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clnq
littlecranky67
To get rid of shovelware, Google should just add a search filter that allows filtering for "No In-App Purchases" and "Doesnt show ads" plus a "Costs money (no subscription)". But something tells me thats only good for the user, not the business.
MrDresden
That will filter out a lot of high quality apps made by single person dev teams that include the option for users to support them through in-app purchases.
That would effectively make it impossible for single/small dev teams to justify making apps for the Play store.
And I don't see why filter paid apps would solve anything. The aversion of the average Play store user to spending money on anything is in part the reason we are in this mess.
12 continuous years working as an Android developer and I've never bothered to personally release an app on the Play store. There is nothing to be gained from it except needing to support it without any hope of making back the cost of developing it.
Ads, I however agree with, are the bane of our time. Except, due to the aversion to paying for apps, it has become the only way small dev teams can make a living.
The change needs to happen on the consumer side for this one. Buy the apps that you enjoy using.
tgsovlerkhgsel
I'm not bothering to make open source apps for Android because they'll be inevitably flooded out by 1000 ad- and microtransaction-infested variants, and I'm not even allowed to distinguish myself from them with my primary feature, "free of that garbage" (IIRC you can't even mention it in the app description, definitely not in the name).
There are enough people happy to just make and maintain a cool thing, but I can't find their work.
fxtentacle
I think you just argued that we should go back to shareware. Free to download and then a one-time payment to unlock all functionality. That's also easy to support officially in the store and it's easy to add a filter for.
The problem with allowing IAP to be used for a shareware-like unlock is that there's nothing stopping shady developers from forcing a subscription on you later even though you already paid now. Forgot which one that was, but this kind of double dipping recently happened to a popular baby monitor.
JohnFen
> That will filter out a lot of high quality apps made by single person dev teams
Maybe.
On the other hand, when I see an app that includes ads or in-app purchases, I assume it's a low-quality app by default. Such a filter would be useful to me and wouldn't change my selection process. It would make it much less onerous over having to "manually" filter those apps out (which would make the app store much more useful to me).
I prefer apps that just charge me up front rather than use in-app purchases or ads.
michaelmrose
Integrating ads with your app isn't merely trying to manipulate your users in a way that is liable to exploit, harm, disadvantage, or oppose their interests. It is virtually certainly compromising their privacy in a fashion that isn't immediately obvious and opening up a security hole that may be used to harm them further.
The first and most obvious clue that what you are considering is wrong is the fact that you are admitting that if people were presented with a choice they would overwhelmingly opt out of such a system so pervasively that there wouldn't be any money in it at all.
> That would effectively make it impossible for single/small dev teams to justify making apps for the Play store.
This is an inversion of priorities. The dev's profession exits to create useful things for users. The users don't exist to enable the devs profession. If the only way an app can come into existence is through the exploitation and disadvantage of its users then the world would be better off if it didn't exist.
sideshowb
You just need to change your filter rule such that a single iap to upgrade from free to premium version, can be considered similar to a paid app with no iap.
geraldhh
> single person dev teams
not to put too fine a point on it, but does a single person really constitute a team?
autoexec
> And I don't see why filter paid apps would solve anything. The aversion of the average Play store user to spending money on anything is in part the reason we are in this mess
If people can find apps that meet their needs which are also free, and free of ads and in-app purchases they should absolutely use those apps. Making it harder for users to find those apps is a much bigger problem than "but I wanted someone to pay me for giving them the same thing!"
The solution for people who want money is to make apps that offer valuable features the free apps don't have, not to make the free apps impossible to find because they're scared they can't compete.
JCharante
> 12 continuous years working as an Android developer and I've never bothered to personally release an app on the Play store. There is nothing to be gained from it except needing to support it without any hope of making back the cost of developing it.
As a high schooler it was pretty cool to publish a small game onto the play store and have friends download it from there.
ssl232
You need F-Droid. It's not a silver bullet but the high ranked apps on there are great.
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pjc50
Users hate paying upfront for apps precisely because the quality is unknown. It's the Akerloff "market for lemons" paper in real life.
rchaud
App stores offer refunds.
It was better when apps had a fixed price like in the early 2010s. At some point it was decided that subscription apps were where the money was at, both for devs and for Apple who took a silent cut every month.
littlecranky67
I would challenge that. iOS Appstore is way more known to charge for apps and have less IAP/Ad financed App. Also, good examples are Steam or other Game Stores - but in order for that to work, you need a refund policy (i.e. have a 30minutes refund period). For Apps with one-time use that can't have a return policy, there could be separate indicators/warnings during purchase.
