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Comment by hirsin | Hacker News Reader

The apparent information gathering and brutal review process is unbelievable here. If I'm understanding this correctly, the requirement is that eg Epic Game Store must register and upload every single APK for every app they offer, and cannot offer it in their store until Google approves it, which may take a week or more - including every time the app updates.

Meanwhile they get full competitive insight into which apps are being added to Epics store, their download rates apparently, and they even get the APKs to boot, potentially making it easier for those app devs to onboard if they like, and can pressure them to do so by dragging their feet on that review process.

> Provide direct, publicly accessible customer support to end users through readily accessible communication channels.

This is an interesting requirement. I want to see someone provide the same level of support that Google does to see if it draws a ban.

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Google and accessible customer support should not be put in the same sentence. Their history of automated neglect is beyond reproach.

their Play store review practices are such a joke. Apps review is a completely obscure process, no clear way to see that the app is in review state, if they reject - amount of information why it was rejected is minimal and you have to second-guess; appealing is not trivial; most of the reviews are done by AI which gets triggered in totally random places from time to time (e.g., in my case, some pictures which looked fine for kids for years and went through many previous reviewed, suddenly seem too violent).

I have healthcare apps. The review process for me consists of some reviewer deciding what set of healthcare features I should have picked from their list and rejecting on that basis. But subsequent reviewers have different opinions. In one app version release I got rejected 5 times for picking the wrong set of healthcare features as either the reviewer changed their mind or I got different reviewers. The app has been on Google play for 13 years.

I wish there were laws against their practice.

I'm not subscribed to too many Youtubers. But it's insane that I still need 2 digits to count how many of those creators tried to work for over a week to address some urgent issue brought upon by one of Google's automation tools. Then simply resorted to Twitter to get their fanbase to rile up YouTube for them.

If it wasn't a hack, Google moves like molasses.

This page only applies to apps distributed by Google Play. Not apps installed by third party stores. It's still outrageous, of course.

Ahh that's a really good call out, thank you. Basically negates most of what I wrote.

Hmm, does this mean that large swaths of people publishing apps are going to flock to distribution platforms like f-droid?

(Yikes)

F-Droid only accepts open source apps.

absolutely, i get this. i assume it's going to be a relatively small subset that go open in order to jump to an open platform. i'm not super familiar with the f-droid publishing ecosystem (or mobile publishing at all, admittedly).

i do wonder if there's regardless going to be some kind of (perhaps overwhelming) inundation.

This is probably why they killed installs that dont have attribution, specifically to undercut f-droid.

I want to see what the EU anti-trust organization will make of this.

Isn't this limited to the US?

Yes, but you can bet that if they succeed with this in the US they will try something similar in the EU. They're constantly testing the waters.

Probably for the same reasons

This has been Apple's stance for years and has been routinely brought down in courts across the globe. Why are you guys surprised.

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