When Google Decides To Delete Your App
andrewpearson.org
andrewpearson.org
I have to admit, it does look pretty spammy.
From your link there are 150+ artists listed. Quite a difference. I think you're very right, this does look spammy.
I agree, more on this below (end of the page).
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
I have to agree that the "artists include" section looks ridiculously spammy.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%...
For reference, the list "one or two dozen" artists is 167 of them:
Artists include: Grateful Dead, moe., Max Creek, Phil Lesh and Friends, Umphreys McGee, Disco Biscuits, Radiators, String Cheese Incident, Blues Traveler, 311, Jack Johnson, Smashing Pumpkins, Yonder Mountain String Band, Tea Leaf Green, Railroad Earth, Furthur, Ratdog, North Mississippi Allstars, Derek Trucks Band, Perpetual Groove, Drive-By Truckers, Mr. Blotto, Donna the Buffalo, Strangefolk, Brothers Past, Hot Buttered Rum, Jerry Joseph and the Jackmormons, Keller Williams, Sound Tribe Sector 9, Little Feat, Guster, Ween, The Breakfast, New Monsoon, Cornmeal, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, JJ Grey and MOFRO, Ryan Adams, The Bridge, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Dark Star Orchestra, Steve Wynn, Ryan Montbleau, Lotus, Greensky Bluegrass, The Dead, Zero, The Brew, Club d'Elf, Local H, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Of A Revolution, Jerry Joseph (solo & side projects), Infamous Stringdusters, Matisyahu, Camper Van Beethoven, Pat McGee Band, Garaj Mahal, Raq, Benevento/Russo, My Morning Jacket, Michael Franti and Spearhead, Cowboy Junkies, Animal Liberation Orchestra, Assembly of Dust, God Street Wine, Soulive, Dopapod, Steve Kimock Band, Moonalice, Mike Mizwinski, The Gourds, Steve Kimock, Charlie Hunter, Larry Keel, Acoustic Syndicate, Robert Randolph [and the Family Band], Dumpstaphunk, The New Deal, Toubab Krewe, Nate Wilson Group, Del McCoury Band, David Nelson Band, John Butler Trio, Karl Denson's Tiny Universe, The Codetalkers, Matt Nathanson, New Mastersounds, JGB, Lazlo Hollyfeld, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, Mickey Hart Band, Zach Deputy, Mysterytrain, Spin Doctors, The McLovins, Band of Heathens, Particle, Rusted Root, John Mayer, Low, The Heavy Pets, Mogwai, David Gray, Robert Hunter, Sam Bush, Mountain Goats, Big Head Todd and the Monsters, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, G. Love and Special Sauce, Glen Phillips, Kung Fu, Trampled by Turtles, Dirty Dozen Brass Band, The Motet, Lettuce, Gomez Warren Zevon, Big Daddy Love, Bushwalla, Emmitt Nershi Band, Garcia Birthday Band, Marco Benevento, Rubblebucket, Carbon Leaf, Elliott Smith, Virginia Coalition, indobox, Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad, Explosions in the Sky, Papadosio, Tim Reynolds, Bob Weir, Future Rock, Moon Taxi, Toad The Wet Sprocket, EOTO, Buckethead, Dubconscious, Rhythm Devils, Addison Groove Project, BoomBox, Roots Of Creation, Billy Corgan, Death Cab for Cutie, Indecision, John Brown's Body, The Pimps of Joytime, Donavon Frankenreiter Band, ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, Los Lonely Boys, Hank Williams III, DJ Logic, Zoogma, Alabama Shakes, Citizen Cope, Greyboy Allstars, Cosmic Dust Bunnies, Vertical Horizon, Telepath, The Verve Pipe, Pinback, The DJ Williams Projekt, Blind Melon, Gin Blossoms, Fugazi, 2 Skinnee Js, Tenacious D and many more.
Google and Apple not only are the owners of the app stores, but also are publishers of applications onto those same stores.. giving a pretty bad conflict of interests .. that may be a bad news for people innovating in areas were you will have to compete with them..
Imagine if this was happening in the nineties, what Microsoft would have done with Netscape back then, with all this power, to let or not let the users of windows to choose what they want to install or not?
Im pretty sure the "app censorship switch" will get used here and there.. and this policy is just a example of a hole they could use for this reason
If an Umphrey's McGee fan (I've seen them ~10 times; a close friend has seen them >170x) were interested in an app to play music on their phone, and could only search using vague terms, like "free music", the results will be mainstream and commercially motivated; not a good match for their actual desire, of listening to that one show they went to, back in '05.
