[dgregd]

I run a small company and offer an app to monitor sales reps work. Managers use it also to see how much time employees spend in the field. To count how much time is spend in some specific location my app uses background location updates.

10 years ago I was distributing just the apk file. Then I moved to Play store. It turned out that most people on their company owned Android devices don't configure Play Store. App updates are disabled until you log in. So I had to educate my customer employees how to log in to Play Store and install my app. The additional benefit was that people had security updates of Chrome and other apps.

Two months ago my app was suspended after I made all necessary changes to support Android 10. The Gbot claims that background location updates aren't essential for my app. As you may guess I wrote appeal without success. My customers pay mainly for that time report feature but Gbot knows better what my paying customers want.

And I just do not care about securing my customer devices and Play Store any longer. Now I distribute apk files again and train people how to install apk files from unknown sources.

[horsawlarway]

Good - There's a clear theme in the motivations of both major mobile OS companies here:

You, a 3rd party developer making custom software products for a mobile platform, are no longer allowed to have customers yourself.

Instead you must grovel and beg and pray that our lords Apple/Google consent to allow you to rent their customers.

This consent can be revoked at any time, you will pay through the nose for it (20%+ of total mobile revenue), and for basically all but the largest of customers - this consent is machine based and you will never be able to get a living person to so much as glance at any content you put into the process.

---

Fuck em both.

[elihu]

What's currently stopping some third party from creating a fork of Android with a better store? Are there closed-source parts of Android that can't be easily replicated? Is it the difficulty of getting any major phone manufacturers to agree to install it? Or something else or all of the above?

[rgrs]

Yep, these content aggregators have become consumer aggregators. They make money by controlling our attention in the webverse

[sa1]

Me, a customer, is very happy that they play a regulatory role and are taking steps to prevent surveillance of the form GP is proposing.

I’m glad that I don’t have a direct relationship with shady 3rd party developers.

[koheripbal]

I run a small company, and offer local business financial services.

A few years ago, I setup my Google My Business listing for my retail location.

Late last year I was trying to do a GSUITE account data export. It requires you to setup 2FA and I couldn't get it to work - so I asked our MSP to help since they help with other stuff. They had better luck, but multiple switching of the 2FA options and recovery emails/phone numbers caused an automatic suspension on the admin account.

I was able to quickly unlock the account with another admin account, but the suspension cascaded to Google My Business, which remains suspended because GSUITE support only support their core apps.

As you can imagine, my appeal went unresponded, and here we are, months later, with no business listing, and literally no ability to contact anyone that can help.

I wonder how many other businesses have stories like this.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

Way to go. Someone gave me an old unlocked Android phone that had almost no apps installed. Playing around with it, I removed all the installed apps and somehow I managed to also disable (break) PlayStore so that it does not work, refuses to update. If there is way to fix it, I surmise it is well beyond the capabilities of the average Android user. AFAICT PlayStore cannot communicate with the mothership to heal itself nor send user data; anyway there are no PlayStore apps installed.

I installed a few useful F-Droid apks. Installing from "untrusted" sources seems far more reliable than any "app store". Besides the F-Droid apps I use it like a dumb phone with maps on a different cellular network. I wish there were more reliable sources for apks, like F-Droid, including apks for older Android versions.

[sebastien_b]

Please sign up as a witness at the next congressional hearings.

[jonprobably]

Someone needs to make a website for Google suspensions. Let people post these stories. I have mine.