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Fuck Android Developer Verification Program

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My account got closed for inactivity while I had multiple apps published. Google does not understand the concept of a finished app apparently, and requires you to continuously push updates or else you permanently lose your account with no way of reopening it.

Gotta drive engagement bro! Line must go up!

> requires you to continuously push updates

Sounds like a perfect job to automate by an always-on LLM.

What happened to simple cron jobs?

They do the same with youtube accounts. My parents lost a ton a family movies that way. No warning either, just poof -> gone.

The worst part is that they probably didn't delete the data and are using it to train models.

Exactly. Think Google/YouTube pulls this type of stunt to fully seize user information and data, so that they can do whatever with it.

Giving users true recovery mechanisms, means possible removal of all or part of the collected data. Where sudden or out of the blue seizure and complete removal of the user's ability to access or recover, means it's now all their data.

I have just one app I published way back in 2014 or so, and I think there were only 2 updates (only counting changes that required uploading new builds) since then that were like "do this or we're taking the app down".

One of them was requiring a privacy policy, even for a fully offline game that doesn't even have the internet permission. The other one was having to update the target platform version if I remember correctly.

> Google does not understand the concept of a finished app

They do! They just hate it.

It happened to me too. And they didn't even refund my $20 or so.

I got a Google survey this week.

Which of the following are the reasons you chose Google Play related issues as one of the weaknesses?

The second option, written by Google was:

- Sudden account termination without actionable feedback or clear restoration guidance

They know they're killing accounts without due process, they don't care, why would they? They're the only game in town now the Android Developer Verification Program is in force.

The person creating the survey might be trying to gather data to raise with management.

It gets better, I too had my account closed for inactivity, but I STILL get emails from them I can't stop because I can't log in to change email preferences.

Almost sounds like one of the intentional product decisions

I got banned from Google Admob (or whatever it is called now) and they still send me promotional emails.

That's how OKRs work!

Mark as spam.

That's illegal. No private right of action though. Gotta go through your ISP or FTC, assuming you're in the USA.

Mark as spam.

There’s Googlers on HN reading these who could probably fix this but won’t.

Unless you offer them a promotion ;)

I wonder if an anti-trust lawsuit would have any chance of succeeding. The Android Developer Verification Program is clearly meant to prevent alternative app stores from gaining market share under the guise of "security."

I think it's reasonable that Google mandates that developers identify themselves when publishing on its own app store. But why would they need to do so on alternative app stores if those don't require it?

IIRC the Android Developer Verification Program was only initiated after the EU mandated alternative app stores to be allowed. That would be sufficient cause for an anti-trust indictment.

Has anyone informed the EU about this?

BTW an anti-trust lawsuit would also have a reaonable chance of moving forward in the U.S.

The question is: does Android Developer Verification Program actually help improving the .apk app store experience?

Probably not. Google is notoriously bad at customer support (for both devs and consumers)

It helps centralize control over what was advertised to be an open OS.

Wait, what was the question again?

They also love keeping malware apps on the play store as well. I tried reporting an app that took over one of my parents phone. It stayed up for quite a while. I'm sure it's still up.

"App store experience" was continually degrading. I used to be able to find small apps and games I liked a lot and basically binge downloading. The last few times I tried, I ended up with nothing useable.

Euqally - there should be a way to recover your account.

I don't know why Google Play Store/Android in general has a good reputation - in my opinion they got worse than Apple. I recently created apps for both stores, and the Google experience is so bad. Because I am an individual (sole trader) I cannot go down the business route - but need to go through the 12 testers route. That is, I need to find 12 people willing to join a google group, opt-in to beta testing, and have my app installed for 14 days at the same time before I can publish the app on the Play Store. This is ridiculous. I'd rather pay a lump sum as I did for the Apple Store: 99€/year, go through App review, publish.

I had to submit my id, private bank statements (we often don't have monthly utility bills in europe, so I had to submit bank statements) and click through a ton of wizards for compliance, and of course pay 25€. Still no publishing rights. Now I would just pay some clickworkers on Fiverr to fulfill the testing criteria, but that risks getting my account (and app) banned forever. Needless to say that google now has all my private data associated with my google account.

People always say walled garden to the Appstore, but at least the entry ticket has a clear price label.

And all that, for them to then put your private home address (assuming you're not a business) on the app page?

I haven't bothered with them for years now, since the way they treat indie devs is absolutely awful.

And the 12 people/14 days things was a complete show-stopper. Two arbitrary numbers completely pulled out of someone's arse.

Same! I ported my free iOS utility app[1] to Android because a lot of people were asking for it. Just before I could publish it, they closed my Play Store account for a year of inactivity. Now, I haven't been able to re-create the Play Store account. Every time I try, money gets debited from my card, but the process ultimately fails. TBF, the money gets refunded after a month or so.

