An introduction

I have been developing Android apps for nearly 10 years and I have personally lived the evolution of the whole Android ecosystem, since Android 1.5 to Android 9.0, from “Android Market” to “Google Play”.

I started developing apps as a hobby, later on I joined a major company as developer and finally 4 years ago I decided to follow my own path and co-founded a start-up with a colleague. Android has given me all, a career path, economic independence and best of all, the privilege of making a living doing what I would do just for fun.

While it is undeniable that Google Play has flourished to become the greatest App, Games and Media distribution platform of all times and has devoted all the effort to provide the best experience to more than 2 billion users, it has failed in one simple and plain key point:

Developer customer support

Two other key services provided by Google for Android developers are Admob and Google Ads. If I have a problem with Google Ads, I can just make a phone call and have direct customer support. If I encounter any problem with Admob I can even meet in person with my local Admob Account manager, which is great.

But If I have a problem as a developer at Google Play I can just get a text form and template answers.

We count with all kind of tools in our developer console to publish, monetize, track, monitor, get user feedback, etc… but we cannot just simply get a proper “human” support when an issue arises.

And I can tell you that issues arise more often that we could expect, if you are lucky it’s just an app suspension that can be fixed with an app update but others is an app removal and you must to republish your app. It can be even worse, one day you can receive an email that notifies you about your “Google Play Publisher account termination”.