The author used other people's content, packaged them into an app, and then repeatedly submitted the same app (with one minor modification -- the use of someone else's content) to the Play store. 'Beta' apps or apps that you write for close friends/family can be distributed via other means than the main app market.
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).
Your position is a common response: paint the affected individual in such light that you can safely state he's different from you, and making it obvious this wouldn't possibly happen to you.
The important facts, irrespective of the correctness of app suspension are:
a) App suspension led to Google Wallet suspension. Google Wallet can be used as a payment processor, so this decision could have affected entirely independent revenue streams. It's inexcusable for Google to do this!
b) Google support is awful. This is a known fact. AdSense suspensions are probably the most common. I've been affected by one. Google does not answer. Ever. Period. (well, if you're lucky you get a canned response).
The conclusion is that an irresponsible and deaf company now holds power over huge swaths of people.
Judging by the names of the apps/wrappers (if they were same in the store) from here http://distantfutu.re/page/portfolio.html he is lucky to not get sued at the same time as well. He's even argumentative about trademark infringement in his post. I don't think he fully understands what he really did wrong.
"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."
If you ask why, you should be told exactly what is wrong. Or better yet, be told exactly what is wrong right away. Obviously packaging other people's content is the issue here, but you should be told exactly what rules are being broken so there's no ambiguity.
"I thought I was doing these guys a favor. The apps I wrote would have cost about $50,000 each if I had charged for my time. I basically donated $500,000 to the Android community. That’s how I saw things."
This is where i stopped reading - the author is a bit delusional.
You're missing the nub of the issue - sure the guy made mistakes and ignored warnings. But the fact remains that he was banned by an impersonal, automated system with no chance of appeal, and as such is now effectively locked out of the entire android app ecosystem for ever - an therefore an entire possible line of business. Note there's also no possibility for him to mend his ways and be re-instated.
Imagine if the same applied to people who run physical businesses - some shop owner skips some paperwork thinking it'll be harmless, gets caught, gets a fine... and then is banned from ever owning a shop ever again for the rest of his life, no appeal.
This is our brave new cloud-oriented future - where all the power to regulate what content is available to millions of users lies in the hands of a couple of private companies. I find the whole thing very worrying, and am very glad that the FirefoxOS and Ubuntu phone projects are moving forward to provide some kind of alternative.
And to be honest I don't know why he's scared to make a new google account. Yeah sure they track your IP address and whatnot but they certainly wont do anything about it. They wont ban an entire household, that's just bullshit.
I don't know why he thought getting suspended wasn't a big deal because he was "innocent". That's also a fairly stupid idea as well.
I tried one of his apks : The Verge TV.
It installs an app of the same name. The First Screen is the logo of the website on 2/3 of the screen and a description of the website. In a corner there is a disclaimer button,
clicking on it leads me to a disclaimer explaining that 'The Verge TV is not affiliated with The Verge'.
I find it hard to believe that he did not realize that an app copying the names & graphics of popular websites would get him banned for impersonation. Chances are that some of these websites reported him to Google.
That's just bad business. It's like the MPAA and RIAA suing their customers. In the short run you can bully a few independent people but, in the long run, you are eroding your user base -- or developer base in this case.
I consider the apps in question fair use. Now, I've never read google's TOS but, then again, neither has anyone else. You'll notice that the op was working with the system to try to understand its rules. That's the quintessence of what a hacker does. It seems to me that google is making themselves vulnerable to an open app store. One where you can experiment and collect user feedback before committing resources to a project.
Youtube provides videos that users specifically label as a creative commons license, and are available for commercial use. He may have not been in the wrong, though it's pretty doubtful considering his questionable judgement on everything else.
The author used others people's content and spammed with play store with official sounding apps, then ignored warnings to stop. Got caught and punished for it, now Google won't let him do it again.
Honestly, it just sounds like Google were doing the right thing and protecting it's users from low quality spam apps.
The author didn't use other people's content. He simply used the YouTube APIs for exactly what they're there for -- remixing the YouTube experience to match a specific use case YouTube has not yet accommodated. What else are APIs supposed to be used for?
The original uploader of that content still retained all control over the content. If the original uploader didn't like his content being reskinned, he shouldn't upload it on a provider that gives users that ability through an API.
