Comment by age_bronze
4 years ago
Why is this legal? Why is it legal for Google to completely demolish a business with no human review, no due process and no excuse at all?
Why do we keep hearing this without a single developer going forward and suing the hell out of Google? Or Apple by the way.
To be clear, the root problem here is that Google gives their own app store an unfair advantage. Third-party app stores can't auto-update their apps, among other things, without the phone being rooted, which carries serious consequences for functionality (e.g., can't use the camera anymore on the Galaxy Z Fold 3, can't use Snapchat, Netflix, or Android Pay anymore on any phone, and on some phones you just can't root at all, period). If third-party app stores could fairly compete with the Play Store, then there'd be no issue at all with it having draconian and arbitrarily-enforced policies.
If you use Magisk you can just sideload Netflix from APK Mirror or Aurora Store and you're fine. Samsung stock ROMs specifically have extra Netflix DRM checks built in iirc, but if you're rooted disabling them should be easy, I'm sure there's open source scripts on xda that will do all this. Netflix is even fully functional on GrapheneOS despite it being a custom build which doesn't pass SafetyNet, although the bootloader is locked and it's not rooted, but still it fails SafetyNet and Netflix runs fine without any tricks.
Android Pay is easy to get working on a rooted phone you just need to slightly modify one single SQLite database. There are scripts to automate this on xda for certain, I used one before on my old Pixel.
Snapchat though is a lot more tricky yeah, they do their own checks outside of SafetyNet and it's a game of cat and mouse where whenever someone gets around one Snapchat adds five more. But then how many people still use Snapchat these days? Everyone I know just uses IG which works fine on a rooted phone.
> Android Pay is easy to get working on a rooted phone you just need to slightly modify one single SQLite database.
"You just need to slightly modify one single SQLite database" has got to be the most unintentionally amusing thing I've read all week. I'm happy to poke around in the internals of Android, but even most of my developer friends would see a process like that and go "nope, not worth the effort". Ordinary people do not know what SQLite is, or how to run scripts, so a barrier like that is a deal breaker for them.
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Try getting a non-techie to set up Magisk on their phone though. And just doing it for them isn't a practical option unless you live with them, because then they won't know how to install the monthly OTA security updates anymore.
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My Samsung phone came preinstalled with an unremovable third party app store. No root necessary. Maybe device manufacturers aren't considered third party?
Silent installation of applications without your confirmation or knowledge is a privileged permission reserved for preinstalled apps. So Samsung can provide a 3rd party store on their phones that can silently install applications on your phone while others can't.
This was changed in Android 12 (I think) where silent app installation is a grantable permission for other stores like F-Droid.
App stores that come baked into vendor ROMs are granted special privileges that user-installable app stores aren't.
Samsung Galaxy phone, Huawei phones and other phones have 3rd party stores that update apps in background just fine.
No need to spread FUD, come on.
Those are preinstalled apps with system access just like the Play Store itself though. It is still true you cannot do auto updates with user installed app stores like F-Droid unless you root.
Personally I don't mind just hitting update all in F-Droid every now and then so it's no big deal to me, just saying it is functionality only apps with system permissions (meaning pre-installed only if the phone isn't rooted) are allowed to have.
If, as you said in another comment, this will change in Android 12 that's a cool development. I hadn't heard this previously.
Those are baked into the vendor ROM and are granted special privileges that user-installable app stores are not.
The problem is not quite Google's behavior. It's legal for the same reason it's legal for you to not allow someone inside your house for bad reasons or no reasons at all.
The problem is that we've allowed digital marketplaces to achieve the kind of market power that would make a robber baron blush -- and we're not talking enough about how breaking up FAANG companies into multiple competing companies helps prevent the kinds of harms discussed in the blog above (as well as others).
I purchase software from no less than 5 different digital marketplaces on my computer, but I am all but prevented from downloading software on my phone that does not originate from the Play store. Monopolies are not good for markets.
I have F-Droid installed on all my Android phones. Admittedly it's something you must go out of your way to do, but you can put third party app stores on Android phones very easily, or just sideload apps individually if they have an official APK link (many do).
iPhones on the other hand, yeah very different story.
With alternative app stores, you have to approve every single app update, ehich is way inferior to play store.
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When I was a freelancer, I was warned by my legal help that taking a businesses site offline in response to non-payment was legally risky. There was a chance of being sued for disrupting their business.
I wonder if there are grounds for a (reasonable) legal suit here. Anyone in the know that can fill us in?
You're talking about self-help that isn't in a contract, right? The OP is talking about self-help developer account suspension that presumably is a right listed in the applicable TOS.
> I wonder if there are grounds for a (reasonable) legal suit here. Anyone in the know that can fill us in?
If this was this company's only revenue stream, chances are they can't survive until such a lawsuit has dragged out to the end.
That's OK: then any settlement gets distributed to the ex-company's shareholders.
(Of course some entity needs to fund the lawsuit: if the company cannot, and the lawyers will not take it on contingency, then the shareholders would need to.)
Most people even when they think they're in the right won't take legal action. Even when they think they'll get a payout they won't take legal action. If they get threatened with legal action they'll automatically backdown.
I'm sure there are a multiude of reasons behind why this is. But I think part of it is on some level fight or flight. I am sure for a lot it's just not worth the hassle.
I'm hoping for the day someone does take them to court especially in the EU where they're less likely to put up with the corporate nonsense that the American courts seem to put up with.
It's because the cost to bring them to court is far to expensive. I don't know anyone who can afford to do that here in the U.S.
I'm in the EU the cost to taking them to court here isn't that much. In fact, I'm in Germany where there are legal limits to how much a lawyer can charge so the cost is not a factor. Yet, I know people who back down and avoid legal fights even when they think they can win.
It is legal because of the contract between the developer and Google. In this case Google decided that the developer violated the contract's terms and terminated the account.
Also, there might have been a human review, and it was decided that termination is going to proceed, hence no basis for human to intervene.
Because law enforcement is for the rich, that's why.
snarky and oversimplified, but basically true.
In the US, there's something called a class action lawsuit.
"As of July 1, 2010, Quiznos was close to reaching a settlement over the multiyear class-action lawsuit that covers nearly 10,000 of its current and former franchisees. The case comprises four separate class-action lawsuits dating back to 2006 which consolidated in 2009 — involved allegations by attorneys for franchisees that Quiznos Franchise Co. LLC and other entities with ownership or control of the Quiznos chain had violated U.S. racketeering and corruption statutes."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiznos