Banned for Life

https://medium.com/@sgehrman/banned-for-life-c62f2404f66

by lubomir • 12 years ago

316 285 12 years ago

_petronius3• 12 years ago

The author used other people's content, packaged them into an app, and then repeatedly submitted the same app (with one minor modification -- the use of someone else's content) to the Play store. 'Beta' apps or apps that you write for close friends/family can be distributed via other means than the main app market.

This article admits that he ignored all of the warnings he was given, and now accuses Google of unfair business practice. I don't buy it.

There's a lot of logical contortion going on to dump the blame for this back on Google. "The suspension email stated that I was trying to impersonate another company" is followed quickly by "Well since Google was silent about the exact reason for suspension..."; he even admits to intentionally ignoring the warnings he was given because "if I thought a human at Google was giving me the warning, I might have listened more carefully."

That is, at best, negligently poor reasoning. At worst, it's a contemptuous disrespect for the other party you're engaging in business with, which is pretty good grounds for them exercising their option to terminate that business relationship.

Google, Amazon, etc., are for-profit commercial service providers. If you're going to violate their policies, they will stop working with you, regardless of the impact on your business. Anyone who depends on a third party supplier for anything, in any business context, should keep that in mind -- they have no duty to you beyond whatever contract you have signed (if, of course, you have signed one).

Keyframe2• 12 years ago

Judging by the names of the apps/wrappers (if they were same in the store) from here http://distantfutu.re/page/portfolio.html he is lucky to not get sued at the same time as well. He's even argumentative about trademark infringement in his post. I don't think he fully understands what he really did wrong.

rrrx3• 12 years ago

Agreed - the whole thing reads like a giant whine, to me. The author has zero concept of what he's done wrong, which is astounding to me.

Renaud2• 12 years ago

On top of that, you can only use a .re TLD if you are a EU citizen or a company that resides in the EU...

http://www.afnic.fr/en/products-and-services/the-re-tld/

icebraining8• 12 years ago

Here's a copy of the app information, copied by some app discovering site: http://www.myappwiz.com/home/getapp?platform=Android&appID=c...

naiv• 12 years ago

Copyright and trademarks don't seem to be his strength, I doubt that he licensed the pictures on http://distantfutu.re/page/team.html .. But because he grew up "in the 70s/80s", these are public domain to him.

jamesbrownuhh• 12 years ago

Releasing an application called "Top Gear TV" is remarkably naive on its own (it's one of the BBC's biggest worldwide commercial franchises) - doing it with 10 other major properties just turned something that was only a matter of time, into an absolute inevitability.

Loque• 12 years ago

From that website; http://distantfutu.re/page/team.html

Two Founders, Two PR people and One Engineer....

Good structure :¬P

Anderkent2• 12 years ago

I don't think he fully understands what he really did wrong.

Well, yeah, that's the point of the article. That google never made it clear what he did wrong, so that he could fix it.

wolfgke5• 12 years ago

I don't think he fully understands what he really did wrong.

Google not making it entirely clear in their hellbanning email what he did wrong makes the hellbanning double unfair in my opinion.

Chinpokoman• 12 years ago

And to be honest I don't know why he's scared to make a new google account. Yeah sure they track your IP address and whatnot but they certainly wont do anything about it. They wont ban an entire household, that's just bullshit.

I don't know why he thought getting suspended wasn't a big deal because he was "innocent". That's also a fairly stupid idea as well.

g0510512• 12 years ago

In addition to carefully making Google's case for them, he then descended into paranoia about Google's tracking. For someone supposedly so experienced in software development, he has some weird ideas about what's right and what's wrong.

danielweber4• 12 years ago

If you are trying to monetize, you have likely given Google your real name and address and bank account information, and would need to do the same thing for your new account. Submitting fraudulent information in order to get money could cross you into serious trouble with the IRS or the law.

rgbrenner• 12 years ago

Wait.. so Google's terms state that any new accounts will be terminated.. but you're saying he should just go ahead and violate that term of Google's policies as well?

And assuming that Google won't carry out the threat is a poor way to run a business.. at any time, Google may decide any earnings he's made will be forfeited.

therobot242• 12 years ago

"I thought I was doing these guys a favor. The apps I wrote would have cost about $50,000 each if I had charged for my time. I basically donated $500,000 to the Android community. That’s how I saw things."

This is where i stopped reading - the author is a bit delusional.

bicx• 12 years ago

Yeah, he clearly wasn't thinking straight on that one. Even if the time he spent on the first app was worth $50k, he said earlier that he created the other apps just by changing the YouTube channel on the first app and repackaging. Definitely not $500k of work by any stretch.

mattstocum5• 12 years ago

"The app was simple. Launch it and it display the videos for a single YouTube channel. I made the app, and it was really nice and a pleasure to use."

I'm assuming his hourly rate is $50,000/hr. Did he do anything other than wrap the web page for the channel in a web view? I'm not familiar with Android, but on iOS, you can accomplish this without writing a single line of code, everything could be done inside Interface Builder. I can't imagine it's any more difficult on Android.

lyndonh• 12 years ago

I very nearly stopped at this point:

"All Apple products are banned in my household to make a statement about programmer freedom."

Sorry kids, to increase freedom I'm taking away your iPhones and you have to use Samsung.

There must be a Franklin quote there, somewhere ?

mturmon• 12 years ago

Yes, this is a bad post.

It gets close to an interesting question (using multiple Google services can result in a domino effect if you violate the TOS of one).

But it raises so many peripheral points, and is so full of whiny after-the-fact juvenile justifications like the one you noticed, that it's impossible to filter out the interesting part.

ascendantlogic• 12 years ago

The only thing I side with him on is this:

If you ask why, you should be told exactly what is wrong. Or better yet, be told exactly what is wrong right away. Obviously packaging other people's content is the issue here, but you should be told exactly what rules are being broken so there's no ambiguity.

Fuxy4• 12 years ago

I find it amazing that everyone here seems to be a lawyer or extremely well versed in the rules while agreeing with them.

What's wrong with packaging other people's content as long as you're not profiting from it?

If the content owner wants it removed there should be a way to request that while not negatively affecting the developers account.

Plus the whole 3 strikes rule seems a bit too strict for me especially if it's going to be enforced so heavy handedly for what is obviously a minor issue that could have been resolved by a email conversation.

Not to mention other Google accounts like Google Wallet and Google Music getting banned for something like this.

What does one have to do with the other? Do you mean to tell me if i get banned in the Play store all Google account on all services get banned including my Google drive, Google docs, gmail etc

Doesn't that seem a bit absurd to anyone?

How would you like your entire music library deleted because your developer account got banned?

einrealist• 12 years ago

Google does not do that, because it could bite them if they do and if this goes to court.

mempko• 12 years ago

What this shows is how anti-user closed app eco-systems are. Some users probably found his app very useful but can't use it because lawyers.

icebraining8• 12 years ago

You'd have the same problem if you were on the open web and the company sent a DMCA takedown request to your hosting company.

pogue• 12 years ago

I think its fair to ask why you can't get human intervention on these kinds of problems and for Google to _at least_ consider what happened was an honest mistake and not something intentionally attempting to damage other peoples trademark (or whatever).

That's another trouble with so many of these mega companies now that don't seem to have any kind of instance of customer or end user support at all. It's easy to code auto response systems, and bots that track down spam and malicious software, but to get an actual person to review what is being done is nearly impossible.

Pxtl• 12 years ago

As a user, I tend to disagree. Finding the store full of knock-offs that just are a skin over a YouTube channel is frustrating when looking for actual content and not a simple YouTube skin. He's not the first guy to make this YouTube-wrapper app, there are a lot of them. Too many.

hawleyal4• 12 years ago

Completely disagree. People at Google acted in a ridiculous manner. This is atrocious.

norswap• 12 years ago

"It's all your fault any way." Very mature, man.

sergiosgc5• 12 years ago

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.

byuu• 12 years ago

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.

kazinator• 12 years ago

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.

_petronius3• 12 years ago

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).

moogleii• 12 years ago

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.

imsofuture• 12 years ago

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.

angersock• 12 years ago

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.

hashtag• 12 years ago

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.

spinlock• 12 years ago

That's just bad business. It's like the MPAA and RIAA suing their customers. In the short run you can bully a few independent people but, in the long run, you are eroding your user base -- or developer base in this case.

I consider the apps in question fair use. Now, I've never read google's TOS but, then again, neither has anyone else. You'll notice that the op was working with the system to try to understand its rules. That's the quintessence of what a hacker does. It seems to me that google is making themselves vulnerable to an open app store. One where you can experiment and collect user feedback before committing resources to a project.

poopsintub• 12 years ago

Youtube provides videos that users specifically label as a creative commons license, and are available for commercial use. He may have not been in the wrong, though it's pretty doubtful considering his questionable judgement on everything else.

mangecoeur• 12 years ago

You're missing the nub of the issue - sure the guy made mistakes and ignored warnings. But the fact remains that he was banned by an impersonal, automated system with no chance of appeal, and as such is now effectively locked out of the entire android app ecosystem for ever - an therefore an entire possible line of business. Note there's also no possibility for him to mend his ways and be re-instated.

Imagine if the same applied to people who run physical businesses - some shop owner skips some paperwork thinking it'll be harmless, gets caught, gets a fine... and then is banned from ever owning a shop ever again for the rest of his life, no appeal.

This is our brave new cloud-oriented future - where all the power to regulate what content is available to millions of users lies in the hands of a couple of private companies. I find the whole thing very worrying, and am very glad that the FirefoxOS and Ubuntu phone projects are moving forward to provide some kind of alternative.

on_and_off• 12 years ago

I tried one of his apks : The Verge TV. It installs an app of the same name. The First Screen is the logo of the website on 2/3 of the screen and a description of the website. In a corner there is a disclaimer button, clicking on it leads me to a disclaimer explaining that 'The Verge TV is not affiliated with The Verge'.

I find it hard to believe that he did not realize that an app copying the names & graphics of popular websites would get him banned for impersonation. Chances are that some of these websites reported him to Google.

baldfat2• 12 years ago

March 25th post that was on Hacker News at least twice already. This is the only article on his blog.

Here is hi github page: https://github.com/sgehrman He is still developing. I am wondering what the updated status is on this? Seems that if he is still developing he isn't banned for life?

There already were some petition at https://www.change.org/petitions/sergey-brin-respect-the-eff...

Cthulhu_4• 12 years ago

So that petition is accusing one dude in Google of disrespecting 'small and indie android developers' when they're blatantly violating trademark law? Lols.

fuzzywalrus• 12 years ago

Never underestimate the pariah complex...

While it'd be nice for Google to explain why he was banned, it already sounds like he understands why he was banned but he had a chance to grand-stand so he's on his soapbox.

JamesMcMinn2• 12 years ago

The author used others people's content and spammed with play store with official sounding apps, then ignored warnings to stop. Got caught and punished for it, now Google won't let him do it again.

Honestly, it just sounds like Google were doing the right thing and protecting it's users from low quality spam apps.

izacus• 12 years ago

So banning him from using Google Wallet to BUY anything ever again is a proportional response? O.o

fnordfnordfnord• 12 years ago

The lack of feedback would be annoying.

ben0x5392• 12 years ago

Ignored warnings to stop? It sounds like the author did one thing (uploading ten apps) and then got three "strikes" and a full suspension without doing anything else.

true_religion4• 12 years ago

That's like saying a mass murder just killed 10 people in a single go so it should be 'just one thing' in court. Each individual act is a separate 'crime'.

hawleyal4• 12 years ago

Banning his developer account is one thing. Cancelling his other Google accounts is complete bullshit.

cookiecaper5• 12 years ago

The author didn't use other people's content. He simply used the YouTube APIs for exactly what they're there for -- remixing the YouTube experience to match a specific use case YouTube has not yet accommodated. What else are APIs supposed to be used for?