If he says 1 or 2 dozen, I hear at least 13, and probably close to 24. Listing 20 popular artist names in your music app's description specifically to increase the chances of people seeing your app when doing a search for one of those artist names does sound like excessive keyword usage to me. I could see naming around three just to point out that music from well known artists is available as well as indies.
I do still sympathize somewhat because the Play Store process is horrible, and at the very least, it seems reasonable he should be informed, "Hey, you are spamming artist names, cut it down to five or less please" then get his app reinstated rather than the vague "you done bad now you shall PAY".
EDIT: I saw the cache copy of the description made by another commenter. Now I am MUCH less sympathetic. Maybe he meant 1 or 2 gross instead of dozen? There are 167 artist names crammed in at the bottom. I doubt many people would feel that is reasonable.
Cached copy of the app: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:w8V67uz...
The appeal says "We don't profit from it, and thus have no incentive to spam." So change the description!
"Don't put all your eggs in 1 basket and build a SEO-based startup. 1 algorithm change can flunk your business"
"Don't build your platform on the Apple Store or Play Store. Google can decide to take away your app anytime"
"Don't base your business on Adsense. They can ban your account anytime"
..what's left?
Build something good, rely on solid marketing (if you must), handle the business yourself.
Artists include: Grateful Dead, moe., Max Creek, Phil Lesh and Friends, Umphreys McGee, Disco Biscuits, Radiators, String Cheese Incident, Blues Traveler, 311, Jack Johnson, Smashing Pumpkins, Yonder Mountain String Band, Tea Leaf Green, Railroad Earth, Furthur, Ratdog, North Mississippi Allstars, Derek Trucks Band, Perpetual Groove, Drive-By Truckers, Mr. Blotto, Donna the Buffalo, Strangefolk, Brothers Past, Hot Buttered Rum, Jerry Joseph and the Jackmormons, Keller Williams, Sound Tribe Sector 9, Little Feat, Guster, Ween, The Breakfast, New Monsoon, Cornmeal, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, JJ Grey and MOFRO, Ryan Adams, The Bridge, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Dark Star Orchestra, Steve Wynn, Ryan Montbleau, Lotus, Greensky Bluegrass, The Dead, Zero, The Brew, Club d’Elf, Local H, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Of A Revolution, Jerry Joseph (solo & side projects), Infamous Stringdusters, Matisyahu, Camper Van Beethoven, Pat McGee Band, Garaj Mahal, Raq, Benevento/Russo, My Morning Jacket, Michael Franti and Spearhead, Cowboy Junkies, Animal Liberation Orchestra, Assembly of Dust, God Street Wine, Soulive, Dopapod, Steve Kimock Band, Moonalice, Mike Mizwinski, The Gourds, Steve Kimock, Charlie Hunter, Larry Keel, Acoustic Syndicate, Robert Randolph [and the Family Band], Dumpstaphunk, The New Deal, Toubab Krewe, Nate Wilson Group, Del McCoury Band, David Nelson Band, John Butler Trio, Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe, The Codetalkers, Matt Nathanson, New Mastersounds, JGB, Lazlo Hollyfeld, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, Mickey Hart Band, Zach Deputy, Mysterytrain, Spin Doctors, The McLovins, Band of Heathens, Particle, Rusted Root, John Mayer, Low, The Heavy Pets, Mogwai, David Gray, Robert Hunter, Sam Bush, Mountain Goats, Big Head Todd and the Monsters, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, G. Love and Special Sauce, Glen Phillips, Kung Fu, Trampled by Turtles, Dirty Dozen Brass Band, The Motet, Lettuce, Gomez Warren Zevon, Big Daddy Love, Bushwalla, Emmitt Nershi Band, Garcia Birthday Band, Marco Benevento, Rubblebucket, Carbon Leaf, Elliott Smith, Virginia Coalition, indobox, Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad, Explosions in the Sky, Papadosio, Tim Reynolds, Bob Weir, Future Rock, Moon Taxi, Toad The Wet Sprocket, EOTO, Buckethead, Dubconscious, Rhythm Devils, Addison Groove Project, BoomBox, Roots Of Creation, Billy Corgan, Death Cab for Cutie, Indecision, John Brown’s Body, The Pimps of Joytime, Donavon Frankenreiter Band, …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, Los Lonely Boys, Hank Williams III, DJ Logic, Zoogma, Alabama Shakes, Citizen Cope, Greyboy Allstars, Cosmic Dust Bunnies, Vertical Horizon, Telepath, The Verve Pipe, Pinback, The DJ Williams Projekt, Blind Melon, Gin Blossoms, Fugazi, 2 Skinnee Js, Tenacious D and many more.
