I see similar-ish warnings on Amazon about "frequently returned item", but I've no idea if it is true or why. Maybe an underlying vendor for the same item is bad? Amazon (who doesn't care about bad vendors as far as I can tell) just slaps a label on it and throws up their hands.
I have to wonder if there’s some sort of strange meta where people search for one thing buy something and not realize that they’re actually looking for something else that’s difficult to search.
In a twist, I had previously attempted to order the right product from a different vendor, but I put the wrong one in the cart, and had to pay a restocking fee to return it. They sent me the right one when I ordered it properly.
Fewer installed is not it.
- They now require a DUNS number to submit an app
- You now need 10-15 people to "QA" your app before submitting
- Now this.
It just seems that Google wants the "major" apps and nothing else.
Even for non-us residents?
These things are easy to get, the idea is to at least slow down the deluge of scam apps and barely working "vibe coding" apps.
> You now need 10-15 people to "QA" your app before submitting
Again, enforcing at least a baseline of testing isn't bad.
Both Apple's and Google's stores suffer from a massive problem with low quality apps and it's honestly more than time that this gets tackled.
When you add bureaucratic hurdles to a process to try to slow down abuse, you often find that abusive users are more willing to navigate that process than legitimate ones. (We've seen this with email spam already - spammers are perfectly willing to set up DKIM and DMARC, and have stronger incentives to do it correctly than legitimate senders.)
In this case, it's not just a bureaucratic hurdle, it's adding a real external cost - app authors now have to go and deal with their government to get something DUNS accepts as a certification of entrepreneurship.
For single developers and legitimate startups, that cost is practically irrelevant and they're going to have to do it anyway to file taxes - but scammers run into the issue that they'll have to either use their own identity or have to clone someone else's which carries significantly more risk when the cops come investigating.
https://developer.apple.com/help/account/membership/D-U-N-S/
> If you’re enrolling as an individual, you don’t need a D‑U‑N‑S Number.
The big corps are NOT autonomous, they are moved around like chess pieces. They are tentacles of a bigger entity, whatever that is.
Speaking as somebody, who owns some mid-grade thermal cameras that stopped production in the past few years after a decade run, that depended on and are solely controlled and run on apps that were removed from the app store or no longer can run on modern phones because they are in 32-bit format ; this sort of thing would further punish that type of software and only speed up its demise.
When you spend thousands and thousands and thousands and of dollars and resources into getting unique capabilities like that, that can only be controlled through Android apps often, and is the only way to get that capability for some (this will apply to multiple and I imagine with niche capabilities that only have one or two methods of Access)
- this hurts a lot of opportunity, and this type of dark anti-pattern is far too blunt
All these gigafuck companies have a minimum viable user in mind: someone who has disposable income, free time, and wants to use their phone to shop for shit or endlessy scroll on whichever social they happen to like most, and that's what their products are designed to do. Everything else is ancillary.
Spoken as someone who works on a niche app for both platforms that works with hardware we make: we get NO support. Arbitrary system changes fuck up our app constantly, without notice, and we have no recourse but to fix it ASAP and tell people to not update.
If so, there's obvious financial incentive for Google to push more people to a smaller number of apps.
Google's Play Store policies have been harebrained for quite some time - previously with the 15 reviewer approach they decided to make it even harder for developers with fewer resources to distribute their apps. It's ironic that even though the iOS App Store is arguably more of a walled garden, it's so much friendlier to human beings who are trying to build a product. But at this point it seems ingrained in Google to release self-defeating features (remember the finder network that prioritized "first of its kind privacy" over being able to find things?)
Google has the numbers to know that "buyer [or in this case, downloader] beware" isn't good enough because people aren't smart enough. It sucks, but at scale it's a pattern we see over and over and over again (see also "Why does Windows force updates," "Why is Apple so paranoid about side-loading," "Why is it so hard to get an app on Apple's App Store in the first place," and "Why does Facebook log a big warning in the browser console to not paste any code in there and hit enter").
I’m not a “Googler who may be responsible”, but my understanding is that Apple does this too… and Google App Store has a reputation for being lower quality.