The original uploader of that content still retained all control over the content. If the original uploader didn't like his content being reskinned, he shouldn't upload it on a provider that gives users that ability through an API.

The potential problem is in the implication that the mark's owner endorsed the application. The post claims that the the author made significant effort to indicate he was unofficial. It's arguable whether this continued to constitute infringement, and for that reason I think the guy should've at least been given a polite human touch and a direct, non-automated opportunity to correct the specific issue, which was never directly elucidated ("Impersonating how? I'm just using the YouTube APIs that Google published for me to use...").

I'm not saying that the author has great judgment. I'm just saying that Google's actions aren't really proportional, that the author's actions are not at all as illegal as everyone is saying, and that Google should recognize that they have a social responsibility to at least follow-up on things like this with a human to clear up any potential miscommunication. An expectation of care in account deletion is one of the side effects of knowing and doing everything about and for everyone. It's a big deal to lose big chunks of your Google account.

JamesMcMinn2• 12 years ago

So using YouTube's API to use other people's content isn't using other people's content? I don't follow the logic there.

Yes, he was not banned simply because he used other people's content. He was banned because he was using other people's content to create low quality apps which (even if unintentionally) imitated official applications. Taking someone else's content and serving it up in a way that looks like it's official is just asking to be banned, especially when the thing you're imitating is YouTube and the app is on the Play store.

If someone is, for all intents and purposes, spamming your app store with imitation apps, why should you waste time giving them a "polite human touch"? If this had been a Chinese company rather than someone with a sob story would you still expect Google to offer a polite human touch?

oskarth• 12 years ago

Did OP do something wrong? Yes, definitely. Is being banned from all other Google-related activities forever without recourse proportional? No. The response - being the sum of all its direct consequences - is tyrannical, and worse, automatic and faceless. Unless you enjoy being A Perfectly Obedient Citizen (TM), the only real lesson here is to not put all your eggs in one basket. Use Google, use Apple, but beware of letting them have full control of important parts of your life.

girvo• 12 years ago

I use their devices... but my data I own, at least as much as possible. I don't know what I did before ownCloud...

M4v3R• 12 years ago

I continued to be an Apple fan until they announced the “walled garden” and the app review process for iOS. I am totally against having to get permission from a corporation to write and sell apps (...). All Apple products are banned in my household to make a statement about programmer freedom.
Now my Google play account and Google Wallet account are both banned for life. I’m no longer able to write Android apps ever again, and my family and I can’t even use Google wallet to purchase from Google Play.

So much for programmer freedom. Apple is at least very explicit about its rules. Google seemingly lets you do whatever you want, but then bans you if you do something that they don't like. Now of course one can say that the ban is justified, as author clearly misused the Play store and didn't follow the guidelines.

If he did try to do that on the App Store his apps would be probably instantly rejected, but he would not be banned. The funny thing is that there's a big chance that he would then write a blog post about how App Store is a "walled garden" and that on Play store that would be OK.

icebraining8• 12 years ago

The rule is explicit: it's called trademark law. You can't just copy the name and logo of another company, append " TV" and distribute it publicly.

This is an official app of The Verge: http://www.myappwiz.com/home/getapp?platform=Ios&appID=54251...

This is OP's unofficial app: http://www.myappwiz.com/home/getapp?platform=Android&appID=c...

It's pretty clear that this is prone to cause confusion, even with the disclaimer.

wolfgke5• 12 years ago

Quotes from the article:

"I emailed Google back and asked them to tell me exactly what I need to change to be compliant with the rules. Is it the icon? The name? The disclaimer? What? Google refused to give me any additional information. So, I just left the app in the suspended state and never attempted to update it since I really didn’t know what I needed to change"

"Why didn’t you give the apps a different name?

Well since Google was silent about the exact reason for suspension, I didn’t know what I needed to do. Was it the app name? Probably, but I didn’t know for sure."

If Google does not inform you in detail that it was the trademark that was violated, they have no right to ban you on that reason.

rquirk• 12 years ago

The only thing that seems odd here is that Google appear to be proactively defending other companies' trademarks. Shouldn't the Khan Academy or Vice have been the ones to send the takedown notices? Or perhaps they did behind the scenes and this manifested itself in the app bans.

vacri• 12 years ago

I’m no longer able to write Android apps ever again

Well, this isn't true. You don't have to use Google Play to distribute your app - unlike with Apple, where you do have to use their store (unless you like personally managing users' ids)

lmm• 12 years ago

Apple is far from explicit about the rules. It's entirely possible to submit the same app (or almost-identical apps) twice and have one rejected and one approved. And they're no clearer about the reasons why something was rejected than Google is.

arsalanb• 12 years ago

After just skimming through the post, I have a question for OP. Why did you create 10 different apps? Why not just one app, that gave the user the ability to enter a channel name and check out all their videos? I think that's better, both in terms of not spamming — for the lack of a better work — the Play Store, as well as UX.

I'm afraid the actions taken by Google in this case can be justified, since publishing 10 apps a day is a dubious figure. However, I'll give it to you, they could've made the regulations regarding this a little more explicit and visible.

icebraining8• 12 years ago

Why not just one app, that gave the user the ability to enter a channel name and check out all their videos?

According to the article, that's what he was working on after releasing the 10 apps.

However, I'll give it to you, they could've made the regulations regarding this a little more explicit and visible.

