App Submissions On Google Play Now Reviewed By Staff, Include Age-Based Ratings

http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/17/app-submissions-on-google-play-now-reviewed-by-staff-will-include-age-based-ratings/

by kshatrea • 11 years ago

149 58 11 years ago

__xtrimsky• 11 years ago

Nice. I just hope they won't be as annoying as Apple.

Well if you've been submitting apps in the last month or so then you used this system. They say even with adding humans apps are approved in hours not days/weeks as has been known to happen with Apple. Also they use a lot of automation to reduce the number of apps and the amount of work each reviewer has to review.

creshal• 11 years ago

From my experience (with one app published in that time frame) it's… meh. The review process is fast, granted (<1 business day), but the enforcement of rules is as arbitrary and byzantine as with Apple, with no useful appeal process.

profmonocle• 11 years ago

days/weeks as has been known to happen with Apple.

That's understating it. Long review times are the norm, not just known to happen. I've never had a submission take under 72 hours. Typical is 4-7 days. (And I've done it dozens of times.)

It's incredibly frustrating when you have users (or clients) complaining about a bug you fixed days ago. I don't understand why they're still have such a deep approval queue after almost seven years. I guess they don't consider it a problem. The perks of having a huge market share, I suppose.

ajjai• 11 years ago

That's nice.. I hope, now, they will respond to developer queries also..

tomjen3• 11 years ago

If they want to make the appstore a better place, why not spend some time to make search work? I dunno, an eigen-vector algorithm of some sort.

Copying Apples mistakes are not the way to go.

nemothekid• 11 years ago

I believe the top search engine in world with 100s of search engineers have thought of an eigen-vector algorithm of some sort".

ChrisClark• 11 years ago

And they've been doing it for the past few months and no one knew. So I think this is a good thing all around, as long as review times don't increase to Apple levels.

moubarak4• 11 years ago

after getting 100k active users, and over 2million sessions per week, which was 1 year after submitting my app, google play suspended my app without warning, and i lost all.

they were right, i didn't accurately follow their terms, but if they reviewed my app once submitted a year ago, that could've been avoided.

it was a bitter experience for me, and i decided to port my app to iOS. i heard iOS provides warnings atleast.

ceejayoz3• 11 years ago

they were right, i didn't accurately follow their terms, but if they reviewed my app once submitted a year ago, that could've been avoided.

Couldn't they say that to you about reading the terms a year ago?

moubarak4• 11 years ago

that's what i'm saying. i wish they did. when they suspended my app i was being contacted by another team from google, AdMob, to "help grow my business". so i thought i was fine as long as i can make them money. they got me excited, then suddenly removed my app.

SunShiranui• 11 years ago

For what reason was your app removed?

moubarak4• 11 years ago

infringement. my app was called Nexus Photos. before submitting i read that google was denied the trademark on the name nexus. i also sent an email before publishing the app to google play, and they said it's ok to use the word "Nexus" in the title. i provided this info in my appeal. but the appeal was refused. as i said, they were right, but removing the app with no warning was brutal.

tsunamifury2• 11 years ago

If you think Apple will provide a more cooperative experience you are mistaken. I've built apps for years and many times a short discussion with Google allowed me to re-post an app with some modifications.

Unless you are making apple SERIOUS revenue (think high6 to 7 figures) they will shut you down without even a response.

s73v3r4• 11 years ago

"I've builds apps for years and many times a short discussion with Google allowed me to re-post an app with some modifications."

The vast, vast, vast majority of people are not able to find a person at Google to have that discussion with in the first place.

"Unless you are making apple SERIOUS revenue (think high6 to 7 figures) they will shut you down without even a response."

Apple tells you before your app goes live.

sigzero• 11 years ago

That's not true at all. You submit, they review, you fix whatever and then approve. What you say is just nonsense.

s73v3r4• 11 years ago

"they were right, i didn't accurately follow their terms, but if they reviewed my app once submitted a year ago, that could've been avoided."

And if you had followed their terms, it could have been avoided as well.

outworlder2• 11 years ago

. i heard iOS provides warnings atleast.

Not necessarily. If you blatantly disregards their terms, then your app will be rejected for sure. Now, if the issue is more nuanced, then it could take some time.