KeplerBoy
Do these apps even exist anymore? I feel like they never really did on Android and are a dieing breed on iOS.
Of course them being hard to find on the store, is part of why they don't exist in the first place. Fixing that would help.
rchaud
Don't try to find that needle in the haystack of a million-app Play Store. F-droid is all you need.
Testers20
[flagged]
KomoD
I'd love a filter like that, I'd totally pay once for apps if they just worked and didn't have extra bloat, subscriptions, IAPs, etc.
63
They could also start ordering search results by relevancy or quality instead of propensity to make money, but that won't happen either
michaelmrose
It is so bad that in the official play store app ads potentially for competitors or irrelevant apps will appear before the item even when you search for the entire name of the app. This means that devs are incentivized to buy ads for their own name lest their competitor be listed first and if they don't you might well download malware.
On net the play store is 100% useless because of ads and poor search. The only way to adequately search for apps is by using an actual search engine, even googles, in your mobile browser to find apps and then using the play store solely for installation.
The play store is a product so bad if it wasn't required to install software it would have no users. It is the windows ME of google's product lines. It is so bad that Google ought to be embarrassed to show it off in public.
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Testers20
[flagged]
jayd16
I don't really understand how this could stop shovelware. Shovelware devs have the bandwidth to get something tested on 20 devices. This would only stop one man passion projects.
I wonder if its just a way to sell a cloud build and testing service.
Testers20
[flagged]
tadfisher
They do have automated + manual reviews. I think the $99/yr developer account is what separates Google from Apple here, along with much stricter policy enforcement on the Apple side.
dangus
I have to think that $99 a year keeps away a lot of people who aren’t serious, and maybe even discourages various scams and schemes that depend on flooding platforms with apps scammers know will get rejected eventually in a whack-a-mole fashion.
If your account gets banned and you lose $99 before the scam paid off it’s not worth your time.
heavyset_go
There are multimillion dollar scams on the App Store[1]:
> That man’s name is Kosta Eleftheriou, and over the past few months, he’s made a convincing case that Apple is either uninterested or incompetent at stopping multimillion-dollar scams in its own App Store. He’s repeatedly found scam apps that prey on ordinary iPhone and iPad owners by luring them into a “free trial” of an app with seemingly thousands of fake 5-star reviews, only to charge them outrageous sums of money for a recurring subscription that many don’t understand how to cancel. “It’s a situation that most communities are blind to because of how Apple is essentially brainwashing people into believing the App Store is a trusted place,” he tells The Verge.
The fee is nothing.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/8/22272849/apple-app-store-s...
lakpan
I think you underestimate how much scamming pays. It’s much more than $99 per day, so unless Apple blocks the app immediately they’re still making money.
clnq
I didn’t know Google reviewed apps manually as well. I thought it was all automated as I’ve not heard of an app not passing. There are even some people who have spoken about automating making and publishing shovelware apps for a time.
It takes a bit of effort even to get an app on public TestFlight on Apple’s side. Plus the fee, which is reasonable for a thorough review.
Anyways, I edited my comment to not misrepresent the Play Store process, thanks.
alias_neo
I can assure you, Google does have people review apps.
Our app gets held up fairly regularly, I'm not sure why us in particular, but we have an app that requires our licensed service to use, quite often they'll muck up the registration process with the test accounts we provide (they're one-time) registration, and then hold up our app until we provide more test accounts for them to use.
They also recently took issue with some functionality of our app that they claim existed (but doesn't) and forced us to update our privacy policy to mention it so we can get it through. I know for a fact, said functionality doesn't exist, because I lead the team that builds the backend, but there was just no arguing with them.
Larrikin
It's mostly automated but then you will get someone every so often that holds up your release, can only speak by quoting the guidelines, make you decipher their cryptic quote, just to find out that it's about some rule change from six months ago you missed in an email.
It's even more fun when it's a purely administrative thing like updating information in a link on your developer profile, but they make you upload a near identical binary, since the automation has kicked in again and they can't rereview an already submitted and rejected app.
heavyset_go
Google charges developers fees, as well, when it comes to publishing.
tadfisher
It's a one-time fee for the developer account and it's $25, which is quite different from a $99/yr charge to keep your apps live on the App Store.
clumsysmurf
> If Google would want to get rid of shovelware on the Play Store, they know what to do - (edit: better) automated + human reviews
They could also do something like a progressive tax, like per year (USD), based on apps submitted:
1 free; 2-5 apps $20 each; 6-10 apps $40 each; 10+ apps $100 each
Nobody is putting out 10 high quality apps per year ;)
happymellon
Couldn't I just create two accounts?
clumsysmurf
At the moment, you can. I have two accounts (by mistake). However, I'm not sure what the purpose of keeping 2 accounts active simultaneously is ... if one is banned, the other will be too (so there is no point in safety by numbers).