It's called trademark law. It's very explicit that you can't copy the logo and name of another company.

ripb• 12 years ago

1 app, 2 apps, 10 apps? Did it matter either way? I could have posted 50 apps if I wanted
So I was using the app store as my beta testing platform.
I was planning on taking all these apps down in a few weeks anyway.
I thought I could get maybe 20-30 apps suspended without repercussions
In this age of Google, it’s now “obey or face an instant lifetime ban.” This is progress? What does the future hold if we are forced to strictly obey and understand every legal gotcha in Google’s terms of service? I believe in freedom, not blind obedience. I made some mistakes and would have removed all my apps if I had known the true consequences.

He spammed the Google Play store with multiple unfinished versions of the same applications for "beta testing", received warnings which he chose to ignore and then got banned for his gross abuse of the service.

Instead of "I messed up, here's a warning to others" it's a case of "why don't Google let me mess around with their service as much as I like? This is oppression, this is America goddamnit, where's muh freedom?!?"

Zero sympathy. Well done to Google on taking down one of the many people spamming the Play store with junk.

bengillies• 12 years ago

Getting banned from publishing apps to the Play Store is reasonable and proportional. Getting banned from all Google services whether related or not seems a bit much imho.

w0utert• 12 years ago

Zero sympathy. Well done to Google on taking down one of the many people spamming the Play store with junk.

Yes, also, I find it highly amusing how his long-winded whine about 'programmer freedom' makes me appreciate the walled-garden approach of iOS just a tiny bit more. Sure, it's not perfect, and it's not 'freedom', but at the very least it does make it very explicit to 'developers' like the author that they should take their spammy app tactics (and free-riding on someone else's content, using a free service and its users as your beta testing platform) somewhere else.

Funny thing is I'm pretty sure he would get banned from the Windows Phone store pretty quickly as well (and rightly so)

jpwagner2• 12 years ago

Sure Google is a private company. Sure this means they have no formal responsibility to this developer. Programmatically, he seems to deserve to be sanctioned: he violated their policies for several weeks with several different apps.

I emailed Google back and asked them to tell me exactly what I need to change to be compliant with the rules. Is it the icon? The name? The disclaimer? What? Google refused to give me any additional information.

But if his story is true, he makes good faith efforts to be compliant. What, if any, is the social responsibility a company has that owns half the market of mobile development platforms to people that could potentially make a living using their platform? Monopolies/duopolies throw a wrench in the invisible hand, and I'm not sure there's a clear answer.

kunai• 12 years ago

Even if his story is true there's a lot of fallacious arguments and lack of reasoning in his claims. It's the type of "I-can-do-anything" mentality that was his pitfall.

Just because he might think that using somebody else's trademark to create a revenue stream for yourself is doing them a favor, doesn't mean anybody else has to. I don't have pity for his point-of-view, but I do think that it was unnecessary and irrelevant to suspend his Google Wallet account.

Still, it doesn't matter what I think: Google reserves the right to do whatever they want.

krschultz4• 12 years ago

A good faith effort would be reading the terms & conditions. He obviously didn't, because they are quite clear about not being able to put other companies' names in your app name.

If the article was about someone that had this happen, and they read the conditions and didn't see anything that they had violated, and then asked Google - that would be a different story. This guy just can't be bothered to put the effort in himself.

msandford4• 12 years ago

Yeah because I'm sure the T&C is only a page or two long, not like say 50k words.

https://play.google.com/intl/en_us/about/play-terms.html

The idea that you should have to scrutinize that entire document to determine what you did wrong is crazy.

Ostensibly someone on the Google side of things determined what he did that was not OK right? I mean they don't just ban people for the hell of it right? He had to do something SPECIFICALLY wrong, and that might correspond to some portion of the T&C. Is it so unreasonable to ask WHAT section you're violating?

I get that everyone on HN thinks the guy is a douche and deserves what he got. But to refuse to even say what? That's douchey too.

TuringTest5• 12 years ago

...and thus, the natural consequences of walled-garden markets begin to rear their ugly heads.

It was all love and rainbows while the gold rush held it promise of instant richness and fame, wasn't it?

VLM5• 12 years ago

"Google could have, and still could block my gmail"

They have a different revenue generation business model for gmail.

My son's account was blocked, couldn't figure out why, and they wouldn't say. I suspect some kind of data mining thing where watching more than 5000 blitzwinger videos on youtube "proves" you're a kid or a teen. He does like his video games...

He falls into that gap between being old enough to have an account per google's rules, but young enough to not have his own credit card or a drivers license (they'd accept a scanned copy of his DL, but he's not 16 yet) so the only option to reinstate his account was to get Dad (me) to charge 50 cents on his CC to "prove" he's of legal age.

So part of the gmail business model is to hold kids (teens) accounts hostage with a threat of permanent deletion until Dad pays 50 cents. I'm not annoyed at the 50 cents, gmail is worth a large multiple of that. I am annoyed that at a random time long after BAU was initiated, they felt like charging us for fun.

It is possible the gmail biz model of randomly applied fees could be applied to play store / wallet accounts.

Not sure if OP would have flown off into as much of a rage for a $50 reinstatement fee, or if he'd be like me, pissed off at the "business agreement" being unilaterally rewritten at a later date. Either way, the gmail biz model does appear to be superior to the play/wallet/app store biz model, at least GOOG would get some revenue, however little.

I assume based on evidence Google dropped the "don't be evil" motto a long time ago.

smeyer• 12 years ago

Do you really think Gmail's business email is collecting arbitrary one-time fees of 50 cents on minors' accounts? Is this really any more than a rounding error compared to advertising revenue, charging for extra space, and providing email services to companies and schools? The whole $0.50 thing may be a scummy tactic, but it really doesn't seem to be their business model.

VLM5• 12 years ago

Perhaps my choice of phrase "business model" was inaccurate, but the core message stands, that in summary one part of google operates under the "any problem can be fixed with a credit card" outlook on crime and punishment, and another part of google operates under a brutal inhumane lifetime banhammer model, a capital punishment with no trial or appeal judicial model. Its an interesting inconsistency.

moron4hire2• 12 years ago

This is ludicrous. Do you have any evidence to back up any of this?