The potential problem is in the implication that the mark's owner endorsed the application. The post claims that the the author made significant effort to indicate he was unofficial. It's arguable whether this continued to constitute infringement, and for that reason I think the guy should've at least been given a polite human touch and a direct, non-automated opportunity to correct the specific issue, which was never directly elucidated ("Impersonating how? I'm just using the YouTube APIs that Google published for me to use...").
I'm not saying that the author has great judgment. I'm just saying that Google's actions aren't really proportional, that the author's actions are not at all as illegal as everyone is saying, and that Google should recognize that they have a social responsibility to at least follow-up on things like this with a human to clear up any potential miscommunication. An expectation of care in account deletion is one of the side effects of knowing and doing everything about and for everyone. It's a big deal to lose big chunks of your Google account.
Ignored warnings to stop? It sounds like the author did one thing (uploading ten apps) and then got three "strikes" and a full suspension without doing anything else.
>1 app, 2 apps, 10 apps? Did it matter either way? I could have posted 50 apps if I wanted
>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.
Getting banned from publishing apps to the Play Store is reasonable and proportional. Getting banned from all Google services whether related or not seems a bit much imho.
> Zero sympathy. Well done to Google on taking down one of the many people spamming the Play store with junk.
Yes, also, I find it highly amusing how his long-winded whine about 'programmer freedom' makes me appreciate the walled-garden approach of iOS just a tiny bit more. Sure, it's not perfect, and it's not 'freedom', but at the very least it does make it very explicit to 'developers' like the author that they should take their spammy app tactics (and free-riding on someone else's content, using a free service and its users as your beta testing platform) somewhere else.
Funny thing is I'm pretty sure he would get banned from the Windows Phone store pretty quickly as well (and rightly so)
> Anyone using my simplistic beta quality app would know instantly that this is not “official”
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.
Sure Google is a private company. Sure this means they have no formal responsibility to this developer. Programmatically, he seems to deserve to be sanctioned: he violated their policies for several weeks with several different apps.
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.
A good faith effort would be reading the terms & conditions. He obviously didn't, because they are quite clear about not being able to put other companies' names in your app name.
If the article was about someone that had this happen, and they read the conditions and didn't see anything that they had violated, and then asked Google - that would be a different story. This guy just can't be bothered to put the effort in himself.
Even if his story is true there's a lot of fallacious arguments and lack of reasoning in his claims. It's the type of "I-can-do-anything" mentality that was his pitfall.
Just because he might think that using somebody else's trademark to create a revenue stream for yourself is doing them a favor, doesn't mean anybody else has to. I don't have pity for his point-of-view, but I do think that it was unnecessary and irrelevant to suspend his Google Wallet account.
Still, it doesn't matter what I think: Google reserves the right to do whatever they want.
Did OP do something wrong? Yes, definitely. Is being banned from all other Google-related activities forever without recourse proportional? No. The response - being the sum of all its direct consequences - is tyrannical, and worse, automatic and faceless. Unless you enjoy being A Perfectly Obedient Citizen (TM), the only real lesson here is to not put all your eggs in one basket. Use Google, use Apple, but beware of letting them have full control of important parts of your life.
"These warnings to me felt like the warnings on a plastic bag telling you not to put it over your head"
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??
Good. I wish all the people developing crappy and useless apps, flooding the place, would get banned. You publish 10 different apps where the only thing that changes is the youtube channel, and claim you were beta testing? I hope Apple and Microsoft ban you as well.
"Google could have, and still could block my gmail"
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.
Do you really think Gmail's business email is collecting arbitrary one-time fees of 50 cents on minors' accounts? Is this really any more than a rounding error compared to advertising revenue, charging for extra space, and providing email services to companies and schools? The whole $0.50 thing may be a scummy tactic, but it really doesn't seem to be their business model.
I know lots of people don't know how to setup an email server. But gmail, as an email account, is worth less than $10/month. And, in fact, your ISP probably includes several email accounts with your internet service. If your child needs an email account, just assign him one...
So, in point of fact, gmail - as a 'free' email service - is actually a huge additional COST, considering the payment in privacy. And this is why I do not use it myself...
