7 ms·

Daily reminder that your business/project/hobby should not depend on anything controlled by Google. Edit: Despite all their shortcomings, I wouldn't mind seein

Daily reminder that your business/project/hobby should not depend on anything controlled by Google. Edit: Despite all their shortcomings, I wouldn't mind seeing android phone makers join force and create an independent app store.

bawolff 6y ago
That's unrealistic if your target is android phones. You can wax poetic about the idea of an independent app store all you want, it doesn't change the facts on the ground in the current moment.
- wheresmycraisin 6y ago
  Or you can just make a web app. Unless you are doing games or anything requiring lower-level hardware access, like a bluetooth scanner or something.
  - arkitaip 6y ago
    Why stop there? Web apps can trivially be taken down if your domain registrar, hosting provider, datacenter partner or payment solution decides to kick you out.
    - nguyenkien 6y ago
      There many hosting provider, datacenter, payment gatway to choose from. But just 2 appstore to use (technically android can have as many as you want, but how many pp use 3rd store right now?)
      - em-bee 6y ago
        compare to china where google is blocked, which as a result has dozens of competing appstores. each phone brand has their own, and then some. i do believe that if google didn't have an appstore that it forces android licensees to use, then we would have a similar variety of appstores world wide.
      - derekp7 6y ago
        The problem I have with third party app stores is you have to open up permissions to install any third-party app -- you can't just say "Trust apps from the following app stores" (at least that I've found, although it has been a while since the last time I looked into it).
    - wheresmycraisin 6y ago
      You have alternatives for those things though, in other countries if necessary. Ok, ok, accepting payments is hard -- if you're getting booted from your processors because, say, you're in a controversial industry, you might have to get creative (look at the US cannabis industry for such creativity).
  - bawolff 6y ago
    You mean that thing which google controls 90% of the rendering engines for? [Yes, they have much less power, but its not exactly independence either]
    - wheresmycraisin 6y ago
      Let's not go into hypotheticals about what might happen if google started... what, inserting spyware, basically, into their own open source browser engine?
      - throwawaysea 6y ago
        Chrome and even Firefox have already begun political policing of their browsers (https://reclaimthenet.org/google-chrome-web-store-bans-dissenter-extension/ https://reclaimthenet.org/google-chrome-web-store-bans-disse...). The next step seems like it’ll be forced curation of the web or blocking of IP addresses, since they’re already knocking on that door.
        wheresmycraisin 6y ago
        They banned a sleazy-looking extension from their extension stores. That's a far cry from "forced curation of the web or blocking of IP addresses". And, if that happens? Someone will just fork the browser.
      - bawolff 6y ago
        The hypothetical is that they remove support for part of a web standard and screw over your app. Which they certainly have done in the past (albeit,usually for really good reason. Google is a bit in a damned if you do damned if you dont position)
  - p49k 6y ago
    Users, for the most part, don't want web apps and won't use them. It's an unrealistic stance.
    - wheresmycraisin 6y ago
      Actually, users, for the most part, don't want to install apps.
      - p49k 6y ago
        Maybe HN users, but an increasingly overwhelming percentage of the general population prefers to download an app to do something instead of using a mobile website.
        wheresmycraisin 6y ago
        Various industry surveys, like the one from comscore in 2019 suggest otherwise. IIRC it found that most American phone owners install only 1-2 new apps per year. I think they would've gone to more new websites than that.
        p49k 6y ago
        That study doesn't imply what you suggest. Yes, most Americans install 1-2 apps per year: Facebook, Instagram and similar, and that's all they ever use. That segment of the population doesn't use the mobile web either; they spend all of their time in 1-2 walled gardens and you're not going to reach them with an app or website.