Source: I developed an app that, among other things, could let people know about DIU checkpoints (not in the US, mind you). It survived for more than a year in the store, only getting an email from Apple when we changed it from free (with ads) to a paid app, returning more revenue in a month than the past months put together (which nevertheless was enough to pay the monthly office rent).

Instead of engaging Apple, we decided to pull the app ourselves from the store.

We did get an email from an actual person, instead of getting the app pulled from the store with no explanation. I also guess that, had we decided to discuss things with Apple, that we could have reached some sort of agreement. We'll never know, but that's what I inferred from the tone of the email (surprisingly friendly, mind you).

avinassh• 11 years ago

Now, will there be any increase in developer program fee? Since reviewing requires resources and will cost more money to Google now onwards.

sergiotapia• 11 years ago

I'm glad Google got the funding necessary to hire more -people- to review submissions. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Galactigon• 11 years ago

I like the Apps, Games, Utilities method of organization.

I didn't see any word on judging 'content'.

philip1209• 11 years ago

Google tries to automate everything, so it amuses me that they have had to fall back to manual reviewers instead of fully automating the process.

marinabercea• 11 years ago

So many poor quality apps though on their marketplace, I don't think they have any other choice but to revert to a manual review process.

solomatov• 11 years ago

These are very good news. We have enough malware and spyware in play store.

emsy2• 11 years ago

As an Android and iOS user, I think this is a step in the right direction. As a player I'd rather have a curated games store that allows me to discover new games easily.

s73v3r4• 11 years ago

Wouldn't the Humble Bundle store fall in that category?

emsy2• 11 years ago

Yeah, I didn't even think of that. But Humble Bundle is only known to a core audience and if Google did something like HB, I think they could leverage Android as a serious gaming platform (Apple too, but I don't think this will ever happen. They just don't "get" games).

speeder2• 11 years ago

I noticed they are working with ClassInd but are not clear how.

I really hope this won't open the door to censorship on Android, one of the reasons why I make mobile games is exactly to circunvent ClassInd (as the article calls it).

Here in Brazil, to release any entertainment product (even live Circus Shows are included on this), you must first ask the Ministry of Justice to give you a rating, the process, specially for things that aren't a Circus Show, is very long, slow and cumbersome (example: you need to do it again every time you make an official update of your software, and the process involves writing lots of paperwork, sending the physical papers to the Ministry, and waiting AT LEAST 30 days).

Although officially they claim it is NOT censorship, the process is mandatory for all entertainment, even if free, the law allow them to punish (with 2 years in prison and fines) anyone that are distributing, storing, selling, buying or creating things without ratings, and they can deny rating you (meaning that even if you ask, if they deny the rating, you are de-facto censored).

This does have an obvious effect here:

People here create fake US accounts to buy stuff on Xbox Live and PSN, because the local versions of XBL and PSN follow the law, and has much less content.

Steam don't have official Brazillian offices, although recently they stated to charge in BRL, and have portuguese translations, the charging part is handled by Brazillian companies and credit card processors, in a way that if Brazil government go ater Steam, Steam can just cut-off Brazil (and let the CC processors take the blame and the lawsuit).

Apple for a while, got in conflict with the government here, the Ministry of Justice threatened to sue Apple for 2000 BRL for each unrated app, back then 300.000 unrated apps already existed, Apple in response just set entire categories to be hidden from iTunes users with Brazillian IPs or accounts (leading to lots of fake accounts, sometimes using stolen CCs, and iTunes access using proxies).

Eventually, some merciful judge ruled that since Apple don't have offices here, they don't have to follow our law, opening access again.

Also, like I said, I make mobile apps to avoid that law, what I do is that I have a Brazil company, a Swiss company, and then I make the Swiss company, hire the Brazil company to create software for hire, then the Swiss company that "create" the completed entertainment software, and sells it (including to Brazillian users, that frequently pay with international CC, of course this leads to lots of inefficiency, since I have to pay taxes on exchanging CHF to BRL, after users already paid taxes on exchanging BRL to CHF, beside the exchange fees, the sale tax from Brazil to Switzerland, and the income taxes on both Brazil and Switzerland).

outworlder2• 11 years ago

also, like I said, I make mobile apps to avoid that law, what I do is that I have a Brazil company, a Swiss company, and then I make the Swiss company, hire the Brazil company to create software for hire, then the Swiss company that "create" the completed entertainment software, and sells it

Why do it in Switzerland, instead of say, US Delaware?

speeder2• 11 years ago

1) Some of the investing co-founders already lived in Switzerland

2) Some of the non-investing co-founders lived in Switzerland before, or would not mind living there in the future.