In order for this progressive taxing scheme to work they would have to make sure each personal account is unique per person, and they are already increasing the requirements to verify your identification (all Android devs have to verify this information soon).
nine_k
Two, maybe. 100, with much more trouble.
majani
Google's attachment to "low touch" approach to support is maniacal at this point. There's no use confronting them about it, they'll never change
Aulig
What a stupid requirement. I run an app builder and offer my users plenty of ways to test their app beforehand, but outside of Google Play, since their system is just cumbersome.
This will make it nearly impossible to get an app published as a small business, since who the hell has 20 users just waiting for your app? It's already a huge struggle to help people with publishing their app.
The road to hell is truly paved with good intentions. All the scam apps will have no problem cheating this system, but honest devs will struggle. I can only hope Google reconsiders this requirement, otherwise it might be worth it to push my users more towards alternative app stores. We already support the Amazon App Store and the Huawei App Gallery (which are a lot easier to publish apps in), but the user base is just not there unfortunately.
forgotpwd16
>since who the hell has 20 users just waiting for your app
And that's how test-as-a-service is born.
brucecrust
Already here. I work in that industry.
Anamon
> who the hell has 20 users just waiting for your app?
I'd wager that the majority of apps published to app stores struggle to find 20 users total, period. Let alone before public release.
It really seems like an obviously counterproductive measure. I think you're totally right in that the people who will have the least issues passing these new requirements, are those who don't shy away from dishonesty.
sourav22
Thought that i would atleast create an app that is useful, so spent 1 month developing it, their was more to it but i wanted to publish atleast 1 app. So spent $25 to create account , than spent 3-4 hours publishing app , waited 5 days to get released. Today it was showing " Closed testing " in app status. I was not aware of it. So searched on internet & read about Google's NEW REQUIREMENTS.
This month on 16- Nov i created account on it & that time i was not aware of this new policy!!!!!! From where the hell i am going to bring 20 testers now !!!!!
bigiain
BRB, starting up AndroidAppDevTesting.io - faking test users to PlayStore-as-a-Service.
For just $29.95/month we will load your new app onto a fleet of 20 test Android devices and run your Appium or Selendroid test suites twice a day for 14 days.
dkarras
you joke but this will happen.
bigiain
I mean, it's kinda just BrowserStack or DeviceFarm and an Ansible script, right?
(I'd spend an evening or two setting up a landing page and duct taping that Ansible script onto my Stripe account, but I've got a personal policy of never ever trying to sell tools to developers...)
MrDresden
>I've got a personal policy of never ever trying to sell tools to developers...
It feels like there is a story there. Care to share?
cryptoz
Cute but surely those devices, accounts and IPs will all be banned, along with the developer who used the service? I wouldn't play around with my account like that personally.
creshal
I'll be worth it to scammers. As so often with misguided policies, only the honest are punished.
dangus
I feel like this actually would be a weirdly therapeutic little side gig.
e12e
Why not resell testers from Amazon Turk with a hefty markup?
Testers20
[flagged]
grishka
An unpopular opinion: app stores as a default means of app distribution need to die, yesterday. The intentions were good, but in the end, it's horrible for everyone — both the users and the developers. Especially for those outside of the US who don't share the American obsession with relentlessly protecting everyone from the very idea of sexuality, whether they want that protection or not. And the reviews are just never helpful to neither users nor developers. And apps begging for those reviews always feel pathetic.
diffeomorphism
Not likely. Both mobile platforms have app stores, windows has winget/chocolatey/..., macs are trying/have brew and linux has package managers since the 90s. It seems very much that this approach is winning over "side-loading" and for good reason.
Your complaint is somewhat orthogonal to this. It would be perfectly possible to just have multiple repositories/sources backing the same app store with different values of curation/censorship. Tick a box once to enable the sources and it is completely seamless. Of course, the store owners have little incentive to do that, since they earn a cut if you buy from their repo, but that is why you have to force "gatekeepers" (in the EU terminology). If they make it non-seamless, fine them and fine them again until they do.
idle_zealot
I think you and GP are using different definitions of "App Store". GP seems to be taking issue with how walled gardens enable application censorship and erode user control. You counter that standardized application installation/management is good UX and compatible with models that allow anyone to spin up software repositories, which is true, but doesn't counter anything GP says.
diffeomorphism
GP is equating app stores with walled gardens. I am saying that this need not be the case and that you should keep the benefits while getting rid of the points he is criticizing.