I'm happy supporting iOS, macOS and web.

[1]: https://cleanlinks.app/en

Google employees can pat themselves on the back for a job well done putting the same hurdles in place for software development that apply in a country 3rd last on the World Press Freedom Index.[1][2]

[1] https://developer.huawei.com/consumer/en/doc/start/rna-00000...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Press_Freedom_Index#Rank...

Fortunately PWA are well supported on android, half the apps on my phone are PWA and I didn't need an app store or hacking my device to install them. But I moved from native android to PWA after having hellish issues with their automated developer nightmare system.

Except WebGL isn't really OpenGL ES, and WebGPU will never be like Vulkan as well, so games still need to be native.

Now if it is plain old CRUD style application, many that are webviews packaged as APK, sure.

https://progressier.com/what-web-can-do-today

Can PWAs operate with local data? Can they interact with data from anywhere in the file system?

yes, with the File System API, it needs user permission though (which is a good thing).

Permissions are fine, but on android they happen every single time for the same file (and there's yet no option for the 'Allow everytine' that is present on desktop chrome). This is pretty horrible UX for some use cases.

PWAs are awesome but Firefox does not support them, you can only install them with Chrome based browsers. So it is still largely Googles ecosystem and they can fuck with it like they are doing with android apps.

I have had PWAs with Firefox for years, they work well.

PWA support got worse on the latest android. They removed the clear "Install" button and copied iOS, that is you have to scroll down a long list and select "Add shortcut" / "Add to home screen". IIRC they removed the "install" wording.

Had the exact same thing. Developed a small game, pushed it to iOS without much fanfare (well, other than having to pay the insanely high toll to get into the garden) and then turned to Android to do the same. Another toll gate at only a quarter the price - sure, lets pay that as well. But then we get to the point where they require images of government issued id and address verification. You can have my money, buddy, but that level of personal data for something small like a game? How about no…

Google take $25 once, Apple takes $100 every year. For hobby projects, the former is reasonable, and the latter is a dealbreaker.

I'm surprised Apple doesn't make you scan your ID since there are laws that force both Apple and Google to publish real names of developers on app store pages. And address too, if you charge money.

They do if you want to distribute your apps in the EU. And your physical address will be published as well.

Imo even the $25 is too much or at least promotes inequality. Plenty of countries with developers where $25 is a full day's wages, but for the average American software dev $25 is almost nothing.

With the changes they did recently, unless you find 12 people opting-in to google groups for your beta test and downloading a private build from a beta-tester link, keeping the app installed and engage with it for 14 conescutive days, your game is NEVER published on Play Store at all. And that is AFTER you submit government ID and paid the 25 bucks.

Only companies can now have instant publishes on the Play Store without that 12-tester limit.

the browser is the best tool we have now to fight the duopoly and its absurd rules.

Funnily, or depressingly, a lot of people here on HN are against the browser, either because "the UI doesn't look native" or because of security/privacy issues, with regular apps shipping with hundreds of MB or spyware you have no control of.

Let's push for the browser to become more feature rich, more secure and more universal. Or maybe for another OS altogether?

Apple won't allow it. They've crippled PWAs on Safari and just let the tech languish, you can't have any other web engine on IOS other than Safari's WebKit, and it takes 6 steps to install a PWA on Safari (so you just know 99% never will).

Related discussion from 3 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39388218

I wouldn't say that it's "production ready" or anything, but I've recently tried KDE Plasma Mobile on an old phone, and it's actually good - not perfect - but I think that if I were to just gove it to someone to play around with, I wouldn't get a "wtf is this weird nerd thing?" response from them

> the browser is the best tool we have now to fight the duopoly and its absurd rules.

The browser, this infamous neutral platform fighting against Google and Apple duopoly by having the two biggest browser made by... Google and Apple ?

Joke aside, the state of the web and browser is depressing right now. Sure, we get webusb and webgpu, and all new fancy spec, and are slowly turning the browser into the final portability layer of the OS. But at what cost ? All browsers are now chrome with a layer of paint. Safari only continues to exist because of iPhone, and everyone is apparently moving on from Firefox. I keep using FF because I don't want the web to become a Google monopoly, but it's getting harder and harder. Google services that I have to use for work are becoming buggier and buggier on FF, I had big SaaS with bugs making them unusable on FF too. Even a government software I have to use... Nobody seem to QA on FF anymore.

They took away our freedom of installing apps on the devices we own.

Yes, fuck it. This is beyond insane, apparently I cant distribute apps just in GitHub "releases" section anymore without Google's approval. I hope some EU antimonopoly something will fry their asses.

I've been reaching out to my MEPs over this. I would encourage other EU citizens to do the same.