        derekp7 6y ago
        Couldn't you create a web-first app, then have the "app" that appears in the app just install a launcher icon that launches a browser window pointing to your website? This method (PWA?) I believe also lets you launch the browser without the browser control bar at the top (so it appears as a local app). The best part of this is even if your app gets banned from the app store, it is still accessible to anyone that wants to bookmark your URL, and I believe that users can also install the local PWA icon without having to go through an app store (I may be wrong about that, just starting to learn about PWAs and what is currently possible, and what is coming up).
  - sneak 6y ago
    Webapps don't show up on the home screen, can't be targets of share pane actions, can't access contacts, can't send push notifications.
    - GormanFletcher 6y ago
      The current state of webapps on Android has made good progress on these issues: Supported on all major Android browsers: - Progressive Web Apps can be added to your home screen - Web Push lets web apps receive push notifications (Brave's implementation is broken, but they try to support the feature) Experimental APIs supported by Chrome for Android: - Web Share Target API, which lets homescreen'd web apps receive shares from other apps (the share pane makes no distinction between sharing to a web app or a native app) - Contacts APIs to read the user's contacts list I think PWA's competitiveness will get a lot better once other browsers adopt the Web Share Target (or something like it), but I'm skeptical that they'll really take off as long as Apple continues hold off on implementing features that would make PWAs competitive with native apps.
A12-B 6y ago
I guess all business/project/hobby websites should shut down then? Your website won't get very far at all when most people rely on google's search results, browser, and email service.
anoncow 6y ago
The same is true for Facebook. My website and ad accounts were banned one day without a reason. They said it did not meet community standards. There has been no recourse since 2 years.
- Joeri 6y ago
  You do have a recourse, same as with any other business: you can always take them to court.
  - adamcstephens 6y ago
    Unless they force binding arbitration in their terms. This is quite common and precludes you from going to court.
    - p_l 6y ago
      Which is why such terms should be illegal.
      - LorenPechtel 6y ago
        Yup. Binding arbitration clauses should be taken out with a RKEW as nuke from orbit means you're way too close. // RKEW - Relativistic kinetic energy weapon
    - mrkstu 6y ago
      They're not even getting arbitration now- a professional arbitrator would likely find in their favor, at least as far as monies owed.
- wheresmycraisin 6y ago
  I once tried to advertise on facebook. I was editing my ad, and when I was trying upload an image or something, it went into some sort of infinite loop of trying to reload the page. Then, seconds later, it was banned, taking down my business page and my personal account as well. Still down after two years and going through their "appeals" process, which involves trying to log in with my old password, saying it was a mistake, and nothing ever happening.
arkitaip 6y ago
Repeating this same line is just harmful noise at this point. Rather, we should - legally - demand more from tech utility platforms like Google, Facebook or Apple.
- kempbellt 6y ago
  > Repeating this same line is just harmful noise More like a strong disclaimer worth repeating for newcomers in the space. These stories have come up several times over the years on HN and it is worth reiterating: It is very risky if your product/company relies solely on another company's success and openness to you - especially if that company is not contractually obligated to continue providing you service.
xwdv 6y ago
> Daily reminder that your business/project/hobby should not depend on anything controlled by Google. Note that this doesn’t mean don’t participate on platforms controlled by Google, it just means diversify your business so you have multiple income streams rather than just putting all your eggs in one App Store basket. Apps should really just be a client facing portal tied in to a whole ecosystem of solutions you provide.