> I continued to be an Apple fan until they announced the “walled garden” and the app review process for iOS. I am totally against having to get permission from a corporation to write and sell apps (...). All Apple products are banned in my household to make a statement about programmer freedom.
> 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.
Microsoft was known as the Borg, but that was poorly placed. Google has been more of a Borg than MS ever was.
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.
He was definitely in the wrong (by using logos and names without permission for starters) and ignorant of basic trademark and copyright law (which many of us probably are too!), but I also worry about two things:
- Google's continued lack of communication (most everything is automated),
- and their ban-hammer (much like Paypal's, it can be terrifying for a small developer).
BTW, he added the following disclaimer to his app (not that it did much good):
"DISCLAIMER: The Verge TV App is not affiliated with The Verge. Information shown in this app is obtained through public YouTube APIs. We are fans of The Verge and we wanted a better viewing experience to watch their videos.
Any copyrighted material belongs to the original owners. If you want changes made to this app, please let us know."
I want to use (for example) photos and names of cars for an app - do I need to get permission from the brand owners?
March 25th post that was on Hacker News at least twice already. This is the only article on his blog.
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?
So that petition is accusing one dude in Google of disrespecting 'small and indie android developers' when they're blatantly violating trademark law? Lols.
After just skimming through the post, I have a question for OP. Why did you create 10 different apps? Why not just one app, that gave the user the ability to enter a channel name and check out all their videos? I think that's better, both in terms of not spamming — for the lack of a better work — the Play Store, as well as UX.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's an unfortunately common idea that copyright violation is sometimes okay because it amounts to "free advertising" for the organisation whose content you're co-opting. I was disappointed to see that argument made here.
I wouldn't call the OP blameless but there is a lesson here: it is dangerous for a professional software developer to become too invested in one technology or platform, especially with a capricious corporate overlord behind it.
[+] [-] _petronius|11 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] sergiosgc|11 years ago|reply
The important facts, irrespective of the correctness of app suspension are:
a) App suspension led to Google Wallet suspension. Google Wallet can be used as a payment processor, so this decision could have affected entirely independent revenue streams. It's inexcusable for Google to do this!
b) Google support is awful. This is a known fact. AdSense suspensions are probably the most common. I've been affected by one. Google does not answer. Ever. Period. (well, if you're lucky you get a canned response).
The conclusion is that an irresponsible and deaf company now holds power over huge swaths of people.
I'm uncomfortable. And so should you be.
[+] [-] Keyframe|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ascendantlogic|11 years ago|reply
"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."
If you ask why, you should be told exactly what is wrong. Or better yet, be told exactly what is wrong right away. Obviously packaging other people's content is the issue here, but you should be told exactly what rules are being broken so there's no ambiguity.
[+] [-] therobot24|11 years ago|reply
This is where i stopped reading - the author is a bit delusional.
[+] [-] mangecoeur|11 years ago|reply
Imagine if the same applied to people who run physical businesses - some shop owner skips some paperwork thinking it'll be harmless, gets caught, gets a fine... and then is banned from ever owning a shop ever again for the rest of his life, no appeal.
This is our brave new cloud-oriented future - where all the power to regulate what content is available to millions of users lies in the hands of a couple of private companies. I find the whole thing very worrying, and am very glad that the FirefoxOS and Ubuntu phone projects are moving forward to provide some kind of alternative.
[+] [-] Chinpokoman|11 years ago|reply
I don't know why he thought getting suspended wasn't a big deal because he was "innocent". That's also a fairly stupid idea as well.
[+] [-] mempko|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] on_and_off|11 years ago|reply
I find it hard to believe that he did not realize that an app copying the names & graphics of popular websites would get him banned for impersonation. Chances are that some of these websites reported him to Google.
[+] [-] spinlock|11 years ago|reply
I consider the apps in question fair use. Now, I've never read google's TOS but, then again, neither has anyone else. You'll notice that the op was working with the system to try to understand its rules. That's the quintessence of what a hacker does. It seems to me that google is making themselves vulnerable to an open app store. One where you can experiment and collect user feedback before committing resources to a project.
[+] [-] poopsintub|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hawleyal|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] norswap|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JamesMcMinn|11 years ago|reply
Honestly, it just sounds like Google were doing the right thing and protecting it's users from low quality spam apps.
