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Why is Google allowed to remove purchases from our Play Store accounts without telling us?
(www.androidpolice.com)
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this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2024
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As a hobbist App developer I can tell its probably at least to some extent due to the ongoing "cost" to keep the Apps hosted and working.
Every year when a new Android beta comes out you have to go through your App, check if everything still works only to then discover something broke and now you gotta figure out how to fix it.
With a small App I hosted starting at Android 10 every major update so far caused me some trouble. Now with Android 14 this is the last version I'll support for the simple fact that I don't have the time to keep up with it.
And mind you this was a rather simple small App, I can't imagine what a headache it is to maintain a game.
Sure, you don't have to support it with updates indefinitely, but I think the possibility should exist to delist it so new people can't buy it but people who bought it before would still be able to download it (with no guarantee it will work).
Agree, thats fair.
You're talking about a different situation though. I have old apps that are no longer supported so I can't install them on newer devices. However, I can still install them on old devices with a supported OS version (or trick the Play Store into installing on a new OS and deal with bugs).
You say that like businesses in eras past haven't had any overhead.
Overhead is a part of the profit equation. If you can't make it work, you're not profitable, and you lose.
It isn't just about businesses. There used to be a lot more free apps on the Play Store, but keeping up with constantly-changing requirements makes that impractical. You can't just put something up and leave it. You have to work on frequently or it gets dropped. You also have to keep up with their demands to limit certain features and to provide new information or it gets dropped.
I used to have a handful of free apps up on Play. Now they are all gone because I just don't have the time to rewrite them every few months.
Try releasing them as apks to bypass Google's insane rules.
I have already done that. My apps.aslanrefuge.org site has downloadable APKs for everything. It also has the code, for anyone who wants to tinker with it.
I just wish there was a better way. I need to look into F-Droid and other options.
The website doesn't load unfortunately.
Sorry about that! I fixed it in the message above. I typoed the actual link, but the visible version was correct so I didn't notice.
The correct address is: https://apps.aslanrefuge.org
It doesn't help when the overhead is dictated by a massive corporation that isn't your friend...
What about this: Can we stop pushing for big OS updates every year? This just makes it harder on developers, and the apps are the reason people use the OS in the first place.
For Google, hosting an app is just a matter of keeping an entry in a database and its data in storage. It's not about the difficulty.
Furthermore, that app COST MONEY to the user. Here Google is not only removing the app from the store, they're also UNINSTALLING it from the user's device, without warning them, and without compensating them financially for this.
To make things even worse, their malware detection algorithm is prone to false positives. There's not even a degree of certainty, like "there's a 20% chance we could be making a mistake." A binary without tolerance means they are removing things only on the SUSPICION they could be malware.
I had a very useful open source app - that I installed WITHOUT Google play store - removed from my phone. It was never submitted to Google and neither the author nor I EVER agreed to their app store remove third party software from my phone.
Google have become control freaks over our phones. The only solution I see is to install a third party OS, like Lineage or Graphene. I might even have to buy a new phone for this, but I don't care. I don't want Google to assume the role of Nanny and take away control of MY devices that I bought with my own fucking money.