swebs 6y ago
There's already F-Droid and the Amazon App store.
- mschuster91 6y ago
  f-droid doesn't have payments, Amazon is yet another faceless mega-corp that has had its fair share of sellers accusing them of various shady things. Creating a Play Store alternative is hard for many reasons: 1) finance: the more countries you operate in, the messier it becomes. International taxes are one hard mess, KYC/AML regulations differ between countries, and to top it off there is the whole "international sanctions" issue especially regarding Iran (where it's fine and explicitly encouraged by the EU to do business with Iran, but any entity that has US exposure exposes themselves to liability in the US for violations). 2) vetting of apps against a constant onslaught of spam, malware, copyright violations: f-droid has it a bit easier since they require all apps be open source, but a commercial, widely used alternative will have to run static analysis, dynamic analysis (to catch runtime exploit attempts) and manual testing. All of this is expensive and requires expert knowledge of Android as well as IT security. 3) Implementation and hosting: an app store worth its name has a lot of binary assets to distribute to users (and again, you have to avoid getting into trouble with people abusing your service to spread illegal content, because there will be such cases rather sooner than later), the store itself has to be implemented, regularly adapted to account for changes in the Android core, you definitely want a focus on security to avoid some hacker distributing malware to all your users with a push... 4) Customer and developer support: it's a well-known meme that FB/Amazon/Twitter/Google are almost impossible to reach for ordinary people without raising a shitstorm on Hacker News or a well-funded lawyer team... but the key thing is, support is expensive to run.
  - ketzu 6y ago
    The hardest part is getting any traction with it. Developers have no incentive to go the extra mile to publish on your store, because there are no users and it is extra work. Users have no incentive to install your store, because there is barely anything on it. OEMs have no incentive to preinstall your store, because you don't have any content (which devalues their product) and they don't gain anything from it. If they are willing to roll their own store, they at least rake in all the profit from it.
melomal 6y ago
Yeah, SEO has become hell hole in the last 6 months. Crippled businesses across the board from what I've seen and heard on the grape vine. After 8 years of SEO expertise I honestly can say that there's nothing about SEO these days that makes sense, pages are not being indexed for weeks at a time, spam/crap at the top result. Throw in the endless (and ambiguous) requirements to adhere to the mighty G's requirements.
sunshineforever 6y ago
There are independent app stores. The problem with the Parler situation is more that their average user is too incompetent and inexperienced with computers to understand how to download something that isn't literally laid out in front of them. I refuse to use Google Play or create a google account so I use The Aurora Store which replaces the Google Play Store. If I want to download some independent apps I head to F droid store or Aptoide. There are even more independent and alternative app stores, but these are the ones I use. Oh, and don't forget about github and app downloads directly from the web. F droid allows you to install without Google play.
Blikkentrekker 6y ago
> Daily reminder that your business/project/hobby should not depend on anything controlled by Google. So said by the ideologist, not by the businessman. It is an unavoidable reality in many cases, for those who wish to remain afloat.
yunohn 6y ago
>> android phone makers join force and create an independent app store And why wouldn’t this App Store have any takedown policies? Or have to follow the same kind of legal restrictions? In the discussed example, this wasn’t even automated; an employee manually reviewed and chose to ban their app.
heavyset_go 6y ago
This is why we need anti-trust action when it comes to mobile app distribution. Google and Apple have abused their duopoly in this market for over a decade, now.

bawolff 6y ago

That's unrealistic if your target is android phones. You can wax poetic about the idea of an independent app store all you want, it doesn't change the facts on the ground in the current moment.

wheresmycraisin 6y ago
Or you can just make a web app. Unless you are doing games or anything requiring lower-level hardware access, like a bluetooth scanner or something.
- arkitaip 6y ago
  Why stop there? Web apps can trivially be taken down if your domain registrar, hosting provider, datacenter partner or payment solution decides to kick you out.
  - nguyenkien 6y ago
    There many hosting provider, datacenter, payment gatway to choose from. But just 2 appstore to use (technically android can have as many as you want, but how many pp use 3rd store right now?)
    - em-bee 6y ago
      compare to china where google is blocked, which as a result has dozens of competing appstores. each phone brand has their own, and then some. i do believe that if google didn't have an appstore that it forces android licensees to use, then we would have a similar variety of appstores world wide.
    - derekp7 6y ago
      The problem I have with third party app stores is you have to open up permissions to install any third-party app -- you can't just say "Trust apps from the following app stores" (at least that I've found, although it has been a while since the last time I looked into it).
  - wheresmycraisin 6y ago
    You have alternatives for those things though, in other countries if necessary. Ok, ok, accepting payments is hard -- if you're getting booted from your processors because, say, you're in a controversial industry, you might have to get creative (look at the US cannabis industry for such creativity).
- bawolff 6y ago
  You mean that thing which google controls 90% of the rendering engines for? [Yes, they have much less power, but its not exactly independence either]
  - wheresmycraisin 6y ago
    Let's not go into hypotheticals about what might happen if google started... what, inserting spyware, basically, into their own open source browser engine?
    - throwawaysea 6y ago
      Chrome and even Firefox have already begun political policing of their browsers (https://reclaimthenet.org/google-chrome-web-store-bans-dissenter-extension/ https://reclaimthenet.org/google-chrome-web-store-bans-disse...). The next step seems like it’ll be forced curation of the web or blocking of IP addresses, since they’re already knocking on that door.
      - wheresmycraisin 6y ago
        They banned a sleazy-looking extension from their extension stores. That's a far cry from "forced curation of the web or blocking of IP addresses". And, if that happens? Someone will just fork the browser.
    - bawolff 6y ago
      The hypothetical is that they remove support for part of a web standard and screw over your app. Which they certainly have done in the past (albeit,usually for really good reason. Google is a bit in a damned if you do damned if you dont position)
- p49k 6y ago
  Users, for the most part, don't want web apps and won't use them. It's an unrealistic stance.
  - wheresmycraisin 6y ago
    Actually, users, for the most part, don't want to install apps.
    - p49k 6y ago
      Maybe HN users, but an increasingly overwhelming percentage of the general population prefers to download an app to do something instead of using a mobile website.
      - wheresmycraisin 6y ago
        Various industry surveys, like the one from comscore in 2019 suggest otherwise. IIRC it found that most American phone owners install only 1-2 new apps per year. I think they would've gone to more new websites than that.
        p49k 6y ago
        That study doesn't imply what you suggest. Yes, most Americans install 1-2 apps per year: Facebook, Instagram and similar, and that's all they ever use. That segment of the population doesn't use the mobile web either; they spend all of their time in 1-2 walled gardens and you're not going to reach them with an app or website.
      - derekp7 6y ago
        Couldn't you create a web-first app, then have the "app" that appears in the app just install a launcher icon that launches a browser window pointing to your website? This method (PWA?) I believe also lets you launch the browser without the browser control bar at the top (so it appears as a local app). The best part of this is even if your app gets banned from the app store, it is still accessible to anyone that wants to bookmark your URL, and I believe that users can also install the local PWA icon without having to go through an app store (I may be wrong about that, just starting to learn about PWAs and what is currently possible, and what is coming up).
- sneak 6y ago
  Webapps don't show up on the home screen, can't be targets of share pane actions, can't access contacts, can't send push notifications.
  - GormanFletcher 6y ago
    The current state of webapps on Android has made good progress on these issues: Supported on all major Android browsers: - Progressive Web Apps can be added to your home screen - Web Push lets web apps receive push notifications (Brave's implementation is broken, but they try to support the feature) Experimental APIs supported by Chrome for Android: - Web Share Target API, which lets homescreen'd web apps receive shares from other apps (the share pane makes no distinction between sharing to a web app or a native app) - Contacts APIs to read the user's contacts list I think PWA's competitiveness will get a lot better once other browsers adopt the Web Share Target (or something like it), but I'm skeptical that they'll really take off as long as Apple continues hold off on implementing features that would make PWAs competitive with native apps.

A12-B 6y ago

I guess all business/project/hobby websites should shut down then? Your website won't get very far at all when most people rely on google's search results, browser, and email service.

anoncow 6y ago

The same is true for Facebook. My website and ad accounts were banned one day without a reason. They said it did not meet community standards. There has been no recourse since 2 years.

Joeri 6y ago
You do have a recourse, same as with any other business: you can always take them to court.
- adamcstephens 6y ago
  Unless they force binding arbitration in their terms. This is quite common and precludes you from going to court.
  - p_l 6y ago
    Which is why such terms should be illegal.
    - LorenPechtel 6y ago
      Yup. Binding arbitration clauses should be taken out with a RKEW as nuke from orbit means you're way too close. // RKEW - Relativistic kinetic energy weapon
  - mrkstu 6y ago
    They're not even getting arbitration now- a professional arbitrator would likely find in their favor, at least as far as monies owed.
wheresmycraisin 6y ago
I once tried to advertise on facebook. I was editing my ad, and when I was trying upload an image or something, it went into some sort of infinite loop of trying to reload the page. Then, seconds later, it was banned, taking down my business page and my personal account as well. Still down after two years and going through their "appeals" process, which involves trying to log in with my old password, saying it was a mistake, and nothing ever happening.

