[malinens]

You seem to had never gone trough this approval process. There are many dark patterns there:

* Asking for huge amount of money in the of the process (after you wasted hundreds of hours of expensive developer time) * forcing to use restricted scope (read,White,delete) for standard IMAP access even if you need only read-only access or use their proprietary API with read-only scope with unknown rate limits and which is difficult and time-consuming to use * cryptic messages why app is not approved and ignoring arguments made for their questions * often changing APIs (access token formats)

They do everything to avoid competition not making better product but by locking existing customers to their ecosystem.

And this is not only google. We had similar issues Apple and Meta.

[tptacek]

I am, because reasons, quite familiar with the security review portion of the process. Not only is it mostly/probably not run this way for anticompetitive reasons, but Google doesn't even run the audits; they picked specific auditors (last I checked, Bishop Fox and Leviathan), both of which have gold-plated reputations.

Like I said, there are things I don't love about the program. But it's not an elaborate hazing ritual.