[PythonicAlpha]

The OP made some grave errors with his apps. But is it really a good reason, to not tell him, what was going wrong and instead swinging the big hammer on his head (life-long ban)?

Google once started with the slogan "Don't be evil".

By being the new "Judge Dredd" of the internet, it can just become, what it never wanted to be. All that, just because Google tries to drive technology to its extremes ("customer-service from hell").

This is going to be more and more important, because there exist only very few major app-stores and very few major internet-payment systems (gladly, there the situation could still change to the better). But I know, how much Paypal was criticized because of his behavior and being a semi-monopolist in internet payments.

With our today's trend to centralization -- I don't want to put my fate into the hand of one of these new Judge Dredds.

[g051051]

They did tell him, didn't they? They told him 3 times.

[PythonicAlpha]

As much I understood, they did tell him not enough, that he could understand what was wrong. Automated eMails are "customer-support from hell".

[smoe]

I have no experience with google customer support as a normal developer[1], but I guess there is a vast amount of this kind of arguably spamy apps submitted every day. On that scale it's probably hard and too time consuming to distinguish naive from fraudulent developers.

For me its difficult to believe, that someone who has been a developer for so long, really didn't think, that using another companies name in an app name, use their logo – and removing their ads(?)[2] – couldn't lead to some sort of serious problems.

The punishment might be too harsh, but defending yourself in this case with 70/80 rebelism and doing them a favor with "free advertisement" is just bizarre.

[1] I've worked in the advertisement team of the biggest swiss news site, and we got decent personal support from google. Unfortunately, i guess it is as always in life: If you're big, others will listen to you. If not, you'll be ignored.

[2] "No ads, no junk, just videos" http://www.myappwiz.com/home/getapp?platform=Android&appID=c...

[AppSec]

Googles' model is to allow apps without pre-screening. This model (trust but verify) lends itself to having more spammy apps submitted to it (no proof, just an educated guess). Google is providing a gateway for others to generate income.

The OP stated: 1) They had a disclaimer in multiple places. 2) They reached out explicitly because they weren't sure where the real problem existed. 3) Only one app was notified at a time when multiple apps had been following the same style and none were notified until later. Surely Google would want to investigate whether the developer posted any other apps which might be in violation? 4) Was not trying to nor had any interest in making any money off of this set of apps.

It has been said, the OP was naive and should have pulled the apps after the first notice since they were just beta. But any corporation that is providing business support services really needs to fund a customer service desk with real people. The fact that people use google for businesses like this knowing this situation is really surprising.