arkitaip 6y ago

Repeating this same line is just harmful noise at this point. Rather, we should - legally - demand more from tech utility platforms like Google, Facebook or Apple.

kempbellt 6y ago
> Repeating this same line is just harmful noise More like a strong disclaimer worth repeating for newcomers in the space. These stories have come up several times over the years on HN and it is worth reiterating: It is very risky if your product/company relies solely on another company's success and openness to you - especially if that company is not contractually obligated to continue providing you service.

xwdv 6y ago

> Daily reminder that your business/project/hobby should not depend on anything controlled by Google. Note that this doesn’t mean don’t participate on platforms controlled by Google, it just means diversify your business so you have multiple income streams rather than just putting all your eggs in one App Store basket. Apps should really just be a client facing portal tied in to a whole ecosystem of solutions you provide.

swebs 6y ago

There's already F-Droid and the Amazon App store.

mschuster91 6y ago
f-droid doesn't have payments, Amazon is yet another faceless mega-corp that has had its fair share of sellers accusing them of various shady things. Creating a Play Store alternative is hard for many reasons: 1) finance: the more countries you operate in, the messier it becomes. International taxes are one hard mess, KYC/AML regulations differ between countries, and to top it off there is the whole "international sanctions" issue especially regarding Iran (where it's fine and explicitly encouraged by the EU to do business with Iran, but any entity that has US exposure exposes themselves to liability in the US for violations). 2) vetting of apps against a constant onslaught of spam, malware, copyright violations: f-droid has it a bit easier since they require all apps be open source, but a commercial, widely used alternative will have to run static analysis, dynamic analysis (to catch runtime exploit attempts) and manual testing. All of this is expensive and requires expert knowledge of Android as well as IT security. 3) Implementation and hosting: an app store worth its name has a lot of binary assets to distribute to users (and again, you have to avoid getting into trouble with people abusing your service to spread illegal content, because there will be such cases rather sooner than later), the store itself has to be implemented, regularly adapted to account for changes in the Android core, you definitely want a focus on security to avoid some hacker distributing malware to all your users with a push... 4) Customer and developer support: it's a well-known meme that FB/Amazon/Twitter/Google are almost impossible to reach for ordinary people without raising a shitstorm on Hacker News or a well-funded lawyer team... but the key thing is, support is expensive to run.
- ketzu 6y ago
  The hardest part is getting any traction with it. Developers have no incentive to go the extra mile to publish on your store, because there are no users and it is extra work. Users have no incentive to install your store, because there is barely anything on it. OEMs have no incentive to preinstall your store, because you don't have any content (which devalues their product) and they don't gain anything from it. If they are willing to roll their own store, they at least rake in all the profit from it.

melomal 6y ago

Yeah, SEO has become hell hole in the last 6 months. Crippled businesses across the board from what I've seen and heard on the grape vine. After 8 years of SEO expertise I honestly can say that there's nothing about SEO these days that makes sense, pages are not being indexed for weeks at a time, spam/crap at the top result. Throw in the endless (and ambiguous) requirements to adhere to the mighty G's requirements.

sunshineforever 6y ago

There are independent app stores. The problem with the Parler situation is more that their average user is too incompetent and inexperienced with computers to understand how to download something that isn't literally laid out in front of them. I refuse to use Google Play or create a google account so I use The Aurora Store which replaces the Google Play Store. If I want to download some independent apps I head to F droid store or Aptoide. There are even more independent and alternative app stores, but these are the ones I use. Oh, and don't forget about github and app downloads directly from the web. F droid allows you to install without Google play.

Blikkentrekker 6y ago

> Daily reminder that your business/project/hobby should not depend on anything controlled by Google. So said by the ideologist, not by the businessman. It is an unavoidable reality in many cases, for those who wish to remain afloat.

yunohn 6y ago

>> android phone makers join force and create an independent app store And why wouldn’t this App Store have any takedown policies? Or have to follow the same kind of legal restrictions? In the discussed example, this wasn’t even automated; an employee manually reviewed and chose to ban their app.

heavyset_go 6y ago

This is why we need anti-trust action when it comes to mobile app distribution. Google and Apple have abused their duopoly in this market for over a decade, now.