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Comment by sergiosgc | Hacker News Reader

Your position is a common response: paint the affected individual in such light that you can safely state he's different from you, and making it obvious this wouldn't possibly happen to you.

The important facts, irrespective of the correctness of app suspension are:

a) App suspension led to Google Wallet suspension. Google Wallet can be used as a payment processor, so this decision could have affected entirely independent revenue streams. It's inexcusable for Google to do this!

b) Google support is awful. This is a known fact. AdSense suspensions are probably the most common. I've been affected by one. Google does not answer. Ever. Period. (well, if you're lucky you get a canned response).

The conclusion is that an irresponsible and deaf company now holds power over huge swaths of people.

I'm uncomfortable. And so should you be.

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I can't speak for _petronius, but what makes this guy obviously different from me is:

* he thinks that an icon which links to something on the web is an "app", whereas I think that an app is something which contains a significant amount of program logic.

* he thinks that changing the configuration (like YT channel id) generates a whole new app. This is like claiming that, at your Unix command line, "grep foo" is a different app from "grep bar" because we changed the string that it looks for.

* he thinks that going from an "app" with a hard-coded YT channel to one with a user-configurable channel is a big step in development, the "real app".

* he thinks he can no longer write apps for Android, whereas it is obvious to me that you can put a .apk file up for download anywhere you want, and get paid by means other than Google Wallet.

* he cannot see what he obviously did wrong: make a spammy app that only re-frames other people's content, and infringes on trademarks, etc. In response to the first takedown, I would have pulled all copies of this app immediately.

Google only holds power over those swaths of people who surrendered some aspects of their lives to Google.

He also claims to have done $500,000 of development for the eco system for Google in the spirit of Open Source with the development he had done before being banned.

Yeah. That's a bit ridiculous. If that was $500,000 of work, I should be a billionaire.

His logic is probably: VALUE = timeSpent * overpricedBillingRate

In reality he only provided about as much value as people found in the app.

To be fair, he claimed that those he would have charged out each of those apps at 50K for custom development time. I don't know if he has the pipeline, infrastructure, etc. to actually bill out clients for Android apps at that rate, but that doesn't sound like an extremely high number to me for custom software work.

You are confusing $500K worth of "work" with $500K worth of billing. A common problem in our industry.

I don't think he could have found clients gullible enough to pay that much for what's essentially a web view in a minimal wrapper. But I suck at the marketing.

Yeah, except he himself described the first app as "simple" and the next 9 apps after the first consisted of nothing more than changing the YouTube channel id the app pointed to and changing the app's name.

$50,000 seems pretty exorbitant for a "simple" app that does nothing more than embed YouTube videos.

$50,000 for the literally 5 minutes of work involved in changing the channel ID and app name is downright comical.

There's no way to spin this as $500,000 worth of work. I don't care what his billing rates are. (And I suspect his billing rates aren't very high to begin with — he doesn't strike me as the sharpest tool in the shed.)

Actually that sort of semi-custom simple rebranding is an exceedingly common business model for boutique software shops. You find a market where the framework for your application works with minimal changes across a large variety of clients. The sales cycle then becomes the scaling bottle neck. It is sort of the other side of the coin of low touch SaaS.

You are making a common mistake on pricing something based on the amount of work it requires, not on the amount of value it provides. I can't imagine that a rebranded youtube viewer provides 50K worth of value to anyone, but it wouldn't be nearly the most outlandish work/value ratio I've seen.

50K of "billing" time for a prototype that views one youtube channel seems excessive. At $150/hr that's over 2 months of fulltime development for something a real developer could knock out in a couple days.

What was funny to me was that the author claimed, "Ah, those are just silly, throw-away apps I developed for my kids and friends." at the start of the article, and then jumped to, "I dedicated $500,000 worth of my efforts on these apps!" later on in the article. Well, that escalated way too quickly ....

Also, what is that statement that amounts to "Nobody uses Android in San Francisco"? I found it pretty ridiculous ....

> Google only holds power over those swaths of people who surrendered some aspects of their lives to Google

No. Google wallet is, as of now, an unacceptable payment processor for me. Its existence, however, precludes other competitors from entering the space. As such, even if I do not use Google services, its power still affects me.

For a reduction to the absurd, imagine Google wallet a payment processor monopolist, or a duopolist (with PayPal).

>Its existence, however, precludes other competitors from entering the space.

Amazon and Paypal are still both way bigger than Google Wallet is. I sincerely doubt that anybody looking to get into the payment processing industry is saying "crap, we can't do this because Google already does". They're worried about competing with Paypal. Hell, even Bitcoin is accepted at more places than Google Wallet is, from my own life experiences.