I assume it’s because unoriginal apps at some point are just “polluting” the market and making it harder to find higher quality products. Which is generally what users want. Some things are redundant - how many flashlight apps, weather apps, ChatGPT wrappers, etc are needed? I guess Google doesn’t see value in hosting and distributing such apps.
I’m not sure I agree with this, but I understand it. Target or Walmart don’t need to sell your random trinkets that no one buys, and Google is deciding that the same applies to their store. At least with Android you can generally side load and access alternative stores, so you can build a richer marketplace where different “stores” can serve different customers.
If an app is not even in the app store, how can it possibly attract user interest? What if users happen to like some quirky feature that seems unremarkable to app store reviewers?
App stores need better search and filtering.
I used to think this, but then I just abandoned their search and now use Kagi. (I use the !gp bang for the Play Store, no App Store bang seems to exist.)
I can't imagine ever going back to native store searches now that they're full of ads.
We need more than a search engine. We should be able to query the app store database using _all_ the properties that the app store knows.
On top of that we should be able to ask LLM style questions about the functionality of the app.
For what it's worth, the wording Apple uses in their App Review Guidelines [1] is:
> 4.3(b): Also avoid piling on to a category that is already saturated; the App Store has enough fart, burp, flashlight, fortune telling, dating, drinking games, and Kama Sutra apps, etc. already. We will reject these apps unless they provide a unique, high-quality experience.
[1]: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/
I’d much rather Apple let in junk apps but do more to promote curated lists of good apps. I like the “Editors Choice” section. I think it is generally a step in the right direction to surface decent apps.
Plus there’s also already some kind of precedent: Maps does an acceptable job promoting third-party “Guides” to attractions and food for many cities.
It doesn't help much for Apple. You can search for pretty much anything on the App Store and get at best a handful of useful results, followed by page after page of complete dreck.
Originality and quality are orthogonal.
I’ve given up on Android, but when I used it, I always checked FDroid first.
Thankfully the web has always been neutral, which has allowed all these monopolies to thrive and exploit it, otherwise who knows which proprietary app hell we would be in.
(I really want “frequently uninstalled” label for games: because games are very often 100% different than what they show or describe)
(You get an automatic refund if you pay for an app and then uninstall again quickly. I've repurchased apps that I've been refunded for in this way - I don't want to punish developers who make apps that accomplish their function quickly.)
The only purpose of our software is to control hardware that our company makes. Nobody uses it for fun, they use it because they have to. If I had a say, I'd automate even larger parts of the customer workflow.
(Yes, at first we released a mobile PWA but ran into limitations related to push notifications and MDM support. We then created the native app, but our customers cannot remotely load APKs not signed by Google).
Either way, it's nonsense that they force this, especially for those who made an app however long ago and just uploaded and forgot about, or that version was the only one they intended to make. It's crazy how much Google gets away with bullying us.
It's a pain in the ass, but to be honest, I've been asked to do worse with my time.
The main issue is that we support way too many different workflows based on customer requirements and actual hardware configuration, and even a slight change to a component often means we have to do manual UX testing.
e.g. I'm typing this on Firefox, which has a much different process for point release vs their 4-week release cycle.
This lets google beat the version numbers out of it at will.
It's time. Governments need to put an end to the app store.
No, it's in 10 different places.
I quote
----
Limited Functionality and Content
We do not allow apps that only have limited functionality and content.
Here is an example of a common violation:
Apps that are static without app-specific functionalities, for example, text only or PDF file apps
Apps with very little content and that do not provide an engaging user experience, for example, single wallpaper apps
Apps that are designed to do nothing or have no function
You forward us complaint emails and we create some AI slopscript that fulfils the least compliant interpretation of the rule it can think of.
The goal would be to use automated nonsense to try to frustrate MBAs who have managed to burrow all the way to the brain of a tech giant and are now burdening humanity with their folly.
They're already using AI slop to come up with these rules in the first place, to verify compliance, and to respond to your complaints.
It's AI slop all the way down.
And the shittier things are, the more raise they get for successfully moving the needle of utilization of AI in the business model.
Others = FAANG
You kid, but Google makes substantial security and privacy SDK / API changes from one Android version to the next (reactively in response to abuse by 3p apps) & maintains backwards compatibility for a limited time period, post which incompatible apps are not visible to latest Androids on the Play Store. This means, developers have to continually update their "targetSdkVersion", if nothing else.
https://developer.android.com/guide/app-compatibility / https://developer.android.com/google/play/requirements/targe...
Forcing apps using old sdks out of the app store is probably the main reason they do this.
[1] https://developer.android.com/google/play/requirements/targe...
Which is usually the root cause of this complaining - "why do I have to refactor my app so it won't demand access to all private photos and documents anymore?!"
In fact if I had my way, I’d never see a prompt and permissions would default to “only selected” (collections) and “no access” (location, wifi, etc), with the handful of exceptions having access granted manually.
AUaaS - App Update as a Service
Meanwhile, our console/steam/gog builds have seen an update or so at our discretion, and have just continued to run happily, and make more money.
Honestly it's hard to justify the maintenance effort to even consider porting out next games to mobile.
But really the people who are hurt are our players that already bought our game, but when the upgrade phones or OSes they no longer have an option to play unless they want to transfer their licenses to PC.
- you can only install programs from our approved package manager
- if you make any transactions through your program, we'll take a 30% cut
- you can't be access those files, you're not root
- you got root?! We're going to fucking sue you (yeah, I know about the PS3...)
- you can't change these settings
- you can't access that hardware
These companies have turned into scorpions[0]. It's myopic and they'll scream about how they're dying even though it's their own damn fault. These aren't just unavoidable things that are leading them to their deaths, but unreasonable. Foregoing larger future rewards (crossing the river) for short term ones (stinging).
It is insanity. Especially as we often try to justify it
> It sounds like game consoles :-(
>> - you got root?! We're going to fucking sue you (yeah, I know about the PS3...)
Consoles feel different because they're one-purpose machines. Sure, it's irritating if they hardcore a maximum fps or what have you, but it feels less offensive for them to be locked down.
It's kind of like the difference of Disneyland having weird, restrictive, draconian rules versus just a public park. Which is also one of two brands of public parks in your city. That you also have to use to deposit checks.
Who is "we"? I think this had always been the wet dream of corporate types, not the users. In the PC space there are too many existing ecosystems to implement that kind of control (through Microsoft certainly tried with the whole "trusted computing" stuff) but as soon as there was an opportunity for a popular new "blue ocean" platform, they jumped.
You could see this most blatancy with ARM tablets. Microsoft released two versions of Windows, one for x86, one for ARM. The x86 one allowed installation of regular programs, the ARM version was restricted to Store apps. Made no sense from a technical perspective, the only reason is that they could.
> Who is "we"?
But my point is that the strategy is illogical even when one is simply profit maximizing. You get short term gains but they prevent future games. It need not even be that far in the future. See the iterative prisoners dilemma for a simple example. Defecting will get you higher reward in one round but if there are any further iterations then your rewards are lower.
That's myopia. And I'm not satisfied with any "it's just it is" style arguments because we (inclusive) are ultimately the ones who decide how things are. It's a collective decision, a society. And that's why I press, because we can all do better. A rising tide lifts all ships, kings and peasants alike.
My opinion is anyone who owns iPhone knows what they sign up for, and does not care. So I don't get your rant.
- Do you own iPhone? Well, you've made your bed, now lie in it. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of phones on the market - if you chose one without 3rd party app store, it's on you.
- Do you own Android? You have nothing to complain about, push any apks you want anytime. Hey, get Samsung - it comes with 2nd app store preinstalled (from Samsung of course). Maybe even root the phone if you want to.
(Note the GP mentions "MDM", and that's why they could not use this route. MDM means corporate security, and they apparently made a rule to block 3rd party installs. This is sad, and I feel for them... but this is a corporate problem, regular users are not affected)
- Are you complaining on behalf of other people? They are all adults and made their own choice. If you want to make a difference, advocate against Apple. Or even better, advocate for regulations against Apple, to make their products worse so that more people move to Androids.
Nobody can quantify how much these practices stifle innovation because there are plenty of app developers and there is no comparison to how the app landscape would look if there were less barriers. Perhaps it's not a big deal but the fact is that nobody knows...
> most Androids are rootable
> So I don't get your rant.
My point has nothing to do with what you "can" do. It has everything to do with the need for such efforts in the first place.
