On June 8, 2018, I received a mail from the Google Play team informing me that my application Cozmic Zoom Lite had been removed because of a “device and network abuse”. Having no idea of what I was accused of, I appealed that decision and asked for more information. The appeal was rejected, however I was allowed to publish a new version (with a different name and zeroing my downloads) and informed that the problem may be related to a YouTube access. Actually the app contained a few scientific videos (mainly from the public domain, or else with a permission from the authors), displayed with the official YouTube API. Having read through the API terms of service, I couldn’t deduce how my app infringed them. Maybe it was the popups that I displayed at the beginning of the videos to credit the authors? I was not certain, and didn’t want to take any risks (the mail was threatening to terminate my account) so I published a new version without YouTube, hosting the videos on my own server.

I was quietly continuing my developer activity, between user support for my mainstream apps and the development of a new ambitious project of mobile apps aimed at professionals. But on July 31, 2019, a new mail from the Google Play team told me that my Star Words app was removed because of an alleged “malicious behavior”, followed by the fatal message informing me that my developer account was terminated.

Me after receiving Google Play’s mail.

I had already read stories about developers having their accounts terminated, but I just thought that in my case, having done nothing wrong, it would be easy to demonstrate my good faith. Hoping that this new false positive problem would be solved quickly, I immediately appealed. Alas, so far, my appeals have run into a wall, and what is worse, after having read backwards and forwards through the “malicious behavior” policies, I still don’t know the case against me. Did my anti-piracy system triggered Google’s new “Play Protect” antivirus? Or is it something else? I do not know, and the Google robots are deaf and mute.

Two alleged infringements in eight years of development, this is what Google Play calls “multiple violations of the policies”, and this is how a career as Android developer is ended overnight for no reason.

During these 8 years of mobile development, I published many app updates, not only on Google Play, but also on iOS, Amazon Appstore, and many others. It could happen sometimes that an update was rejected, for whatever reasons (and believe me, in any substantial app, issues can occur). The technical support of these different app stores then told me precisely what was the problem, after which I could submit a corrected version. In the worst case, some dialog with the support was necessary, but every time, the update was finally published. This is the normal operation between a developer and a support team, and this is how most app stores work. But not Google Play.

Dear users, if you have used and enjoyed my applications, I appeal to you today to share this letter. Even if for most of you, apps are mere trivial toys that pop up (and die out) with a tap on your phone, in the background there are real people who spent days and nights to provide you with these few minutes of fun.

Dear fellow developers, I wish that this letter, setting myself aside, helps to advance the cause of a healthier relationship between the developers and the first app store in the world. If you purchased an Android developer account, if you carefully followed the rules, if you made every effort to produce safe quality apps, you still need to know that you’re not immune to an unjustified ban. It is not possible to work seriously in these conditions. In case of technical or legal issue, we must know exactly what it is about, and have the possibility to correct it. Let us send this message to the Google Play team @GooglePlayDev.

Dear Google Play team, I think that a platform such as Android needs confidence. It needs users’ confidence in the system, by the guarantee of a safe environment protected against malicious applications. But it also needs the confidence of developers, who need a minimum of serenity in order to be able to invest seriously in the development of applications that are the strength of Android, without the fear of losing everything overnight. Dear Google Play, please do the right thing to restore this confidence.

Patrick Godeau

Developer

@TokataSoft