[+] [-] cookiecaper|11 years ago|reply
The original uploader of that content still retained all control over the content. If the original uploader didn't like his content being reskinned, he shouldn't upload it on a provider that gives users that ability through an API.
The potential problem is in the implication that the mark's owner endorsed the application. The post claims that the the author made significant effort to indicate he was unofficial. It's arguable whether this continued to constitute infringement, and for that reason I think the guy should've at least been given a polite human touch and a direct, non-automated opportunity to correct the specific issue, which was never directly elucidated ("Impersonating how? I'm just using the YouTube APIs that Google published for me to use...").
I'm not saying that the author has great judgment. I'm just saying that Google's actions aren't really proportional, that the author's actions are not at all as illegal as everyone is saying, and that Google should recognize that they have a social responsibility to at least follow-up on things like this with a human to clear up any potential miscommunication. An expectation of care in account deletion is one of the side effects of knowing and doing everything about and for everyone. It's a big deal to lose big chunks of your Google account.
[+] [-] ben0x539|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] izacus|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hawleyal|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fnordfnordfnord|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ripb|11 years ago|reply
>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.
[+] [-] bengillies|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] w0utert|11 years ago|reply
Yes, also, I find it highly amusing how his long-winded whine about 'programmer freedom' makes me appreciate the walled-garden approach of iOS just a tiny bit more. Sure, it's not perfect, and it's not 'freedom', but at the very least it does make it very explicit to 'developers' like the author that they should take their spammy app tactics (and free-riding on someone else's content, using a free service and its users as your beta testing platform) somewhere else.
Funny thing is I'm pretty sure he would get banned from the Windows Phone store pretty quickly as well (and rightly so)
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] drpgq|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stevejones|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hawleyal|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jpwagner|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] krschultz|11 years ago|reply
If the article was about someone that had this happen, and they read the conditions and didn't see anything that they had violated, and then asked Google - that would be a different story. This guy just can't be bothered to put the effort in himself.
[+] [-] kunai|11 years ago|reply
Just because he might think that using somebody else's trademark to create a revenue stream for yourself is doing them a favor, doesn't mean anybody else has to. I don't have pity for his point-of-view, but I do think that it was unnecessary and irrelevant to suspend his Google Wallet account.
Still, it doesn't matter what I think: Google reserves the right to do whatever they want.
[+] [-] oskarth|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] girvo|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justinpaulson|11 years ago|reply
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??
[+] [-] mimog|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VLM|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] smeyer|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] me1010|11 years ago|reply
If you have Verizon, here's how... [8 extra] http://www.verizon.com/Support/Residential/Internet/HighSpee...
If you have Comcast, here's how... [5 extra] http://customer.comcast.com/help-and-support/internet/adding...
If you have Cablevision, here's how... [4 extra] http://optimum.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1673/~/c...
So, in point of fact, gmail - as a 'free' email service - is actually a huge additional COST, considering the payment in privacy. And this is why I do not use it myself...
[+] [-] M4v3R|11 years ago|reply
> 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.
[+] [-] danielweber|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] IanDrake|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] neil_s|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GFischer|11 years ago|reply
- Google's continued lack of communication (most everything is automated),
- and their ban-hammer (much like Paypal's, it can be terrifying for a small developer).
BTW, he added the following disclaimer to his app (not that it did much good):
"DISCLAIMER: The Verge TV App is not affiliated with The Verge. Information shown in this app is obtained through public YouTube APIs. We are fans of The Verge and we wanted a better viewing experience to watch their videos.
Any copyrighted material belongs to the original owners. If you want changes made to this app, please let us know."
I want to use (for example) photos and names of cars for an app - do I need to get permission from the brand owners?
[+] [-] puredemo|11 years ago|reply
I thought google wallet went away around the same time google wave did, for instance.
[+] [-] baldfat|11 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aaronem|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arsalanb|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] true_religion|11 years ago|reply
> 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.
[+] [-] TuringTest|11 years ago|reply
It was all love and rainbows while the gold rush held it promise of instant richness and fame, wasn't it?
[+] [-] mikehall314|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fishnchips|11 years ago|reply