Except that this breaks SafetyNet, which makes a bunch of applications important for my daily life (e.g. my banking app) suddenly no longer work. Sure, clever people find workarounds for this issue, but they are not supposed to work. They are treated as vulnerabilities that are actively "fixed", so it's a cat-and-mouse game that can break with any update. This means I effectively have the choice between a device I control, and a device that's useful in my daily life, I can't have both.
This is obviously a much worse situation than on desktop computers.
That's the goal for PCs too. Windows is already partway there and they keep pushing.
But I'm not willing to let that be the answer. It's a thought terminating clique
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A...
Perhaps the most problematic aspect is the way that PC apps have traditionally been granted access to any resource at any time without question, with the largest obstacle being the occasional need for an admin password or UAC prompt. It’s been a chronic point of abuse by third party developers, with some of the giants like Adobe being among the worst (using a third party uninstaller after installing Creative Cloud is like shining a backlight in a hotel room). Third party programs must be treated as somewhat adversarial in order to make sure that the user maintains control and knows exactly what the software they’re using is doing.
So yes, mobile operating systems have been abusive, but at the same time desktop operating systems have been negligent and expanding third party app carte blanche to mobile apps is not the way forward.
Also during the 8 and 16 bit days, all home computers were vertical integrated, outside external expansion ports the only way to upgrade either the software or hardware was to buy a new computer. Sounds familiar?
An improved experience required a whole new package.
The only exception was the PC clones market, that only happened, because IBM failed to prevent it, and they did try to regain control with the MCA design that naturally failed after the pandora box got opened.
Ironically with desktops now being a niche market, we are getting back to those days.
Did they instead just warn that they would unpublish the app? Google does have minimum API levels that they slowly move forward, and they will unpublish your app if you don't periodically rebuild and resubmit.
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
Why. It is not Google's software. Shouldn't that decision be left to the software author.
microsoft windows has been maintained thru to the present, but has become increasingly unusable since Win 7. so, no, false.
Similarly, modern third party windows software runs better than ever.
Of course, I run it all under Linux…
I sympathize with the general idea that software that hasn't been updated in a long time is more likely to contain bugs and incompatibilities with newest OS versions. Whenever I've opened ancient apps on my iPhone or my Mac, they generally break either partially or entirely.
In your case I understand it might genuinely not need updates. But across the Play store as a whole, it seems like a largely beneficial policy. If there really aren't any dependencies that can/should be updated, surely you can make a tiny change to a text string somewhere, and get the added benefit of making sure your whole build chain still works? I get that it's annoying, but it really is valuable to weed out the truly unmaintained apps.
I made an Android app that used React Native and it was the simplest thing ever. It had no auth, no telemetry, no persisted storage. Quite literally all it did was take text input and output it's braille equivalent and vice versa.
Had another one that made procedurally generated credits like you'd see at the end of a game. Same thing. No auth, no telemetry, etc.
I made a total of $3.97 for those apps. I did also receive a $350 settlement for some class action lawsuit Google lost about something they did to developers.
Closing my account removes me from potential future class action pools.
Google has become very aggressive, you need to keep updating the apps, to specific SDK versions, even if there are zero changes to your own application in terms of what APIs got changed.
Otherwise it gets removed from PlayStore.
Examples:
1. Rocketchat, which uses this as a sales funnel (I strongly recommend against using it for this reason)
2. Mattermost allows you to use their free notifications server but without any uptime guarantees unless you pay. I haven't used it enough to know if this is a problem in practice.
3. Nextcloud is pretty great, no limitations on using their notification server, but it would be problematic if you require a high degree of privacy and need a fully private setup
4. Dishonorable mention: Odoo who don't even provide source code or a license to build their mobile app yourself
Setting up a notifications server takes some technical work, but nothing too crazy.
But then, you need to get your private app published in the Play Store. Impossible. Brick wall for most people.
This seems like a problem across Google generally. Search seems like it has been tuned toward the mass market in almost every query, which buries high-quality content, which is by its nature rare, specialized, and less well-known.
They have also tuned the features of Search in this direction, for example replacing queries with similar but more common text strings, and applying “did you mean” redirection more often, instead of just executing the search as typed. They now do this even if you quote the search string!
