Update: On 26th of June in 2019, after nearly a year since the account termination, Google reinstated my Play Developer account.

Unmoved at Slush

I’m the sole founder and sole developer of a game & app studio, Unmoved. I had a game on Google Play Store in a private beta before July 2018 when Google terminated my developer account.

Google told that this was done because some other developer associated to me had multiple account violations. I do not know who this person might be or what violations they might have committed. I appealed Google’s decision but they wouldn’t reinstate my account and suggested me to use “an alternative method for distributing” instead of the Play Store.

The problem with alternative methods, 3rd party app stores, is that they have relatively small market share and some have limited capabilities compared to Google Play. Also, it seems that Apple might do the same kind of exclusion regarding their App Store distribution one day.

In March 2019, Google started a competing business called Stadia Games and Entertainment. In light of this case, is it smart to invest in developing native apps on these two platforms? Are current app developers overestimating their influence on the infrastructure they built upon?

Is there anybody who could help with my case? The transcript between me and Google can be found at the bottom of this post.

Apps, stores and the web

According to StatCounter, Android currently has 75.33% market share among mobile OS platforms worldwide and iOS has 22.4%. This amounts to a 97.73% combined duopoly over the worldwide mobile market.

In addition to the official Play Store, Android has the ability to download and install apps outside of an app store or from 3rd party app stores. If a 3rd party app store doesn’t come pre-installed with a phone, as in the case of Samsung Galaxy Store, it requires a series of steps from a user to download and install one.

On Android 9, a user has to go into the settings under “Apps & Notifications” > “Advanced” > “Special app access” > “Install unknown apps” and tap on their browser of choice to allow installation from that source.

Even with this configuration, a 3rd party app store has limited capabilities compared to Play Store such as the inability to update apps in the background without requiring the user to approve each update separately.

Apple App Store, on the other hand, doesn’t support 3rd party app stores or installations outside of an app store except for developer testing and internal enterprise use cases. Even in these exceptions, Apple has the ability to revoke the certificate required based on their own interests and judgement. Apple recently did this to Facebook and reportedly paralyzed their internal company workflows that relied on iOS apps.

In addition to native Android and iOS apps, consumers can use web apps through a browser. In many cases this requires rewriting of a native app to be compatible on the web which might not be able to provide the same features or performance. The main problem lies in the current consumer behavior: apps accounted for 88% of time spent compared to 12% on a web browser on mobile devices in the US in 2018.

App & developer reviews

It is hard to estimate the effectiveness of app store reviews. Underlying infrastructure is not fully open, such as the algorithms behind static or dynamic analysis. Also, the reviews are not complete as Google & Apple aren’t reviewing code on the servers, only client.

Google’s approach to app reviews doesn’t include upfront inspection by human reviewers, as in the case of Apple, but apps are instead automatically scanned with Google Play Protect, if the user doesn’t opt-out. Google also sometimes goes through the Play Store with unspecified methods and for example removed 700,000 “bad apps” in 2017. How many of these “bad apps” might have been false positives?

In addition to app reviews, Google reviews associations between developers. I’m assuming this is done to limit the ability of an excluded developer to make a new account on the platform or use someone else’s account to publish their own apps.

Based on my experience through Unmoved, and finding a couple of similar cases online here and here, the termination on developer reviews seems to be unfair without a transparent way to appeal.

In both of the referenced cases, the accounts were later reinstated but the developers couldn’t pinpoint the reason for the change on Google’s part. One advice was to get in touch with a local “Google Dev Relations” person but these are not listed on Google’s site. It seems that writing a blog post and getting publicity on Hacker News and Reddit helped the cases.

Platform control

As Play Store and App Store are the dominant players in the worldwide mobile ecosystem and mobile web apps are a niche, it would be devastating for a company to be kicked out of the stores. Based on Google’s terms and Apple’s terms, they can remove any developer for any reason. There are at least five leverages that these two companies can use for their own gain or in the interest of companies they partner with or invest in.

1.Exclusion of a developer. As a thought experiment, suppose Google would kick out Spotify in order to get more users for their competing Google Play Music using the same procedures they used for Unmoved. Consumers would either have to bear with a potentially inferior Spotify web app experience, install a native Spotify app through other means than Play Store, switch to another operating system by either upgrading their current device or buying a new one, or use Play Music instead. If the offerings of Spotify and Play Music are comparable, consumers might choose the easiest route to use Play Music instead.

In addition to directly competing, these platform companies invest in others. These relations might generate incentives to exclude their competitors. It seems that as long as a developer has strong enough brand behind them, it benefits the platform more to keep the developer included even in the case of competing interests.

2.Pricing. Apple allows only certain apps to circumvent their 30% cut on payments, one of them being Netflix with their monthly subscription. On the other hand, Spotify is not allowed to do the same with their subscriptions. In addition to setting the level on pricing, these platform companies have the ability to compete unfairly on their platforms by not having to pay the cut that others need to.

An example of this is the case with Spotify where they raised their price by 30% to customers in order to fund the 30% IAP cut while Apple was able to keep their pricing of Apple Music fixed to a lower point.

3.Excluding features from certain or all developers that are available for the platform provider themselves to compete on. An example of such behaviour is from Apple as Spotify claims “Apple Music sends the very type of promotional push notifications that it forbids its rivals to send”.

Additionally, platforms might suddenly remove features that have been available or add new restrictions on the use of features such as Spotify claiming “Apple arbitrarily decides to prohibit use of its API to recommend podcasts to users”.

4.Search rankings. These platform companies have the ability to alter the search rankings on their stores and possibly demote competing products. It is hard to know if search rankings have been altered as the algorithms behind them are not open-source on App Store or Play Store. Both of these stores also have a certain amount of editor-curated lists and the basis for selection is not revealed. These platforms also have the possibility to advertise their own apps for free.

5.Collected data from competitors. These platforms have the potential to gather data from their competitors, such as sales or usage statistics.

Competition and innovation

Under the current mobile duopoly, is it possible for new innovations and companies to form? Entering into new market segments with little competition remains open but disrupting saturated markets is a tilted playing field. If Netflix can get an exclusive deal with Apple to circumvent the 30% cut, it seems that a new competitor to Netflix on iOS is unlikely without a similar deal.

There might be need for app neutrality, a concept similar to net neutrality, that would aim to treat all apps in an app store equally.

Open stores, open web?

There are two ways to improve the current situation in the mobile app market: level the playing field on Android & iOS by implementing app neutrality or improve web technologies to match native apps.

Both of these companies also develop the default browsers on their platforms that control the clear majority on mobile worldwide which might incentivize to slow down the progress of web technologies in order to collect fees from app stores and limit competition. Additionally, in the case of iOS, WebKit and Javascript Core developed by Apple are the only allowed browser and javascript engine respectively.

Allowing 3rd party app stores on iOS and easing the installation of them on Android could ultimately be better for users through broadened choice by competition. In addition to a browser ballot, these platforms could also have app store ballots.

These measures could benefit competition, users and the whole industry. What do you think?