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by julianee 2493 days ago
I actually had the reverse experience to this. My app was 1.5 years old and had 4mil+ downloads with ~200k monthly active.

After updating my app, they banned my app instead of the other clones and crapware. Citing "Repetitive and Duplicative Content". The clones were so bad to the point that they literally decompiled my app, loaded in their own assets and published it.

Appealing did nothing and I got the exact same response as the article. That was 2 years ago.

Going by this, I would assume that my app had better Ad revenue to Google, but comparing in relative-ness, they dont care about the 4-5 figure you make. Another person will take your place in no time.
1 comments
dwild 2493 days ago
> The clones were so bad to the point that they literally decompiled my app, loaded in their own assets and published it.

Why not send a DMCA to Google?

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julianee 2492 days ago
I couldn't quite remember the reason as it was quite a long time ago and there was a lot of pain, disappointment, unfairness, despair, helplessness which I'd like to move on from. But I remember it was along the lines of: - Difficult to prove (How do you prove stolen code?) - I am not supposed to be decompiling another app to find evidence - What channel do I use when Google makes it so difficult to make a case/complain for anything? (There are channels, but there is no trust in those, they behave like black holes where you put in effort and just maybe, just maybe if they feel like it, they will respond.) - With the image they portray, I felt that to Google, they would see my case as similar to a single piece of candy going missing in a Walmart store.

I found out when I saw that competitors were copying my Store Listing Text word for word (ASO), and when I downloaded them, I noticed a peculiar bug their app had which was identical to mine. It was a programatic bug due to the way the function was implemented, seeing an identical bug that only fails on the same edge case is a big red flag, so I decompiled their app and saw that my work was copied.

I did send email to the developer at fault but did not get a reply or action.

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