Daily reminder that your business/project/hobby should not depend on anything controlled by Google.
Edit: Despite all their shortcomings, I wouldn't mind seeing android phone makers join force and create an independent app store.
Edit: Despite all their shortcomings, I wouldn't mind seeing android phone makers join force and create an independent app store.
More like a strong disclaimer worth repeating for newcomers in the space.
These stories have come up several times over the years on HN and it is worth reiterating:
It is very risky if your product/company relies solely on another company's success and openness to you - especially if that company is not contractually obligated to continue providing you service.
You can wax poetic about the idea of an independent app store all you want, it doesn't change the facts on the ground in the current moment.
i do believe that if google didn't have an appstore that it forces android licensees to use, then we would have a similar variety of appstores world wide.
Which they certainly have done in the past (albeit,usually for really good reason. Google is a bit in a damned if you do damned if you dont position)
The best part of this is even if your app gets banned from the app store, it is still accessible to anyone that wants to bookmark your URL, and I believe that users can also install the local PWA icon without having to go through an app store (I may be wrong about that, just starting to learn about PWAs and what is currently possible, and what is coming up).
Do you have pointers to data on this subject? I am very interested in this subject!
Supported on all major Android browsers:
- Progressive Web Apps can be added to your home screen - Web Push lets web apps receive push notifications (Brave's implementation is broken, but they try to support the feature)
Experimental APIs supported by Chrome for Android:
- Web Share Target API, which lets homescreen'd web apps receive shares from other apps (the share pane makes no distinction between sharing to a web app or a native app) - Contacts APIs to read the user's contacts list
I think PWA's competitiveness will get a lot better once other browsers adopt the Web Share Target (or something like it), but I'm skeptical that they'll really take off as long as Apple continues hold off on implementing features that would make PWAs competitive with native apps.
My website is still blocked by Facebook's sharing debugger and my ad accounts with balance in them have been blocked without a reason given.
Beyond that, the point is just to make them notice you, so anything might be good enough. Reporting to a regulator like the CFPB can also be effective if the case looks financey - I got my PayPal account back recently that way after they didn't like how I typed in a tracking number and banned me for life.
// RKEW - Relativistic kinetic energy weapon
After 8 years of SEO expertise I honestly can say that there's nothing about SEO these days that makes sense, pages are not being indexed for weeks at a time, spam/crap at the top result. Throw in the endless (and ambiguous) requirements to adhere to the mighty G's requirements.
Note that this doesn’t mean don’t participate on platforms controlled by Google, it just means diversify your business so you have multiple income streams rather than just putting all your eggs in one App Store basket. Apps should really just be a client facing portal tied in to a whole ecosystem of solutions you provide.
Creating a Play Store alternative is hard for many reasons:
1) finance: the more countries you operate in, the messier it becomes. International taxes are one hard mess, KYC/AML regulations differ between countries, and to top it off there is the whole "international sanctions" issue especially regarding Iran (where it's fine and explicitly encouraged by the EU to do business with Iran, but any entity that has US exposure exposes themselves to liability in the US for violations).
2) vetting of apps against a constant onslaught of spam, malware, copyright violations: f-droid has it a bit easier since they require all apps be open source, but a commercial, widely used alternative will have to run static analysis, dynamic analysis (to catch runtime exploit attempts) and manual testing. All of this is expensive and requires expert knowledge of Android as well as IT security.
3) Implementation and hosting: an app store worth its name has a lot of binary assets to distribute to users (and again, you have to avoid getting into trouble with people abusing your service to spread illegal content, because there will be such cases rather sooner than later), the store itself has to be implemented, regularly adapted to account for changes in the Android core, you definitely want a focus on security to avoid some hacker distributing malware to all your users with a push...
4) Customer and developer support: it's a well-known meme that FB/Amazon/Twitter/Google are almost impossible to reach for ordinary people without raising a shitstorm on Hacker News or a well-funded lawyer team... but the key thing is, support is expensive to run.
Developers have no incentive to go the extra mile to publish on your store, because there are no users and it is extra work.
Users have no incentive to install your store, because there is barely anything on it.
OEMs have no incentive to preinstall your store, because you don't have any content (which devalues their product) and they don't gain anything from it. If they are willing to roll their own store, they at least rake in all the profit from it.
I'm just a normal F-Droid user, but couldn't you build In-App purchases or link accounts to your website?
So, register for a paid account on mygreatapp.com and use the login details in your app?
I think that's what Google and Apple specifically DON'T WANT for financial reasons, but how about F-Droid?
Developers like in-app payment methods because all they have to do is integrate an SDK for payment, and then they get a monthly payment on their bank account and a bill for accounting, that's it.
If you want to handle payments yourself, you'll have to:
1) implement user management to deal with storing what stuff a user has purchased, with all the GDPR and customer support (forgotten passwords, hacked accounts, lost MFA creds) headache that comes from that
2) find a payment processor that operates in all your target countries (no, Stripe and Paypal alone won't cut it), and integrate these (and hope they don't run into the same issue with Paypal, who are known for deciding on a whim to withhold funds)
3) Issue individual bills to customers, account for stuff like cross-border VAT, insanities like county/city sales taxes, deal with refund laws
4) deal with fraud attempts, angry parents, ...
5) Re-implement recurring payment schemes if your business model wants these
In the end, app stores (and ad SDKs) are a matter of convenience. Big shops like Epic, Spotify, Netflix can get away with running lots of this infrastructure on their own, but 99% of small devs don't have the time, knowledge and legal requirements to deal with that.
The problem with the Parler situation is more that their average user is too incompetent and inexperienced with computers to understand how to download something that isn't literally laid out in front of them.
I refuse to use Google Play or create a google account so I use The Aurora Store which replaces the Google Play Store.
If I want to download some independent apps I head to F droid store or Aptoide.
There are even more independent and alternative app stores, but these are the ones I use.
Oh, and don't forget about github and app downloads directly from the web.
F droid allows you to install without Google play.
And why wouldn’t this App Store have any takedown policies? Or have to follow the same kind of legal restrictions? In the discussed example, this wasn’t even automated; an employee manually reviewed and chose to ban their app.