> but doesn't counter anything GP says.
It says that razing the earth and getting rid of the whole concept is overkill and his criticism should not be of app stores as such but of "gatekeepers" abusing their position.
firejake308
Sorry, are you saying that winget, chocolatey, and brew are equivalent to the mobile App Store? Because for the average user, that is not remotely true. The App Store is how you install programs on mobile by default. On desktop, however, the default installation process is to download an installer/executable from a website. Only very technically literate people (basically just software developers) will be installing things via winget, chocolatey, or brew
thaumasiotes
Since Google is blocked in China, the default process for installing Android applications there is also to download an .apk from the internet and install it manually.
It works without a hiccup on my phone running LineageOS. I haven't tried on something running stock Android.
But it leads me to suspect that there isn't much standing in the way of distributing your Android apps this way outside of China, either.
diffeomorphism
> Sorry, are you saying that
No.
JohnFen
> It seems very much that this approach is winning over "side-loading"
But it's a shame. I hate app stores, personally. Not just on smartphones, but everywhere else they've been popping up.
vbezhenar
Web managed to survive and thrive without App Stores, so I agree with you. What we need is resilient implementation for applications, so it's safe to install anything, just like it's safe to browse anything. May be some curation is good for applications with very deep integration with OS, like file browsers or remote control. But for typical application which could work as a website, there's no reason to have any curation.
grishka
Modern mobile OSes (and macOS) are already resilient. An app can't access anything sensitive unless you give it a permission to do so.
averageRoyalty
> Web managed to survive and thrive without App Stores
Did it? It reached critical mass and started getting shittier, more complex and more closed.
Open is great whilst the majority of users are technical or at least competent in critical thinking. Once you pass that tipping point, protectionism is a necessity.
michaelmrose
This sounds good but its really impractical in practice. Even well designed systems suffer from security holes. Telling dumb people they can install anything they like will always be a harmful pretense.
rchaud
> Especially for those outside of the US who don't share the American obsession with relentlessly protecting everyone from the very idea of sexuality, whether they want that protection or not.
The first step would be to not have mobile telecom device OSes run by American advertising and media companies.
Unfortunately mobile Linux is limited to ultra-small vendors liek Purism and Pinephone.
majani
90% of apps could just be websites, so developers also bear a lot of responsibility for jumping onto that bandwagon for little benefit
nerdjon
While I agree on the sexuality part of this and I do wish that wasn’t a problem on the App Store.
I disagree with this.
There are a lot of situations where an app is unnecessary. I feel like we have too many situations where it could just be a website.
But if I am going to download an app I prefer the App Store. Especially if it’s an app that I need to spend money on/with.
Testers20
[flagged]
rock_artist
This sounds like another nail in the coffin of indie devs.
I have 2-3 apps. I’ve started with Android with eclipse.
Back then I was really enjoying how I could make a small utility and get it on devices quickly.
After my 3rd nexus just died I’ve switched to Apple walled garden and.. got back to developing for Apple eco-system some indie apps.
Since then, The amount of resources I’ve spent on just maintaining an existing app on Google play was so time consuming.
Let alone API and depreciation, the play store required me after all those years sooo much documents and procedures just to keep my account.
I’m not sure how Google got the play store experience to be so worse than Apple.
jmiskovic
Exactly this, so much energy is needed just to keep things working as they were. It's like Google actively cultivates and accelerates the software rot. Personally I'm tired of it and I'm getting off the train with my app.
I'll also stop using the Play Store because this change clearly signals what's welcome there. They don't want to host quirky-but-useful indie apps with personality. They would rather have the polished addiction forming platforms for corporations. Worst thing, they dress it up as a favor to their users.
F-Droid looks good, though.
justworkout
20 people is just a start. I expect it to ramp up and effectively lock out indie developers. This alone would've prevented stuff like Flappy Bird from ever being published.
johnmaguire
I've had issues with my camera manufacturer's app for syncing photos on Android for years, so I finally built a super lightweight replacement which is faster and more reliable.[0] I used it for a year or so before finally going through the hassle of publishing it to the Play Store.
The app has a very limited audience. In the first month, I've had approximately 28 purchases. If I had to find 20 people to use the app for a couple weeks before I could publish, it wouldn't have been published.