VLM5• 12 years ago

A complicated question to answer.

First of all you have a technical win because I screwed up, this was months ago, and its thirty cents not fifty cents.

On the other hand, if you won't google for "gmail locked out of account 30 cents" yielding "About 676,000 results (0.96 seconds)" although only the first hundred or so results are relevant, there's nothing I can do to help you or convince you.

me10103• 12 years ago

I know lots of people don't know how to setup an email server. But gmail, as an email account, is worth less than $10/month. And, in fact, your ISP probably includes several email accounts with your internet service. If your child needs an email account, just assign him one...

If you have Verizon, here's how... [8 extra] http://www.verizon.com/Support/Residential/Internet/HighSpee...

If you have Comcast, here's how... [5 extra] http://customer.comcast.com/help-and-support/internet/adding...

If you have Cablevision, here's how... [4 extra] http://optimum.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1673/~/c...

So, in point of fact, gmail - as a 'free' email service - is actually a huge additional COST, considering the payment in privacy. And this is why I do not use it myself...

omnibrain• 12 years ago

I advice against using your ISP's email service. What happens with your email address when you switch providers? Are you going to mail all your contacts with your new email address and update it at every service you ever registered for?

JohnBooty2• 12 years ago

This is terrible advice. Why tie yourself to your ISP like that? What if you want to switch ISPs, or need to switch ISPs?

neil_s• 12 years ago

Summary: No sympathy for the blog author, but its still terrifying how broad Google's ban-hammer can be if you run afoul of them.

puredemo• 12 years ago

idk, these are a bunch of products I barely even knew about.

I thought google wallet went away around the same time google wave did, for instance.

ZoFreX2• 12 years ago

It's the only way you can buy content (apps, music, books etc) and devices from the Play Store. If you use Android, not having a functioning Wallet is extremely limiting.

GFischer5• 12 years ago

He was definitely in the wrong (by using logos and names without permission for starters) and ignorant of basic trademark and copyright law (which many of us probably are too!), but I also worry about two things:

- Google's continued lack of communication (most everything is automated),

- and their ban-hammer (much like Paypal's, it can be terrifying for a small developer).

BTW, he added the following disclaimer to his app (not that it did much good):

"DISCLAIMER: The Verge TV App is not affiliated with The Verge. Information shown in this app is obtained through public YouTube APIs. We are fans of The Verge and we wanted a better viewing experience to watch their videos.

Any copyrighted material belongs to the original owners. If you want changes made to this app, please let us know."

I want to use (for example) photos and names of cars for an app - do I need to get permission from the brand owners?

fishnchips• 12 years ago

I wouldn't call the OP blameless but there is a lesson here: it is dangerous for a professional software developer to become too invested in one technology or platform, especially with a capricious corporate overlord behind it.

danielweber4• 12 years ago

If you ever find yourself making this argument:

I didn’t think they would mind, I thought I was doing them a favor. Pointing people to their great content. It’s free advertising

then stop. Other people don't want your "free" advertising.

mikehall314• 12 years ago

It's an unfortunately common idea that copyright violation is sometimes okay because it amounts to "free advertising" for the organisation whose content you're co-opting. I was disappointed to see that argument made here.

mimog• 12 years ago

Good. I wish all the people developing crappy and useless apps, flooding the place, would get banned. You publish 10 different apps where the only thing that changes is the youtube channel, and claim you were beta testing? I hope Apple and Microsoft ban you as well.

Iftheshoefits• 12 years ago

The most amusing thing is that the Play Store has an incredibly easy way alpha test as well as beta test versions that are distributed only to users who have signed up for testing. In fact, when you upload the apk to the store it's almost literally impossible to miss it. The one issue I have with their test mechanism is that test users have to have an account with Google(even if it's just membership to a single Google Group).

What the OP did was publish spammy garbage. Not to say Google couldn't afford to put a more human touch on their customer and developer relations, but the OP is just way out of line on this one.

Donzo• 12 years ago

He wants to know the difference between an app and the web: see Chubby Checker settlement.

tomordonez• 12 years ago

I understand that an app is content wrapped around a concept. It is common sense not to use a known name unless you are asking for trouble. I could make a news app. Do I want to name it CNN? No, unless I am authorized to use that name. It is naive to think you can use just any name, even if you meant good. You are looking for trouble. Next time call it something else. The video app. Learn by Watching...I mean you couldn't come up with another name?

VLM5• 12 years ago

The problem is he specifically tried to figure out if that was the problem and google wouldn't say. Perhaps he got the banhammer for not getting using a (TM) after the brand name in the descriptions. Perhaps he's actually in trouble for not getting permission for some of the content in the screenshots. All of that is probably a good idea. But specifically, he will never know why he got the banhammer and we will never know either.

The problem with whatever-as-a-service business model, is you're never worth more than a penny more to the provider than the cost of sales to replace you when/if you leave. So, people are throwing themselves at google to be an app dev, so I guess he's worth precisely nothing at all to GOOG.

A business relationship where one side is worthless to the other is best described as parasitism and often that doesn't turn out well for the parasite. That is the true lesson for all app developers to learn from this story. An inherent part of the biz model is you can get annihilated and the host (host as in parasite lifecycle model) will not care. Make sure you understand that, when making business decisions.

aaronem• 12 years ago

I started laughing at the bit about all Apple products being banned in his household to make a statement about freedom, and I just didn't stop.

Cthulhu_4• 12 years ago

Anyone using my simplistic beta quality app would know instantly that this is not “official”

A silly assumption that both generalizes the audience and is ignorant of copyright laws, imo. Not a valid argument in a court situation either. I could make the crappiest Geocities site out there, but as soon as I put a Google logo somewhere, people may assume it is an official Google site or affiliated with it.