To me, "spammy" would be listing unrelated or marginally related things, to show up in edge-case searches. Perhaps "DJ, party, entertainment" etc. would be spammy. Listing your contents? I respectfully disagree.
However, this did happen before the Dev Center design change and I WAS able to go in and modify my game's description and that's how I noticed what the problem must have been. I think they should at least allow read-only access to the app's info so you can legitimately investigate.
I didn't include this info above, because what happened and what I did may not both be agreed with by all.
I think the big difference between how this situation was handled and how I handled it is that in this situation the author seemed to argue that what he did was acceptable. They already said they don't think it was.
I wouldn't assume that they would come back with more info about the violation, and I doubt they would change their interpretation of the violation.
I believe that when I wrote in, I explained what I thought the problem might be related to (and a few other possibilities) and agreed to change it to be compliant. It may not be what's best for my app, but it's kind-of a David and Goliath situation, so I decided to do what they wanted so my game could stay in the store.
I pretty much agree with the approach. I don't want to think other developers are getting special treatment, so I shouldn't either, so they are going to to be strict with, and stick by their rules.
In the late 90s Google dominated its competition largely because they were susceptible to keyword stuffing. In the following decade they allegedly heaped on layer after layer of algorithms to determine the best rankings beyond simple page rank.
Today, they use nothing more than simple keyword scoring to power their Google Play search.
This algorithm is so simplistic anyone over a certain threshold must be completely purged from the store, even if the app is highly rated by many users. No other alternative means exist.
Is Google's search algorithm really as complex as they've been telling us it is?
http://www.androidpit.com/en/android/market/apps/app/com.cod...
The best part is, my app was not even live!!
It was in draft mode. My description and screenshot were not final, and were semi-complete placeholders. Before publishing the app I would have obviously made sure it complied with everything.
Google found issue with that and took down my app. Now I've been running around trying to get a hold of someone to look into this.
Now we have investors to answer to as well as other people who are annoyed at us for delaying the launch at the last second.
Banned for life: The hidden danger when developing for Android.
This is somebody who published a whole bunch of apps named after other content creators, who subsequently ignored Google's warnings that his account would be terminated, and who seems surprised when his account was terminated.
There's a genuinely important discussion about the "walled-garden" style of software distribution and the ramifications that this can have on developer freedom, but I'm not convinced this fellow is a good example to run with.
But the thing is, I'm unsure what to do. Those massive infrastructures bring software to the masses for free or little and bring huge opportunities for developers. It's hard to imagine someone forcing Google and Apple to give developers some sort of 'due process' within their ecosystem. Who would force them and why? And 'due process' exists outside the ecosystem, but you signed the EULA, remember?
Anti-trust would say: alternatives exist. They're small, but they exist. I really don't know which approach would guarantee user rights better. But my feeling is that this trend is bad for choice in the long run.
>"...Vibe Vault’s store listing did not 'not use irrelevant, misleading, or excessive keywords in apps descriptions, titles, or metadata.'..."
With a double negative implying that it did break the policy. Hope he doesn't write legalese every day as well.
And frankly, users buy Android for the Apps, so what good is the platform being open if the store is not?
> I suppose now that Android is a lot more popular than it was when we started developing Vibe Vault, it is no longer a priority for Google to treat the Android community with a modicum of care or respect.
Oh, there was a time when Google did treat the Android community with a modicum of care and respect? There was a time when they gave you detailed reasons why they pulled your app, and would actually give serious consideration to your arguments for reinstating it? When was that, exactly?
For example consider this app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.eterno
And give me one good reason why it is not yet banned.
For Adsense look at this : http://khabar.ndtv.com/ (This is a site in Hindi and Adsense does not support Hindi)
That is really unfortunate and not sure if there is much you can do about it now. I do wonder if they secretly discriminate against ad free and free software for lack of money?
I had one of my application taken down on a bogus DMCA takedown but do to having no money/time to fight it i just moved on.
If the proceeded with legal action and it was bogus they then have pretty clearly crossed the boundaries required for the criminal element of bogus DMCA complaints.
I agree it's a frustrating and sub optimal situation.
(Obviously I am not a lawyer).
App Stores with a specific profile are absolutely fine IF competing App Stores exist and operate on a level playing field on that platform.
/s