:12 PM
That being said, these kinds of apps are what make the phone app market a cesspool. Would the iOS app store accept youtube channel viewers?
by juliob on 7/29/14, 11:01 AM
Google cannot be trusted to handle relationships, whether with developers or companies. It's clear that they don't care and that's fine. They have their niche for providing services to those who don't mind the lack of the human touch. Just not for me.
by pnathan on 7/28/14, 1:13 PM
That said, I'm not sure I actually side with the author outside of that point of agreement. Looks like the apps were mega shady.
I would advise the author to (1) not place their trust in a corporation again, and to secure their business & personal affairs against single points of failure, (2) not make shady software, and finally (3) consult a lawyer on the implementation of the law and contracts.
by dictum on 7/28/14, 2:04 PM
2. I can't help but appreciate the karma angle of someone who tried to repackage web content as apps getting bitten by the gatekeepers of the walled garden.
3. Ah, Google, the business that would certainly still exist (and be as large and powerful as it currently is) had it been forbidden to ever skirt the limits of copyright law...
by tuhrig on 7/28/14, 3:07 PM
by tripzilch on 7/29/14, 8:07 AM
First, what the guy did was wrong, and he appears pretty stupid, pretending to be stupid, or both.
Google is generally known for their abysmal communication and "customer service", but in this case they were in fact pretty clear about the problem right when the first app got suspended.
He can whine all he want but Google's decision to ban his Android developer account was not too unreasonable.
However even with that in mind I do believe that they went completely overboard with the decisions to also ban-for-life his Google Wallet and Google Music accounts. Those are completely unrelated to this matter[0], and escalated this thing out of proportion.
It is kind of frightening they will just take those things as "collateral" for violating a bunch of rules on a completely different service that just also happens to be part of the Google ecosystem. It starts to become and look like a state that way (hello, cyberpunk future), but with a state you should also have clear rules and ways of appeal. Google definitely doesn't have a meaningful version the the latter.
People depend on all sorts of services that Google provides, and the ability to take all or any of them away (there are no laws) because you violated an unrelated rule, is an amount of power that should come with mechanisms that keep it in check.
Indeed what if they instead had taken his GMail account?
[0] unless there is more that the author is not telling us, which is not at all unlikely.
by chrisBob on 7/28/14, 12:57 PM
The lesson should be that basing a business on any single external resource could be an issue, and you should approach it carefully.
by X-Istence on 7/28/14, 1:10 PM
by chasing on 7/28/14, 3:26 PM
"All Apple products are banned in my household to make a statement about programmer freedom."
"I believe in freedom, not blind obedience."
This guy comes off as being a bit naive. And/or dishonest in his telling of this story...
by logicallee on 7/28/14, 4:38 PM
Never got to find out the meat of the story. Oh well - it was promising and I was looking forward to it, I kind of wish I didn't realize what I was reading. (i.e. a fabrication.)
Basically, I don't find the sentence credible, nor am able to read it in context as an exaggeration or metaphorical, it's presented as fact, and I lost interest.
This is written by a marketer, not a developer. i.e. it's "a paid lie" (if we are cynical), or more generously it's allegory, that I don't have time to read. None of this stuff happened, in my judgment.
Granted I didn't read the 3900 word essay so I could be wrong - I stopped at word 278. It's just my impression that this story takes you for a ride.
by kelvin0 on 7/28/14, 2:47 PM
by avz on 7/28/14, 6:47 PM
* he smashes thousands of dollars worth of equipment because the producer's business model no longer fits his idea of freedom,
* he writes a trivial wrapper app with no original content or behavior,
* he spams Google Play with ten versions of it hard-coding different YT channel IDs in each,
* he values this contribution to the Android ecosystem on about $500,000,
* his apps obviously infringe on trademarks and possibly copyrighted content,
* he ignores multiple warnings and app suspensions, because they don't tell him precisely what to change,
* he considers Google to be under the obligation to handhold him through the nature of his violation of the terms and conditions,
* after all this he continues to think he is in the right,
* he writes a rant and expects to receive sympathy riding on general disappointment in devs community with Google's admittedly lacking customer support.
Wow.
by PythonicAlpha on 7/28/14, 1:48 PM
Google once started with the slogan "Don't be evil".
By being the new "Judge Dredd" of the internet, it can just become, what it never wanted to be. All that, just because Google tries to drive technology to its extremes ("customer-service from hell").
This is going to be more and more important, because there exist only very few major app-stores and very few major internet-payment systems (gladly, there the situation could still change to the better). But I know, how much Paypal was criticized because of his behavior and being a semi-monopolist in internet payments.
With our today's trend to centralization -- I don't want to put my fate into the hand of one of these new Judge Dredds.
by pronoiac on 7/28/14, 4:32 PM
From when this was first posted in March:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7478975
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7569454
From May:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7855337
[1] like this: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=c62f2404f66#!/story/forever/0/c62f...
by Donzo on 7/28/14, 12:18 PM
by piratebroadcast on 7/28/14, 6:58 PM
This guy doesn't quite seem to feel the same way.
by izzydata on 7/28/14, 4:24 PM
If anyone has seen the movie "The Internship" there is a scene where they all have to learn how to do phone support. I would find it very weird if that is entirely a lie and it is nearly impossible to call them.
Also he smashed his apple devices because he disagrees with their ideals? That seems kind of immature.
by FiddlerClamp on 7/28/14, 1:36 PM
by desireco42 on 7/28/14, 3:37 PM
Mostly this is due Google not having customer support, so you are just interacting with machines.
It would be easier if we had more options, this way if you get kicked out by apple and google, nothing else is left.
by bg451 on 7/28/14, 8:20 PM
> I decided on “Vice TV”
> I didn’t plan on trying to sell Vice TV
> I was also secretly hoping I would get a contract job out of this or someone might say, “Hey, add my blog and Facebook pages and I’ll buy the app from you.”
The last quotation isn't necessarily in context with the third one, but nonetheless this guy was either stupidly naive or ignorant.
by mark-r on 7/29/14, 4:46 AM
1. Google is big enough to be an indispensable part of your life.
2. Google doesn't believe in allowing human contact - it doesn't scale. They've put all their eggs into the algorithm basket, and when the algorithm decides you're guilty that's it. No appeal, at least not in any real sense.
It's a story that gets repeated over and over.
by the_real_bto on 7/28/14, 3:29 PM
A month long suspension would get the point across.
by wldcordeiro on 7/28/14, 4:49 PM
by venomsnake on 7/28/14, 2:22 PM
by Karunamon on 7/28/14, 2:54 PM
Furthermore, the author's ignorance of trademark really doesn't win them any points.
by JimmaDaRustla on 7/28/14, 12:40 PM
by 0x0 on 7/28/14, 2:08 PM
by henrygrew on 7/28/14, 1:13 PM
by 59nadir on 7/29/14, 7:04 AM
Google suspended my Google Wallet account when they shouldn't have.
by bitJericho on 7/28/14, 2:42 PM
"If one of their algorithms thinks you’re a bad guy, you’re banned for life."
In his case scratch out "thinks" and put in "knows"
by remon on 7/28/14, 3:10 PM
by jeffehobbs on 7/28/14, 12:52 PM
Honestly, why don't you just use a friend's account?