One of my apps contained the channel id for Vice.com. Since the length of the app name is so limited I decided on “Vice TV”

Yup, there you go. Using a brand name, showing a brand's video - intent isn't the issue here, the author was impersonating Vice.com there.

The author is guilty of being naive and lax about copyright and trademark laws, imo.

stevejones• 12 years ago

So you complain about being ignorant about copyright laws then demonstrate complete ignorance of them. Copyright has nothing to do with it.

Someone12342• 12 years ago

The apps contained icons taken from third parties and then utilised to advertise these apps. So copyright is very much in play here, as well as trademark infringement.

As to your jab at the person above, it might have come across better if it was even remotely constructive. For example, you could explain WHY you feel they misunderstand copyright rather than just waving your hands around and claiming that they're "completely ignorant."

hawleyal4• 12 years ago

Almost like how Youtube ignores copyright and trademark laws.

icebraining8• 12 years ago

Except they don't, and in fact have built a state-of-the-art video and audio recognition system to deal with infringement[1], and of course respond to DMCA takedown requests.

There's plenty of infringement on YouTube, of course, but that's inevitable for any platform where anonymous users can submit media files.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube#Content_ID

drpgq• 12 years ago

I thought it was weird that he kept mentioning children's apps but then has one for Vice TV.

justinpaulson• 12 years ago

"These warnings to me felt like the warnings on a plastic bag telling you not to put it over your head"

And yet you still put the bag over your head and took a deep breath! Why not just remove the ten apps and use common sense to determine that naming your apps after another company's product is a bad idea??

JimmaDaRustla• 12 years ago

The ignorance hurts my bones.

jeffehobbs• 12 years ago

Duh.

Honestly, why don't you just use a friend's account?

chrisBob2• 12 years ago

The author should also do a quick search (perhaps with bing, DuckDuckGo, or Yahoo) on PayPal accounts being blocked. He recommends this as the safe option, trusted option, but I have seen more PayPal banned for life rants than google ones. With PayPal you can loose your account just because your customers are using stolen cards.

The lesson should be that basing a business on any single external resource could be an issue, and you should approach it carefully.

true_religion4• 12 years ago

Has anyone read the list of other developers who've gotten suspended?

http://blog.hutber.com/how-my-google-devlopers-account-got-t...

This guy here writes an app called "Sex Diaries Alpha", and has it rejected because of pornographic purpose. He then assumes that its because he used a picture a cartoon donkey as the icon, so he reploads "Sex Diaries Test" with a picture of a cartoon girl instead.

More repetitions follow. He never once thinks its perhaps the name 'sex diaries' or the stated purpose of the app. Nope, maybe its the fact that this picture has a nipple, or this is cartoon bondage.

http://andrewpearson.org/?p=681

This guy writes an app and stuffs it with 100s of keywords (as one could see by checking the same app in the 3rd party app store), then he complains he isn't in violation because you could play all those artists through his generic music player, and google didn't cap the number of keywords you could use. So he's not in violation. He knows this for sure, because he's an attorney.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#%21searchin/android-develop...

This guy says that Google transfered $4000 of android sales into his adsense account so they could pay him for non-US sales, but they failed to verify his account since he didn't have $10 worth of adsense budget. Then they disabled the entire account due to invalid clicks on a dead-end blog. If his story is actually true, he should get a lawyer and I feel this is really the time that Google customer service would be nice.

X-Istence• 12 years ago

Apple is banned in the household, because walled garden, and yet he doesn't see the Google Play Store as a walled garden... oh boy, this guy is going to go far.

henrygrew• 12 years ago

Google is a bully to say the least and they are not as open as you might think, i learnt this when my adsense account got suspended.

pnathan• 12 years ago

Google is extremely well known for poor customer service in account management. That should not surprise anyone at this point. Automated bans and automated denial of appeal are pretty par for the course from the stories I've read.

That said, I'm not sure I actually side with the author outside of that point of agreement. Looks like the apps were mega shady.

I would advise the author to (1) not place their trust in a corporation again, and to secure their business & personal affairs against single points of failure, (2) not make shady software, and finally (3) consult a lawyer on the implementation of the law and contracts.

ericfrederich• 12 years ago

Don't believe you

You were a die hard Apple fan boy since '85 even during their darkest times... then you can't provide your users updates within hours so you...

"threw out my macs, smashed my iPhones, switched my whole family to Ubuntu and Android."

http://www.reactiongifs.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/dont_b...

jmuguy• 12 years ago

Ha, yep, stopped reading at that. "The walled garden upset me so much I hulked out and destroyed thousands of dollars of my family's tech."

fredoralive• 12 years ago

I'll be a pedant and point out that bit of hyperbole has a bit of an odd timeline issue. It seems to say he jumped ship to Android when the app store was announced. But iPhone OS 2 which introduced the walled garden app store came out before Android 1.0.

Plus, if you're so worried about things like walled gardens, why buy a phone that doesn't officially allow third party native apps like the iPhone with v1.x OS?

bgun• 12 years ago

If it's true (and probably even if it's not), OP seems like an enormous pain to be around, both personally and professionally.

IanDrake• 12 years ago

Microsoft was known as the Borg, but that was poorly placed. Google has been more of a Borg than MS ever was.

Google has decided to automate everything. There is no way to get actual help across their entire product line. Having problems with your adwords account? It doesn't matter if you spend $20K month, you get automatic email responses to your queries with obnoxious links to the help system that you've already read.

While I agree that author did more wrong than he realizes, he also asked Google for an explanation to their objection, to which he received no response. I guess the Borg NLP engine was down that day and couldn't find the appropriate form letter.

Whatever you think about this author, you can't deny the danger of relying on one ecosystem so heavily. Google is the worst. At least Apple would have denied his app with a reason which he could have corrected.

FiddlerClamp• 12 years ago

He could sell the app outside the Play Store, of course. Nothing can stop him from doing that (trademark issues aside) and collecting payment via PayPal, etc.