Google tests and tunes its algorithm updates. If an algorithm update results in lower prominence for sites they consider popular, they tune the algorithm to “fix” it. As a friend said, the modern Google would never release an algorithm update if it doesn’t put Home Depot on the first page for “buy power saw.” Result: a generous in-kind marketing subsidy for whoever is already popular. I’m convinced this is why Fandom and Quora still hang around polluting SERPs. They’re well-known because they’re well-known, like the Kardashians.
This targeting of this warning is over-broad, preventing honest new app developers from getting traction. That’s bad for the long-term health of Android’s app ecosystem, and a competitive disadvantage against iOS. There’s probably some other team at Google who is responsible for improving the development experience for Android, who hates this new warning.
Talking about the harmful outcomes of this warning, it’s good to get the news far and wide and try to get it fixed.
Analyzing why the thing got pushed in the first place, it seems to me a symptom of the challenge of coherently managing a hundred thousand employees.
Play Store/Dev Console:
- the pettiness of and delays by their production reviewers
- won't take action on obviously spammed negative (or positive) app reviews
- allowing expired/fraudulent payment options to take advantage of trials
- not showing all possible search results for search terms which cuts off a ton of other apps from having any visibility
- among many other issues with the Play Store/Dev Console
It's beyond exhausting.
Add to it the fact that Admob:
- won't serve 98% of requests with impressions, having any way to contact them for support or get meaningful support (also have left their contact options unfixed for years which feels like it's being done on purpose)
- will put serving limits on the smallest friggin things, serving limits when they allowed a single user from a country that gets flagged for serving limits all the time was manually blocked months ago from my account after my first encounter of serving limits for the reason of ads being served to users from that country
- will put serving limits even after adding your device's ID/Add ID as a testing device
- etc etc etc
Nevermind that we don't even know if they're actually serving ads or not in our apps and just pocketing what they don't report to us.
Google Ads:
- Block ads all the time for any reason. In my case, my app is purely a crypto market charting and analytics application (yeah I know crypto markets/charts are looked down upon here, but whatever I and others use it. It's not a gambling or trading app, just analytics. please save your hate for NFTs) and it doesn't allow transactions, trading or anything of the sort. Just data. But because "crypto" is in the name of my app, I can't use my app's name in ad copy, nor the word "crypto", etc. And the support team refuses to understand this or make an exception. Because of this policy I can't even show ads in certain countries or languages unless I find some convoluted workaround.
Everything with them has just been a non-stop uphill battle. It's soul crushing and makes you feel helpless and hopeless. They don't care about us even when we've been/are the substrate for the Play Store.
They mentioned 6 reasons for why they have an issue with the banner : each of the 6 is a valid concern and put very eloquently and clearly.
I suppose I only noticed this because I am used to speaking/writing/reading/listening mid-quality English in day-to-day life as a programmer.
It also feels a bit like how software people STILL haven't figured out how to deal with a product that has a finite development cycle. Which is to say, a piece of code that is done and doesn't need any changes. You don't have Hardware stores forcing supply companies to come out with a new version of shovel every year right? A shovel is a shovel. There are probably 8 different types for various uses and within those perhaps two or three variants. So 24 or 30 variant of 'shovel' and your done. Some software can be like that too.
The subtext though that Google is actively hurting their developers for unspecified goals which look like they are desperate to make more money but it certainly could be some other thing. It reminds me of all the wailing about people whose web pages fell in the rankings because they hadn't been "updated" but when you've got the most useful description of say the scientific method on the web, why should you need to update that? It hasn't changed. And yet the 'older' your page got, the lower and lower it ranked.
The problem is that platforms these days are in a constant state of slow rug pull. Even if you have absolutely no bugs to fix and no new features to add, you still need to keep things updated just to make it work on the most recent version of the platform (which users are going to be on because that's the only one that receives security fixes). A slightly less damning case is when the app works but doesn't integrate well with the new parts of the platform, or even just its changing look and feel. E.g. old Windows apps often work fine but don't support hi-DPI properly, meaning that they look very ugly on that 4K display.
I don't think it's a problem that can be fully solved, but the impact would be much less severe if platforms stopped churn for the sake of churn. For example, we don't need a "fresh new" UI redesign every 3 years. And when it comes to API stability, Win32 should be considered the exemplary model of that - yes, it is a lot of effort to keep things working 30 years after they first shipped, but that's the only way if we don't want to be an industry that's constantly building castles on sand.