>I hope some EU antimonopoly something will fry their asses. Yes they will but it takes some time, Europe got it own way to make justice: https://hugston.com/news/ban-european-account-pay-billions

I just recently reopened an account that was closed due to inactivity.

Lucky me i manage different accounts, because the new way to get help for developers is to do that through play console.

But if your account is suspended, you get always redirected to a page that tells you the account is suspended.

Looking at other ways to get to the help portal.... when you select you need help for developers, yep you're redirected.

So because i have another developer account, i could open a support ticket. I had to write the same message to the fucking bot at least three times, which was funny because the answer was more or less a rephrasing of my message, and every time it would add the rephrasing again, and again.

At the fourth time something must have happened because it was escalated, and then i had my account back.

I was actually open to making a new account, which i wrote several times, it's only that i needed to get back the app IDs because you know, the app is installed in places.

Now, it's the first of october and i have constant nagging for unregistered package names on another account: this is for apps that are suspended for bullshit reasons, which i can't reinstate because the bot is in loop mode around the same wrong rule violation (like: i can't make a basic / pro version of my app now? pro version is too simillar so it must be blocked?) and i can't register the package name because it's suspended, an i can't reinstate it because loop. I can't delete it because it's suspended, an i can't reinstate it because loop.

Fucking brillant!

Honestly, I agree!

I paid my fee - $20 or $25, I can’t quite remember - but when I couldn’t reliably enter or find my physical home address via Google Maps because of some weird street-name issues, I never got to complete the process!

You might be able to fix those "weird street-name issues" yourself in Google Maps.

Did you thing it was still the 2000's or something?

That you were still free to write code, put it out there and have people use it freely?

A decade ago, I made a joke comment to a friend that you were soon going to need a carry permit to operate a compiler.

Joke's not so funny in 2026.

A decade ago, I made a joke comment to a friend that you were soon going to need a carry permit to operate a compiler.

Richard Stallman's Right to Read (1997) made a similar observation.

So, the guy that HN loves to mock and poke fun at - Richard Stallman - was utterly correct after all.

Yes, fuck Android though I have to use an Android phone(and I don't want fucking Apple either). I pulled my hobby game from play store because they won't just let it be. Some new regulation now and then and threats to disable the app.

> I have to use an Android phone(and I don't want fucking Apple either)

There are third alternatives, too (GNU/Linux phones).

I switched to GNU/Linux on my GPD MicroPC 2 ;)

Honestly, beyond my deGoogled Android smartphone and a GNU/Linux laptop I am looking around for pocketable device between those. Mecha Comet looks like a perfect fit, but it is not released yet.

Here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem_5

Why does anyone even dev for G or A - unless you get a big pay check from either ? Every time I look into mobile dev I just go “yep, NOPE!” and go to have a shower. And it seems to just get worse and worse? Are both app stores going to be full of just unusable vibe coded crap in few years time?

Either because their vision of what they want to make needs a mobile form factor and can't be a website (possibly due to marketing causing users to reject mobile websites), or (and I suspect that this is the bigger driver) the pay from the stores (even after the ridiculous 30% cut + bureaucratic insanity) makes it worth it (possibly under the category of getting "a big pay check", but it sounds more like you mean employment).

No insightful information or experience in this comment. Just pointless opinions.

That is indeed a perfect description of your comment.

The app I am trying to publish is a PWA but needs a CORS policy bypass for which I have created a small proxy. This proxy needs to be running natively on the device.

> Why does anyone even dev for G or A

Because personal computers are a legacy platform for nerds and programmers, and smartphones are the most widely used consumer computing platform in the world. This desperately needs regulation. Unfortunately the EU is currently regulating the duopoly into law, making their phones necessary for ID verification, so we're probably completely fucked for at least a decade or two before we even have a chance, but that's still not a reason to shrug our shoulders and accept it.

I won't call it exactly legacy.. Nerds still provide an attractive market. :-)

Because at my work, clients want the general public to be able to install their apps sometimes, and my department does native apps, a different department does web stuff. If you want Joe Public to be able to install your app, you have to go through the Google or Apple stores.

However, we don't directly dev in Kotlin or Swift, we use Unity, which can export directly to an APK, or an XCode project (which has to be compiled a second time which is a nightmare). Sometimes we have to write native plugins to access device specific features (Last time I needed to was to access the FoV of the device's main camera), but it's not common, Unity has great support for most things you want to do out of the box

EDIT: I forgot, there are some situations where we supply an android or ios app to clients through our own app store, but I believe that devices have to be "enrolled", especially for ios. Generally though, Joe Public will want apps through the official stores

... just developing for Linux has always had it's own attraction: the one of being free to do what you want.

Users will go use Apple. The next round of enshittification is on. As no competition with "open" anymore.

Go and vibe-code your mobile OS. Lol.

Another person discovers the binary certificate cartel.

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