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Comment by clumsysmurf | Hacker News Reader

As an Android developer since 2009, I will not touch anything from Google ever again. Its a very asymmetrical relationship, and if something goes wrong, like your account gets suspended, its a Kafkaesque nightmare, with usually no recourse.

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same goes for other platforms too, you know.

The only advantage for Android is that you can theoretically also just distribute via sideloading

Sideloading is neither here nor there. Its about ruining a developer's livelihood, you know... like your account gets suspended (for right or wrong reasons), and ability to earn income stops. Not just because you can't distribute your app on Play Store, but because your ability to work for another organization is blunted because your addition to their account places them at risk too.

Can you explain further? It sounds like you're saying that if I work at company A, company A's Play store account gets banned, and then I go work at company B, that the Play store keeps track of this and then company B's account might get banned, just because I moved there.

There have been reports that if an individual's account has been banned, they can "poison" another company's account by being added to it. I have not heard of this happening across companies.

https://www.androidpolice.com/google-terminate-personal-acco...

Happened to me, my account was banned because I was using it from a restricted country (I used a VPN), for some time it worked fine, then after that ban hammer, all other accounts that used my machine later on got banned. I recall that I read online that they track your MAC address that gets attached to the build artifacts when you upload them to the store and used to link the accounts together, it's even mentioned in their banning email "Your account is associated with another banned account...".

The web standard is powerful enough that native apps are unnecessary for most use cases. Hopefully the gap will be closed further in the next decade. API and documentation is better. Distribution is simpler and cheaper. Not having to interact with the Apple / Google monopolists is the cherry on top.

Yes, it happens on other platforms too, but at least you can reach a human being who can disclose what the actual problem is.

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