If I uninstall it, do I still count or not?
What level of Enshittification is it if you actively penalize other apps for not enshittifying enough?
A page that presents and answer to your problem in the first sentence as soon as you open the page? Low engagement time, high bounce rate down rank. A page that buries the not actually an answer under 1500 words and 4 images? Perfect page, up rank.
Thanks Tim Sweeney for fighting to open these closed feudal systems.
Thanks to all the Tims!
1. Because it’s fucking stupid if you think about this for more than 5 seconds. You can think of edge cases where this will be problematic immediately.
2. Some PM at Google is making mid 6 figures to come up with this simp brain decision that has devastating rippling effects to the developer community and trust while also fucking over the cash cow market, that is a mobile App Store, by stifling dev incentives to develop on your platform.
Amazing. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall for that meeting
pk97•23h ago
ncr100•21h ago
Presumably (some faction inside) Google wants to warn users about scam apps. However this seems like blatant shaming and ostracization of smaller developers who did not spend $$$$$ on Marketing through Google's Ad Network.
Seems Monopolistic of Google to me.
pk97•21h ago
robertlagrant•21h ago
pk97•21h ago
If the angle here is running ads and if they are already taking a cut, why are they doing this? If the angle is security, why not test the apps and have them removed! And in either case, why keep the developer in the dark? And why is there no way for small time insignificant devs like me to know how to get rid of the banner!
csomar•20h ago
izacus•13h ago
GuinansEyebrows•20h ago
izacus•13h ago
GuinansEyebrows•13h ago
jjani•20h ago
Or (the ads faction that effectively runs the company) wants to warn users about apps that don't spend much on AdWords and Play Store ads.
gs17•19h ago
Although, I spent a while trying to find an app that did have the banner, and nothing seems to get it on my account.
register•19h ago
thayne•18h ago
zerd•14h ago
VWWHFSfQ•21h ago
"This page has fewer links to it than others, therefore it will be buried in search results"
I think most people appreciated Google's early search algos that prioritized "well-traffic'd" sites and sources over others. Obviously that was a long time ago before SEO (and Google themselves) destroyed everything. Back then there were actually still competitors in the search market so it didn't matter. Not the case now.
luckylion•19h ago
But in the end, it's network effects, only that this banner seems to enforce it manually and explicitly. The old way would've been to not show apps with few users in the top spots.
kedean•16h ago
The difference here is that the play store is the one and only way to get apps for a regular user. By putting that banner up, they're discouraging anyone from trying it even if they found out about it through other channels.
The analog in 2000 or so would be if Microsoft added a warning banner to any website you visited in Internet Explorer with a low link count.
crazygringo•15h ago
The entire point is that you can find the app through other channels -- articles, posts, social media.
They just link to the Play store, but that's how you find them. The banner shouldn't be discouraging if you've come from a post that explains it's brand-new!
p_ing•19h ago
https://chromewebstore.google.com/search/ublock
As a user who suddenly knows nothing about uBlock the ad blocker, are you going to trust an addin with 2k installs and 4.3 stars, or an addin with 30m installs and 4.7 stars?
Install base can be informative when choosing.... anything, really. In many people's minds something that is used more is better in some metric, be it performance, reliability, price, et. al.
EDIT: My numbers were way off :-)
pk97•19h ago
I am increasingly convinced they are trying to direct traffic to apps that use their Ads network under the guise of such vaguely-about-security messages.
p_ing•19h ago
If you download an App using MSFT Edge on Windows, it will warn you (MoTW). If you download an App using any browser on macOS, it will warn you (also MoTW). But if you grab apps via the App Store, there's no warning.
Is that also unfair?
While it's been many years since I did hands on end user support, or even worse, support for family friends back in the 9x days, people still have little clue about what they're doing without a big flashing warning sitting in front of them..., which even that sometimes does not work.
Even I'll often choose an extension for Firefox that has more installs. If I'm going to get a SAML decoder, I want the least phishy SAML decoder available.
fluidcruft•12h ago
Play Store isn't a web browser.
saghm•19h ago
p_ing•16h ago
Those warnings in the Store aren't meant for you or I.