PythonicAlpha2• 12 years ago

The OP made some grave errors with his apps. But is it really a good reason, to not tell him, what was going wrong and instead swinging the big hammer on his head (life-long ban)?

Google once started with the slogan "Don't be evil".

By being the new "Judge Dredd" of the internet, it can just become, what it never wanted to be. All that, just because Google tries to drive technology to its extremes ("customer-service from hell").

This is going to be more and more important, because there exist only very few major app-stores and very few major internet-payment systems (gladly, there the situation could still change to the better). But I know, how much Paypal was criticized because of his behavior and being a semi-monopolist in internet payments.

With our today's trend to centralization -- I don't want to put my fate into the hand of one of these new Judge Dredds.

g0510512• 12 years ago

They did tell him, didn't they? They told him 3 times.

PythonicAlpha2• 12 years ago

As much I understood, they did tell him not enough, that he could understand what was wrong. Automated eMails are "customer-support from hell".

dictum• 12 years ago

1. Don't repackage other people's content. Especially with their trademarks attached. If they had no role in creating the app, don't be a jerk. If you want to make a video app, make a general-purpose video app and teach your users how to add channels.

2. I can't help but appreciate the karma angle of someone who tried to repackage web content as apps getting bitten by the gatekeepers of the walled garden.

3. Ah, Google, the business that would certainly still exist (and be as large and powerful as it currently is) had it been forbidden to ever skirt the limits of copyright law...

0x0• 12 years ago

If he spent even 5 minutes looking at the ios sdk, he'd see that there's no review process involved in distribution of beta apps to customers...

joshdance• 12 years ago

I think the best comment, which was buried in the replies was this:

"There is a guide and it's pretty clear: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ... - For example, if your app displays the brand, icon, or title from another app [...] your apps can be suspended and your developer account terminated."

venomsnake• 12 years ago

He is wrong. But the technology giants wield way too much power and must be tamed.

bitJericho• 12 years ago

I love how the tl;dr bit is at the end of the article. If I were too lazy to read the entire article, why would I scroll to the end before closing?

"If one of their algorithms thinks you’re a bad guy, you’re banned for life."

In his case scratch out "thinks" and put in "knows"

kelvin0• 12 years ago

Google's 'normal' support is horrendous and it takes forever to get someone to even pretend to help you. We had a paying google app engine account for our company... I've dealt with them, and it`s a pain to say the least. Now I can only imagine how they treat people who they consider 'deliquent' (not saying that the author is one)

Karunamon• 12 years ago

Yeahh.. I'm finding it really hard to have much sympathy here. Spammy single-content-source apps like this are a plague upon the store.

Furthermore, the author's ignorance of trademark really doesn't win them any points.

tuhrig• 12 years ago

I don't understand his whole logic. He publishes the same app 10 times for different channels. One after another gets banned and he even thinks this proves that the rest is OK. He says that he made "beta apps written for my kids", but he puts it on the biggest app store in the world. He says an app to display videos is worth 50.000$, 10 times the same app is worth 500.000$. He says it was a free project, but he made it to collect user data for his commercial project.

remon• 12 years ago

TL;DR version "Didn't read the rules, broke the rules, :("

pessimizer2• 12 years ago

Would they have cut off his Nest? If google since G+ thinks of itself as a single product, it might not be smart to let them into your house, or to depend on them for anything important.

That being said, these kinds of apps are what make the phone app market a cesspool. Would the iOS app store accept youtube channel viewers?

chasing• 12 years ago

"Because I had listened to the leaders at Google say that the open web, open source and freedom are important values at Google, and I fully agree with that ideal."

"All Apple products are banned in my household to make a statement about programmer freedom."

"I believe in freedom, not blind obedience."

This guy comes off as being a bit naive. And/or dishonest in his telling of this story...

the_real_bto• 12 years ago

The escalation from written warning to banned for life is a huge leap to make in one step.

A month long suspension would get the point across.

desireco42• 12 years ago

I had this happen to me with adwords, once you get your account suspended or even before that, it is hard to get anyone to talk to you or have a way to correct issue. If you are fresh at it and clueless you are almost certain you will be banned.

Mostly this is due Google not having customer support, so you are just interacting with machines.

It would be easier if we had more options, this way if you get kicked out by apple and google, nothing else is left.

api2• 12 years ago

"I was a die hard Apple fan since 1985 and was an Apple developer all through the darkest days of the Apple death spiral. I continued to be an Apple fan until they announced the “walled garden” and the app review process for iOS. I am totally against having to get permission from a corporation to write and sell apps, and I certainly don’t think I should be forced to sell my work through their store and their store only."

Regardless of the merits of this particular authors' case, I'm frankly astounded that more people don't seem to care about this aspect of mobile platforms. I remember the uproar the Microsoft caused in the 1990s with their "trusted computing" trial balloon, and the uproar that locked PC BIOSes continue to create today. Yet you change the form factor a little and nobody cares. Wow.

rmrfrmrf4• 12 years ago

I think you missed the part where Microsoft and Apple had completely different core businesses.

api2• 12 years ago

I'm talking about how mobile platforms are completely locked down and gated, with app stores taking ~30% of your app revenue and no ability to install what you want.

That sort of thing would never have been tolerated in the PC world, yet in the mobile work nobody seems to care.

izzydata• 12 years ago

Is there anyway to call google help directly? I've heard plenty of stories of google automated email support that never adequately explains anything, but I'm curious if you can actually call them.

If anyone has seen the movie "The Internship" there is a scene where they all have to learn how to do phone support. I would find it very weird if that is entirely a lie and it is nearly impossible to call them.

Also he smashed his apple devices because he disagrees with their ideals? That seems kind of immature.

pronoiac• 12 years ago

I knew I'd seen this before. It looks like Medium's wacky URL structure is bypassing the dupe checker. If you search for the hex code at the end[1], you get the previous discussions.

