[pinkybanana]

> Why should you expect different treatment from Google than Twitter et al.?

Well, because you aren't twitter. Expecting google to treat indie dev the same as multibillion dollar corporations would be stupid. World isn't fair place and crying after fairness is often waste of time.

This kind of blog post might affect the situation and I think it makes sense to make it in polite way. However my default assumption would be that no one inside google will do anything about this, because thats how giant corporations work.

[nixpulvis]

Please sir can I have some more?

Demanding some level of fairness in specific well thought out regulation is exactly the solution to a lot of these problems. It's a tried and true method of reeling in bad actors and imposing some checks and balances.

Realistically, no you can't expect to get the attention of Twitter, but officially it must be the case that they have to at least give real effort to maintaining some measurable level of equality amongst customers.

The actual question is why Google or Apple's App Store is special? Why can a bank pick and choose who they give loans to but the app walled gardens are in the wrong. I think we probably have the same general idea about this question, but I don't have a really solid answer.

Anyway, I feel compelled to rebel a bit, so just remember kids. Fuck the system, don't be polite, and fight for what you know deep down is right.

MOOORE!?

[rchaud]

> The actual question is why Google or Apple's App Store is special? Why can a bank pick and choose who they give loans to but the app walled gardens are in the wrong. I think we probably have the same general idea about this question, but I don't have a really solid answer.

Because they have spent untold millions since 2008 buying ads telling consumers that apps are the only way. Flash is dangerous. PWAs are dangerous. Never mind that our app uses Facebook SDK, requires GPS, mic and camera access for 'essential services'.

[indymike]

> PWAs are dangerous.

I've never seen that one from Google, and both iOS, Android and Chrome have pretty good support for PWAs. Source: we discontinued our mobile apps for a PWA. It's been great.

[heavyset_go]

If you want to implement basic functionality like push notifications in your PWA[1], Apple has gone out of their way to not implement them in Safari, and they prevent other browser engines from being distributed on the App Store.

The marketing line and apologetics imply that it's dangerous for PWAs to implement that basic functionality, therefore it's a good thing that PWAs are hobbled on iOS.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26520148

[OJFord]

What? Google spends (idk how much) money promoting PWAs. Just look at https://web.dev

Sure, maybe the Android division has a strategic preference for Android apps, but.. what would you expect, really?

[rchaud]

I think we both know that just because Google has a website about something, doesn't necessarily mean that they invest time, resources and organizational will into making it succesful.

When Google was courting developers to build for Android, they threw every possible financial incentive at them to get those app store numbers up. There are no such incentives for PWAs.

[jollybean]

This isn't how it works.

Every business tranches it's partners and customers, it's both fair and normative.

If you a a huge customer of XYZ, they're going to treat you differently than if you're not.

As long as they are acting within their own guidelines etc. then this is fine.

I think G. should probably give some notice for GPlay violations, but in my experience they do for these things.

If you don't have a 'Privacy' URL in your GPlay listing that's going to have been flagged for a while in my experience.

[cartoonworld]

This comment, and the truth within it, causes me to think of Stallman.

Aside discoverability, usability and the messaging problem of selling libre software to Mom, proprietary software and walled gardens will just do this to people.

At this time in history there is not really a viable option to access the huge market of app stores with de facto monopolies of the app ecosystem aside from hoping some multinational corporation won't capriciously squash your vulnerable sapling beneath its crocs or birkenstock on its way to exercise some stock options.

The app developers are barely a blip on corporate radars, they don't see 10k users of an app as valuable at all--but this person sure does! Javier probably feels this as much as google, apple, etc would an antitrust suit. Probably more, as unlike them, he has not prepared a multi-million dollar legal defense.

Even though F-Droid is available and those apps are usable and often very good, individuals are basically beholden to this garbage!

Of course he doesn't expect to be treated fairly, this blog concludes that it is unreasonable to yank his side project app and that he has no recourse because of the way that the app ecosystem is. I don't know how these state of affairs can be improved, quickly, but I hope it is possible.

[collaborative]

Thanks

Overall, I am optimistic about the future. I don't expect developing solo will make financial sense anytime soon, but I imagine the scales have to start turning at some point

The current treatment we get from Apple and Google is beyond belief. We add value to their respective platforms almost for free, and what little we make they take a fee from it. To top it off, Apple even charges us to be able to work for them. And then we get shown "our place" when they do things like what they just did to me

But as a collective, developers have a lot to gain if we get organized

[nixpulvis]

Here here!

[kortex]

I think this is reasonable. The bigger the entity is, the more likely it is to act predictably like a corporation, with fleets of lawyers and boards of directors and general risk-aversion. Smaller corps and indie devs have different risk tolerances, and thus act differently.

But also, bigger corps are bigger revenue streams for Google. Google has less to lose by alienating indie devs than Twitter.