3) Switzerland, as bizarrely my phrase might sound, is more free than US, with laws regarding corporations easier to understand, and less crazy problems, for example no extremely stupid patent and copyright laws like US have.

So, in case US corporations get sue-happy against us (like they always do against each other), the best they can do is sue us in Switzerland, and there the law will be usually in our side (instead of siding with copyright/patent/whatever trolls)

Also we did check how much would cost us, including hiring the appropriate lawyers and accountants, to setup our stuff in Delaware vs Switzerland, and Switzerland was cheaper.

pluma• 11 years ago

This seems like a surprising deviation from their traditional stance of "throwing more people at a problem is never an acceptable answer" (which is almost literally their justification for off-loading the bulk of their support to an online manual and a "users helping users" forum with "actual humans" being a scarce resource even paying customers are usually allowed to tap into).

killdill• 11 years ago

I always wonder how big a staff they would need to review so many apps uploaded every day.

moron4hire• 11 years ago

Wasn't the point of creating walled-garden app stores the notion that it created checks and balances to prevent malware and bad user experiences from getting on people's devices? Wasn't that the entire reason we were supposed to be fine with the notion that we'd be giving up a portion of revenue to be able to get onto users devices in pretty much the only way the vast majority of our users understood how to do?

In other words, "you had ONE job, app stores, ONE JOB."

ceejayoz3• 11 years ago

It was hardly the only job, especially considering Google's store didn't have the review process until just now.

That cut pays for the payments infrastructure, bandwidth to deliver the app files, etc. that you don't have to provide.

pasta_2• 11 years ago

Ironic given how the rhetoric suggested the "walled garden" was an evil to be avoided. Over time Apple is being proven right.

stinkytaco• 11 years ago

I can still sideload apps onto my android device, no? I don't view a monitored app store as a "walled garden", I consider it a convenience. I view limiting what I can install as a "walled garden" and Apple definitely falls into that category.

lnanek2• 11 years ago

I've already been getting kind of ridiculous suspensions due to this. A dice puzzle game where all you ever earned was points for making the right patterns was banned for encouraging gambling.

So, uh, goodbye one of the few things that made developing for Google better than developing for Apple. Really don't know how they could possibly be bragging about this.

MichaelGG2• 11 years ago

Hey, there's still the Windows Store. While ostensibly reviewed, they really let everything in. I've found fake Windows Updates. Fake Dropbox, Facebook (second result, even shows up in the start menu if you type in Facebook!), and more. Some even show "Microsoft" as the publisher. And in every case, tech support tells you to piss off. When reporting a fake Dropbox app, the CSR told me it seems to work and recommended installing it again. So if MS is willing to help phish users, they'll probably let a dice game slide by.

Oh and if you get caught, just resubmit. It took Netflix at least 3 times of back-n-forth with MS before they started permabanning fake Netflix. Other software devs have told me that MS refuses to do anything to help them, even when a 12 yr old could see this hurts users, the brand, and ecosystem.

mhomde• 11 years ago

Yeah, there's certainly something rotten with Microsoft's App Store. I'd hazard a guess that most of it is outsourced to India and there's some internal bureaucracy putting it outside of purview of the people who could fix it. It's hard to even search for top apps that you know the name for.

I think its one of those things when Microsoft gets around to focus on it they'll "fix it" but for now, crappola.

blingojames• 11 years ago

Two companies and possibly very few people decide what apps will reach a billion people. Sure wish we could elect those people.

pnathan• 11 years ago

Why should they even control this? It should be an open system by default....

supabill• 11 years ago

And why is that?

notatoad• 11 years ago

They tried that. The android app market / play store has been "open" since the start. Anybody could publish their app with no control by google.

And we blew it. The store filled up with shitty apps, scams, and blatant copies of popular apps. And people complained, so now Google is responding to those complaints by policing their app store, because apparently we can't be trusted with open marketplaces.

App Submissions On Google Play Now Reviewed By Staff, Include Age-Based Ratings

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