Do Paypal and Bitcoin work as standard payment processors for applications in the Play store? And Amazon, for non-Kindle devices?

The whole point of the walled garden is that, in order to be able to access a customer base, you have to play by the rules of the gatekeeper (and pay the toll). I'm not comfortable with a market model where the only choice is what garden you want to be in.

PayPal is accepted in the Play Store. Do some research.

Most normal users would search for apps for each channel. I don't think the guy is really trying to say that they are all totally unique codebases.

The author openly admits that this was a small, throwaway app that he wrote as an experiment, which contributed to his indifference as apps got suspended. It doesn't have to be complex to qualify as an "app".

I'm sure the author understands he can still write code for Android, but as he stated in the article, he might as well not if he expects any exposure. Alternative app stores and sideloaded APKs are used by approximately no one.

I don't think it can really be said he's liable for any kind of infringement just by using the YT API to wrap content. The issue would be in using the company name to imply endorsement of his applications, but even that could be a stretch. Should he have broken down to the old Red Hat trick and said "a prominent North American YouTube channel TV"?

While I probably wouldn't have made the same decisions this guy did, tolerance and handling of these types of uncommon miscommunications are part of the responsibility a company assumes when it decides to hook into so many parts of its users' lives. With the indispensability of something like Google, they really should be more careful before they mess up someone's life with this kind of action. Not everything can be resolved with a static, generalized FAQ.

The whole thing could've been averted if Google had taken the effort to clarify what was happening and why directly, by real communication from a human that is obviously personalized, at any point in the process.

Excellent and logical response, cookiecaper. The developer's article could have been written more succinctly, but the points he makes are completely valid and the larger issue of how Google's unintended power to credibly damage a developer's career should not be taken lightly.

> he thinks he can no longer write apps for Android, whereas it is obvious to me that you can put a .apk file up for download anywhere you want, and get paid by means other than Google Wallet.

And how many people will find and buy such an app? You do know of the standard security advice to disallow app installations outside of the Play Store as this is the main attack vector for malware on Android, for example for banking trojans? Also I would have to be extremely motivated to get this app before I go through the hassle of paying via a non Play Store payment service.

> make a spammy app that only re-frames other people's content, and infringes on trademarks

What is Youtube if not a (not so spammy) service that reframes other people's content and for a long time infringed on copyrights?

The Amazon app store is pretty popular, and you can install it on any android device.

> he thinks he can no longer write apps for Android, whereas it is obvious to me that you can put a .apk file up for download anywhere you want, and get paid by means other than Google Wallet.

He justifies this pretty well. Very few people are going to buy your app if it's an APK on a random website or even on another app store. The next biggest marketplace I can think of is Amazon's and it's still puny compared to Google Play. Without access to the main store it's not financially viable to develop for Android.

I'm not sure I was painting him as "different" from me, or even making it about him vs. me at all.

The onus is on you, the person using the service, to understand what terms and conditions you have agreed to abide by when using that service. If Google fail to uphold their end of the agreement and you lose revenue, you can seek remedy through legal means (although, obviously, that's a pretty crap position to be in); if the agreement doesn't protect you from arbitrary banishment from the service for life, then that is important to know up front.

It would be awesome if Google's support was better; it would be awesome if they were more responsive to the people that make their money through the marketplace they've set up; but ultimately they have no legal obligation to be any of those things, and in business your legal obligations are your only obligations. (I am making no qualitative defense of that fact, merely describing its existence.)

If one doesn't keep those things in mind, then regardless of how irresponsible Google is or isn't, that failure constitutes a kind of irresponsibility all its own.

Whether I personally would never fall afoul of something like this (possible, since I'm a programmer, not a lawyer) is secondary to the best way of dealing with a much larger company that holds all of the cards (follow the terms and conditions; heed the multiple warnings they give you). My personal discomfort at Google acting like jerks is, too (insofar as I don't currently rely on them for any kind of revenue).

>>but ultimately they have no legal obligation to be any of those things, and in business your legal obligations are your only obligations.

So businesses don't have any ethical obligations then? Cool.

They do, but I don't think Google is ethically obligated to let this guy post spammy apps that are closely named to companies he doesn't officially work with. I've been a professional Android developer for 2+ years and a user for longer than that. I'm 100% in support of Google banning this guy from the Google Play store.

One of the major misunderstandings about the Play Store is that there "are no rules" in comparison to Apple's App Store. That's not the case. Apple filters up front, Google deals with terms & conditions violations after you are already published.

