> One factor Google didn’t cite was the new trader status rule enforced by the EU as of this February, which began requiring developers to share their names and addresses in the app’s listing.
Yep, it was probably that.
Yep, it was probably that.
Would like to keep my identity separate to whatever projects I have usually, especially if they're ones that don't 100% align with the your own developer brand that employers might screen for
The real issue, IMO, is that it's still too hard to distribute and install applications on my general-purpose computing devices! You can't be on Google's app store if you aren't a "real business" with a physical address and everything? Fine. Let's just distribute our apps on F-Droid, or by just releasing APKs in our GitHub pages, etc.
At least that's still possible with Android. But who knows how much longer they'll even allow that?
That feature flag just changes what is allowed to appear in search results.
> all online intermediaries and platforms operating within the EU
Google Play (and the App store) assume by default commercial intent, and I'm sympathetic to stricter verification rules when there's money changing hands.
As a customer I really want the ability to sue someone who does me wrong, call them out publicly, or at least avoid their products. In no way is it reasonable that someone should want to stay anonymous while selling me something (or profiting off of it in one way or another). I really don't see a reason to make an exception for people who have free+offline+etc apps.
You're publishing software, you need to be identifiable.
"Because I want to be able to sue you" is not a particularly compelling line of reasoning for legislating incredibly invasive laws.
John Doe ?
It has nothing to do with EU. see jwz.
It's kind of incredible how the EU makes changes like this and then politicians scratch their heads about the weakness of European tech. You would think that the politicians would give some thought to that and make it easier/cheaper to fulfill these requirements, but nope. Either pay up for a company (hundreds of euros) and an office (hundreds of euros) or just have your information publicly available.
And when that information becomes publicly available you will be inundated with spam.
On top of that some services will then take Google street view pictures of your home and link all of that information together in an easily searchable database.
[0] https://developer.apple.com/help/app-store-connect/manage-co...
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/FlutterDev/comments/1f4nmny/comment...
The actual change is not by the EU, but by Google who interprets a EU directive and decides how to apply it to its platform.
This is a big difference, in that the EU requires a verified _contact_ address for _traders_ operating on a marketplace.
From there Google deciding to blanket require onerous verification on anyone publishing any app is Google's call and they should get the blame for it.
For comparison you get a different application of the same rules on the AppStore, and none of that for F-Droid.
Before the rule was put in place by the EU, Google didn't require it; after they did. I'm sure Google didn't go through the design, development, testing, compliance and legal analysis of deploying this requirement for the fun of it.
At this point it's not that far from anthropomorphising the lawnmower.
Also, when I said "changes like this" I mean changes in general where there seems to be no analysis on the knock-on effects of a policy change causes.
Another example from the EU was their VAT change they did some years ago. On the surface it was a decent change, because it made multinationals pay VAT in the countries of the buyers, but it had the downside that it drowned small and micro businesses in so much paperwork that a lot of them shut down or stopped serving customers in other EU countries.
Why? Because they forgot to add a minimum threshold for when these VAT rules apply. Something that most EU countries have. Imagine you start selling 3D models, your revenue is €500 in a year and for this money you're expected to file with 27 different tax authorities who all deal mainly in a different language. Is the €10 sale worth dealing with the Latvian tax authority?
It took the EU about 5-6 years to finally fix this by introducing a €10,000 exemption.
Justifying rules for a private virtual marketplace as being as strict as how the government handles registrations is going overboard IMHO. That's like arguing that Supermarkets are fine fingeprinting customers when emiting loyalty cards because the host country also fingeprints people when emiting passports. They're not the same thing.
> It took the EU about 5-6 years to finally fix this by introducing a €10,000 exemption.
Wasn't the rule introduced in 2021 ? Getting a fix applied within a few years is actually not bad for an international governing entity IMHO.
On the other side, Stripe Tax also launched in 2021, so small businesses had that as a solution if it wasn't worth their time dealing with each countries individually.
Sure the rules could have been optimized from the start, but it doesn't sound half as bad as you make it sound to me (albeit I'm not an expert in any of this)
Haha, how perverse from Google to blame the EU. Google just want more data from you.