From when this was first posted in March:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7478975

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7569454

From May:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7855337

[1] like this: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=c62f2404f66#!/story/forever/0/c62f...

logicallee• 12 years ago

I stopped reading at "So, I threw out my macs, smashed my iPhones, switched my whole family to Ubuntu and Android." (Because nobody does that, specifically the first two things.) BTW until this line I was relating strongly with the author and especially the stuff about supporting a family.

Never got to find out the meat of the story. Oh well - it was promising and I was looking forward to it, I kind of wish I didn't realize what I was reading. (i.e. a fabrication.)

Basically, I don't find the sentence credible, nor am able to read it in context as an exaggeration or metaphorical, it's presented as fact, and I lost interest.

This is written by a marketer, not a developer. i.e. it's "a paid lie" (if we are cynical), or more generously it's allegory, that I don't have time to read. None of this stuff happened, in my judgment.

Granted I didn't read the 3900 word essay so I could be wrong - I stopped at word 278. It's just my impression that this story takes you for a ride.

wldcordeiro• 12 years ago

That this guy was banned from Google Play is meaningless. He would have been banned from the iTunes Store as well for apps like this. This post is just getting traction because it's Google and HN has an axe to grind against them.

yonran• 12 years ago

A lot of people think that the author deserved the punishment for his stupidity. However, I think he had an important point that needs to be discussed: that he was dismissed without a fair hearing and was banned for life from services unrelated to the one on which he committed the offense.

I think this is a growing problem that more people need to be aware of. We do not have the right to use modern marketplaces (such as the Google Play Store, Apple App Store, Google Adwords, AirBnB, Ebay, Uber, etc.) Instead, we have permission from corporations to use them. If an individual bases his livelihood on sales through one of these and then makes a mistake, the company is likely to ban him, destroying his income. There is currently no guarantee of due process or proportional punishment. When you are banned from the majority marketplace, one often has no real alternative. Can anyone make a living selling his goods on the second most popular auction site?

I think we need to fight for the right to due process and fair punishment online.

avz2• 12 years ago

I'm absolutely astonished by the degree of egocentric delusion, arrogance and lack of self-criticism displayed by the author:

* he smashes thousands of dollars worth of equipment because the producer's business model no longer fits his idea of freedom,

* he writes a trivial wrapper app with no original content or behavior,

* he spams Google Play with ten versions of it hard-coding different YT channel IDs in each,

* he values this contribution to the Android ecosystem on about $500,000,

* his apps obviously infringe on trademarks and possibly copyrighted content,

* he ignores multiple warnings and app suspensions, because they don't tell him precisely what to change,

* he considers Google to be under the obligation to handhold him through the nature of his violation of the terms and conditions,

* after all this he continues to think he is in the right,

* he writes a rant and expects to receive sympathy riding on general disappointment in devs community with Google's admittedly lacking customer support.

Wow.

piratebroadcast• 12 years ago

I used to make Android themes back in the day. I would wait until a game got really popular on iOS and count on Android users checking the Android app store for the same titles. I'd sell an "Angry Birds" phone theme for 99 cents. Many Android users werent that technologically savvy and thought they were buying the actual game. This went on for about 6 months. I was making serious money. Eventually they caught on and I was banned from the store. I was a kid and doing something a bit douchey but I definitely understand banning me.

This guy doesn't quite seem to feel the same way.

bg451• 12 years ago

The suspension email stated that I was trying to impersonate another company, and that this was forbidden.
I decided on “Vice TV”
I didn’t plan on trying to sell Vice TV
I was also secretly hoping I would get a contract job out of this or someone might say, “Hey, add my blog and Facebook pages and I’ll buy the app from you.”

The last quotation isn't necessarily in context with the third one, but nonetheless this guy was either stupidly naive or ignorant.

mark-r• 12 years ago

Regardless of how you feel about this particular case, there are two things that are troubling:

1. Google is big enough to be an indispensable part of your life.

2. Google doesn't believe in allowing human contact - it doesn't scale. They've put all their eggs into the algorithm basket, and when the algorithm decides you're guilty that's it. No appeal, at least not in any real sense.

It's a story that gets repeated over and over.

59nadir• 12 years ago

The TL;DR should be:

Google suspended my Google Wallet account when they shouldn't have.

tripzilch2• 12 years ago

It's pretty clear to me.

First, what the guy did was wrong, and he appears pretty stupid, pretending to be stupid, or both.

Google is generally known for their abysmal communication and "customer service", but in this case they were in fact pretty clear about the problem right when the first app got suspended.

He can whine all he want but Google's decision to ban his Android developer account was not too unreasonable.

However even with that in mind I do believe that they went completely overboard with the decisions to also ban-for-life his Google Wallet and Google Music accounts. Those are completely unrelated to this matter[0], and escalated this thing out of proportion.

It is kind of frightening they will just take those things as "collateral" for violating a bunch of rules on a completely different service that just also happens to be part of the Google ecosystem. It starts to become and look like a state that way (hello, cyberpunk future), but with a state you should also have clear rules and ways of appeal. Google definitely doesn't have a meaningful version the the latter.

People depend on all sorts of services that Google provides, and the ability to take all or any of them away (there are no laws) because you violated an unrelated rule, is an amount of power that should come with mechanisms that keep it in check.

Indeed what if they instead had taken his GMail account?

[0] unless there is more that the author is not telling us, which is not at all unlikely.

juliob• 12 years ago

Google's culture of automated customer service continues a long tradition of poor people skills, and disdain for feelings and livelihoods, as well as their own reputation. I was contemplating switching from AWS to the Google Cloud, but it's posts like this that remind me that, oh yeah, I myself have been unjustly banned twice from one of their services.

Google cannot be trusted to handle relationships, whether with developers or companies. It's clear that they don't care and that's fine. They have their niche for providing services to those who don't mind the lack of the human touch. Just not for me.

Banned for Life

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