Now, I think the negative here is that he conflated his personal accounts with his publishing accounts. I generally recommend against that, even if you are a hobbyist developer.

> They do, but I don't think Google is ethically obligated to let this guy post spammy apps that are closely named to companies he doesn't officially work with.

But Google is ethically obligated not to punish the guy by closing associated services (GWallet). It is also ethically bound to treat the customer as good-intentioned, and bound to explain the basis for suspension.

Google failed on both counts.

He hasn't even tried to reactivate the wallet account. They requested information to verify his identity, which he claims "will be used to confirm and blacklist his address", so he hasn't provided it.

Which is even more interesting, since he said he can't open a new account and move on because they'll block him by IP address... so what exactly is he going to lose by sending the verification?

I don't have a big problem with banning his dev account from the Play store. I rather dislike the fact that all of his other Google accounts (Wallet, buying things on Play, Music, etc) got banned as well. That's exactly the kind of thing that makes me wary of actually ever making an Android app in my own name.

To be a canny participant in the economy as it exists, we have to acknowledge how companies should behave doesn't always (or often) line up with how they do behave.

In business, many (if not most) participants will seek to maximize thier advantage within the rules; if you don't establish rules (via contract or something else) or understand and follow the existing ones, it's quite disingenuous to complain that you are at a disadvantage.

I don't like that fact, but (cultural sea-change aside) that's one of the costs of doing business, whether it's on a small scale or a large one.

But we can acknowledge that even as we work to change the status quo. So perhaps there is hope yet.

I agree Google support is awful, but if I'm reading this correctly, he named one of his apps "Vice TV." He sounds pretty naive if he thinks he can get away with that. I don't buy it either. I think he intentionally played dumb.

B is probably a legal issue. If they give you any additional information outside of their canned, lawyer-approved responses, you may be able to use that in a legal claim against them.

>The conclusion is that an irresponsible and deaf company now holds power over huge swaths of people.

Walled gardens and all that. We're all choosing to play in them.

The walled garden I can live with. The problem is that his actions inside the walled garden had effects outside. It's like crashing your car while drunk driving causes your insurance company to cancel your credit card (because the same company owns both your bank and your insurance company).

You're awfully willful about this whole thread. To a degree that you might be the author.

It's a matter of convenience, not necessity, to bank and insure through the same company, but this exposes you to a greater degree of risk, which only compounds with irresponsible behavior as a customer. End of story. He shouldn't have used his personal account. That's part of the reason individuals do things like set up LLCs, to shield individuals from liability in operations related to business, but maybe this guy can't be bothered to understand stupid business or legal logic behind such decisions.

This whole thing reeks of an appeal to pity and logical fallacy. His background is not especially relevant to report on the situation. His switch from Apple to Android fandom and why he made that switch are even less important. If anything, his purported history as a developer should have given him every single indication that what he was doing was subjectively wrong, according to Google. He ignored these signs and subscribed to his own styling of reality. Seems like a sensitive homebrew developer with an overinflated ego ($500k worth of time, my ass) got iced for his bad behavior. Natural selection in action.

> You're awfully willful about this whole thread. To a degree that you might be the author.

Come on! Unnecessary ad-hominem. I'm easily googleable and obviously not the author.

I won't dignify the rest of your comment with an answer.

A tongue-in-cheek observation is hardly ad-hominem. The remark was made to point out that you have a habit of cherry-picking arguments and refuse to see any reason behind opposing views in the same vein of the author, to state plainly. I don't actually care about who you are. At all.

And responding to a reasoned argument is hard to dignify when you have neither a response nor dignity.

Relevant bit from the article:

Google explicitly states that any new accounts created by you will be immediately terminated. Google tracks everything you do. They track all the IP addresses you access your accounts from. They read your mail and track your location, they read your docs, they know your credit card numbers and home and work addresses. They also know who your friends are and who you chat with and email. It’s possible, but incredibly difficult to fool their surveillance.

His Google Music account was cancelled as well. And one could imagine, easily, Google launching a platform (Google Fraud Detection) to allow 3rd parties to determine if a developer or system is suspect--which in turn could result in blackballing for everyone.

While I don't disagree that Google support is abysmal, they do respond if you know the appropriate channels.

I've gotten support for both Adwords and Adsense and can successful claim I've been unbanned from both at different periods of time. That isn't to excuse your point but wanted to put this out there that while difficult, it is possible.

I couldn't get through to Google help pages for adsense because their webforms block on my (real) surname.

Mildly frustrating.

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