[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.johnmaguire...
clumsysmurf
The other question that has come up, is what happens when one of the 20 testers has their account banned? Is the guilt-by-association thing going to apply; would the developer account also get shut down?
secretsatan
Yeah, this is really arbitrary, when I first got started in mobile apps I had one or two users to start with, I didn't know anyone who would help, it was really specialised as it was, catering to a niche market, I just had an idea and I could publish it (to apple in my case).
It didn't do well, but I still sell copies every month, and getting an app on a store considerably improved job prospects after a somewhat drastic change in career direction.
This sucks.
Gigachad
Realistically there is not much reason for flappy bird to be on the store. It could have been a website.
vsnf
What if I want to program in Java, not JavaScript? What if I don't want to learn how to work with PWA and instead just want have an easily offline-accessible app? What if I wanted to add in-app purchases?
There's plenty of reasons for apps like Flappy Bird to be on the store.
rokkitmensch
The universe really doesn't cater to the howls of "but I just want to!"
justworkout
That goes for virtually every corporate app that this policy change benefits.
Turing_Machine
"Wanting to get paid for your work" is a reason.
teapot7
Some programmers like the idea of making a profit. Apps facilitate this.
mpalczewski
This would have prevented me from publishing my first app, which ended up getting me my first job and a great career.
arunkumar9t2
Same, got my first Android dev job from my side projects. Don't think current state of app stores would let something like that happen easily.
txtsd
Wow. Could you tell us more about your journey?
mpalczewski
I bought a t-mobile g1 the first android phone. At the time my school's wifi needed you to log in every time you joined the network. I wrote an app that logged you in automatically. Solved a need I had, I then put in in the app store for $0.99 and sold a few hundred.
I went to a small company career fair for the free lunch. When they saw I had an app in the app store, I had immediate interest and got an internship.
silenced_trope
Wow? It sounds like he created a portfolio piece. lol.
Testers20
[flagged]
tapoxi
Well there goes any hope I had of publishing to the Play Store. I don't know 20 people with an Android phone. What's the option here? Beg for random people to install your beta app?
dr_kiszonka
There will be discords for fellow devs to install each other's apps and possibly companies to facilitate it for a fee (e.g., $3 per install + 50c per day of "testing"). Although, if testers have to be in the same market as where the app is to be sold, this could get a bit more expensive.
mgarciaisaia
Developing-world startup idea here. +90% of Android market share here in Argentina, and probably most South American countries (if not all).
JohnFen
> Beg for random people to install your beta app?
I wouldn't call it "begging", but essentially, yes, this is what I've always done.
YetAnotherNick
It's definitely weird rule if I understand it correctly. If the app developer selects 20 people, what benefit does it offer.
discard124
That seems absurdly onerous for indie devs. I hope Apple doesn’t do anything as extreme.
dmitrygr
I cannot imagine any sane person coming up with this as a solution to any problem other than "it is too easy as an indie developer to make an app, solve a problem people have, and make it big in the world". Seriously whose ass did this idea get pulled from, and how can this be justified?
Rastonbury
Yeah this is just going to spawn a cottage industry on Fiverr with jobs for "20 people testing your Android app", it honestly reminds me of my county's bureaucrats needlessly adding hoops to a process (which is so they can collect bribes).
Even for a small company of up to 10 people, I doubt many have 20 testing user lying around ready and waiting. Either pay/recruit or everyone get their extended families
gilgoomesh
My guess is that 2 weeks and the usage pattern of 20 users gives Google enough data points to determine whether the app is just AI generated bot spam. Because I'm betting there's a lot of that at the moment.
Still seems like absurdly high bar for indie devs to clear.
HurdsTimesNear
Maybe that is the exact problem this is meant to solve. Maybe all these countless apps cost too much to host for google?
sebtron
This lockdown of what used to be a relatively accessible app distribution system is sad. At least we have F-Droid :)
helsinkiandrew
Isn't this just going to create lots of dodgy services that offer a "test 20 apps and 20 people will test yours", that already exist for giving app 5 star reviews?
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As the article says, it’s likely that the devs who previously would test their apps prior to release had higher quality apps just because they were experienced and skilled devs, not because of an arbitrary number of people testing the app for an arbitrary length of time.
If Google would want to get rid of shovelware on the Play Store, they know what to do - (edit: better) automated + human reviews, like Apple. That would be what would nip shovelware in the bud.
But they’re just trying to outsource the cost of that. It feels like one of those Google initiatives that was started by someone who cared, then got watered down to the point of counter-productivity by MBA logic.