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Comment by ams6110 | Hacker News Reader

No you can't sue them. Nobody has a right to publish apps on Google Play. They can be as arbitrary or incompetent as they like in what they do. As long as they aren't violating some protected class criteria, there's not much a court is going to do.

Google hasn't taken away anything. There is still a web and you're free to deploy what you want there on your terms.

(Edits to correct Google's autocorrect errors.)

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We can't sue them today, but we can write the laws under which they get sued tomorrow for pulling something like this - and that's the purpose of these conversations.

Mostly it's just tweaking our existing monopoly laws to be a bit less blind.

(IANAL)

You CAN sue them, but for what is unclear. "Wielding too much power" isn't a crime.

And even if you could find a legitimate reason, you are unlikely to win. I would assume Google Play's Terms of Service has several clauses, including indemnity, arbitration, and agreement that Google can remove your app at anytime for any reason.

Any of those should be sufficient to have the suit summarily dimissed.

Simply because the ToS says that, it doesn't mean it's a fair contract. Whether you win would depend on the jurisdiction.

And resources at your disposal.

That may be true for the US - I don't know US law well enough to say anything there. In large parts of Europe, however, there are very generic rules about what constitute fair contracts and some terms like forced arbitration may not be valid there.

At the very least, it should be easier to involve lawyers and not get totally ignored by the other party. It's never pretty, but at least it is possible.

It would be a civil case, not a criminal one, and it would be on the basis that they caused you a financial loss and a loss of reputation.

The main issue IMHO is not so much whether that would be possible but the fact that they have infinite financial resources while you and I probably have very little money to throw at legal costs. So we're screwed.

> You CAN sue them, but for what is unclear. "Wielding too much power" isn't a crime.

Criminal statutes don't apply to an individual's remedy here. You can sue for damages, but, yes, "wielding power" is not evidence of damages.

However, the power being wielded could be evidence in an anti-trust suit brought by the government.

The Play Store does lots of interesting and innovative stuff in the space of automated tests to detect malware. But clearly there's a lot of room for improvement.

Didn't they take away the level playing field when they created the playing field?

They built a nice new field with a wall around it and guards at the gates. The old open field with all the weeds and litter is still there.

So your complaint is that Google produced a better product? Or are you implying that Google is poisoning all other ecosystems?

Googles field is also full of weeds, and litter.

And it's guards are fairly inept.

But it’s the field everyone plays on. What are you going to do. Play by yourself?

I'm not sure how that's relevant to the point that Google Play is full of malware.

Your argue would not stand a chance in court. If a shoppingmall allows sellers to sell products in their shopping mall and suddenly the shoppingmall would dispel certain sellers resulting into a dispute then the normal us law system will apply.

A shopping mall has opportunity costs (limited availability of space, location, infrastructure needs) that computer based "malls" don't.

It's real easy to contrive clever little gotchas in fluffy language talking about "playing fields" but what is it that you think they've done?

Even accepting your premise that there is no longer a "level playing field", there's no legal reason to expect Google to help you publish your app anyway. Hence they have not taken or vioated any rights you think you have.

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