massacre of Android developers

Hint for everyone: never show your apps on any forums!

Why? Story from Poland:

there’s forum for Android developers… some of them were showing their apps (like live wallpapers, battery widgets and so on). One guy (troll?) was jealous about their income, so he reported all their apps to Google.

And Google banned many, many developer accounts.

Thread on polish forum: http://forum.android.com.pl/f42/publiczne-ostrzea-enie-209838/

Google translate version: http://translate.google.pl/translate?sl=pl&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=pl&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fforum.android.com.pl%2Ff42%2Fpubliczne-ostrzea-enie-209838%2F

Some of my games are posted there. I shouldn’t be afraid - nothing against terms, no notification ads and such - but still.
I’m from Poland if someone needs a better translation of some part, let me know - but there is not much said and I don’t know the people involved.

So. Can you please tell me how its even possible that one developer can you ban other developer?

Isnt that googles job?

From what I read he reported all their apps. Google had to check them and find something was wrong - maybe notification ads without information or sth.

Wow talk about jealousy…I hope Google is more aware of cases like this. Wouldn’t want a jealous developer reportiang my apps and getting me in any unnecessary trouble.

I just find it odd that Google would fall prey so easily and then this guy would come out and boast about it too.

This is just some prank! You need to get (probably) a lot reports before they take some actions because there are developers who puts low rating, bad comments and report others for scam and this is very expressed on big gaming flash portals and I sure that Google is aware of this. The second, you can vote only once from one phone so you can not spam reports. Third, there is probably some banned developers but there is also a lot ad-bombs how I love to call apps filled only with ads and no content.

Maybe it was a coincidence - there is the change in policy so maybe Google was checking their apps anyway. One of those developers cried how he now has 177 Android projects to delete - I suppose if he really had 177 apps then it’s posibble that he was making ad-bombs.

My point exactly. :slight_smile:

Plus showing apps in forums such as this is a good way to get publicity, get help and sometimes its nice for others to know that when you mention ‘your app’, you can prove it by giving a link to it.

It looks like the reason they were banned is they had “placebo” apps that were claiming that they speed up the internet (doing nothing in reality). All such apps (not only Polish) were removed (as one claimes on that forum) and it’s posibble that the original posted had nothing to do with those bans and was just trolling.

Now that sounds a lot more plausible.

Google could have very easily taken action against apps which claimed to do something but in reality didn’t do it. That is deception and I’d assume Google would not support it.

I have a developer who has apps that say they scan fingerprints and what not but he clearly puts a Disclaimer saying its fake. He’s been around for ages and never gotten banned or warned.

As far as ads go, I highly doubt Google would find its target in Polish forums. I’m sure they have an advanced mechanism for dealing with this.