My account got closed for inactivity while I had multiple apps published. Google does not understand the concept of a finished app apparently, and requires you to continuously push updates or else you permanently lose your account with no way of reopening it.
I do like the concept that developers need to put in some effort to keep the app in the app store. Otherwise there'll be millions of orphaned apps and thousands with duplicate functionality.
By mandating a yearly effort the number of apps will fall through attrition and your app stands a bigger chance to get noticed.
I have just one app I published way back in 2014 or so, and I think there were only 2 updates (only counting changes that required uploading new builds) since then that were like "do this or we're taking the app down".
One of them was requiring a privacy policy, even for a fully offline game that doesn't even have the internet permission. The other one was having to update the target platform version if I remember correctly.
Target platform must be updated every year now in August. They started doing this a couple years ago.
They do the same with youtube accounts. My parents lost a ton a family movies that way. No warning either, just poof -> gone.
The worst part is that they probably didn't delete the data and are using it to train models.
Exactly. Think Google/YouTube pulls this type of stunt to fully seize user information and data, so that they can do whatever with it.
Giving users true recovery mechanisms, means possible removal of all or part of the collected data. Where sudden or out of the blue seizure and complete removal of the user's ability to access or recover, means it's now all their data.
> Google does not understand the concept of a finished app
They do! They just hate it.
How else they would force new API adoption?
Apple does the same thing.
Alternative are having applications in 2026 that use POSIX like in UNIX System V, or Win32 like in Windows 95/NT 3.51.
> Alternative are having applications in 2026 that use POSIX like in UNIX System V, or Win32 like in Windows 95/NT 3.51.
If only……
I do confess that I would rather have those than Electron garbage.
Well, FDroid has many apps that are basically done, open source & build from said source. Thats how it should be done.
That has nothing to do with what I was saying on my comment, and there is a reasoning on Google and Apple's attitude, it isn't only money grabbing.
For starters, there are many "done" apps that are like Swiss cheese in terms of security.
> How else they would force new API adoption?
And that would have been fine, if Google hadn't tried to shove the Google Play Store ecosystem down everyone's throat by throwing up barriers for side-loading apps and such.
Just don't show the apps in Play Store search/recommendation. There's no need to completely remove the apps
When APIs get replaced they won't work anyway.
People love to bash how Microsoft manages Windows, yet they keep forgetting that Microsoft is one of the few OS vendors that actually keeps the APIs around, instead of having a deprecation process, finalised by actually removing the APIs, or hard forcing the new behaviour.
https://developer.android.com/guide/app-compatibility
It happened to me too. And they didn't even refund my $20 or so.
Gotta drive engagement bro! Line must go up!
> requires you to continuously push updates
Sounds like a perfect job to automate by an always-on LLM.
What happened to simple cron jobs?
I don't think cron can write code. Jokes aside, I suppose you could just alternate between two lines of code and just publish alternating patch versions. What a stupid situation, fuck Google.
I got a Google survey this week.
Which of the following are the reasons you chose Google Play related issues as one of the weaknesses?
The second option, written by Google was:
- Sudden account termination without actionable feedback or clear restoration guidance
They know they're killing accounts without due process, they don't care, why would they? They're the only game in town now the Android Developer Verification Program is in force.
The person creating the survey might be trying to gather data to raise with management.
It gets better, I too had my account closed for inactivity, but I STILL get emails from them I can't stop because I can't log in to change email preferences.
I got banned from Google Admob (or whatever it is called now) and they still send me promotional emails.
Almost sounds like one of the intentional product decisions
That's illegal. No private right of action though. Gotta go through your ISP or FTC, assuming you're in the USA.
Bit of an issue if your mail provider is Gmail.
I wonder if an anti-trust lawsuit would have any chance of succeeding. The Android Developer Verification Program is clearly meant to prevent alternative app stores from gaining market share under the guise of "security."
I think it's reasonable that Google mandates that developers identify themselves when publishing on its own app store. But why would they need to do so on alternative app stores if those don't require it?
IIRC the Android Developer Verification Program was only initiated after the EU mandated alternative app stores to be allowed. That would be sufficient cause for an anti-trust indictment.
Has anyone informed the EU about this?
BTW an anti-trust lawsuit would also have a reaonable chance of moving forward in the U.S.
There’s Googlers on HN reading these who could probably fix this but won’t.
Unless you offer them a promotion ;)
No they need to find a way to glue a chat service onto it.
I don't know why Google Play Store/Android in general has a good reputation - in my opinion they got worse than Apple. I recently created apps for both stores, and the Google experience is so bad. Because I am an individual (sole trader) I cannot go down the business route - but need to go through the 12 testers route. That is, I need to find 12 people willing to join a google group, opt-in to beta testing, and have my app installed for 14 days at the same time before I can publish the app on the Play Store. This is ridiculous. I'd rather pay a lump sum as I did for the Apple Store: 99€/year, go through App review, publish.
I had to submit my id, private bank statements (we often don't have monthly utility bills in europe, so I had to submit bank statements) and click through a ton of wizards for compliance, and of course pay 25€. Still no publishing rights. Now I would just pay some clickworkers on Fiverr to fulfill the testing criteria, but that risks getting my account (and app) banned forever. Needless to say that google now has all my private data associated with my google account.
People always say walled garden to the Appstore, but at least the entry ticket has a clear price label.
And all that, for them to then put your private home address (assuming you're not a business) on the app page?
I haven't bothered with them for years now, since the way they treat indie devs is absolutely awful.
And the 12 people/14 days things was a complete show-stopper. Two arbitrary numbers completely pulled out of someone's arse.
Why not just put it on F-Droid or self publish it rather than go through this bullshit ? :)
The question is: does Android Developer Verification Program actually help improving the .apk app store experience?
Probably not. Google is notoriously bad at customer support (for both devs and consumers)
They also love keeping malware apps on the play store as well. I tried reporting an app that took over one of my parents phone. It stayed up for quite a while. I'm sure it's still up.
> Google is notoriously bad at customer support
Had to LOL at that understatement. Google invented the ultra-aggressively non-existent customer support model.
But now we have Gemini 4 Argon, and you know, agents (they boast it's so good at that stuff), so customer support should improve soon, RIGHT??
Imagine an LLM trained on Google customer "service"...
Euqally - there should be a way to recover your account.
"App store experience" was continually degrading. I used to be able to find small apps and games I liked a lot and basically binge downloading. The last few times I tried, I ended up with nothing useable.
It helps centralize control over what was advertised to be an open OS.
Wait, what was the question again?
Fortunately PWA are well supported on android, half the apps on my phone are PWA and I didn't need an app store or hacking my device to install them. But I moved from native android to PWA after having hellish issues with their automated developer nightmare system.
PWA support got worse on the latest android. They removed the clear "Install" button and copied iOS, that is you have to scroll down a long list and select "Add shortcut" / "Add to home screen". IIRC they removed the "install" wording.
Can PWAs operate with local data? Can they interact with data from anywhere in the file system?
yes, with the File System API, it needs user permission though (which is a good thing).
Permissions are fine, but on android they happen every single time for the same file (and there's yet no option for the 'Allow everytine' that is present on desktop chrome). This is pretty horrible UX for some use cases.
PWAs are awesome but Firefox does not support them, you can only install them with Chrome based browsers. So it is still largely Googles ecosystem and they can fuck with it like they are doing with android apps.
I have had PWAs with Firefox for years, they work well.
Except WebGL isn't really OpenGL ES, and WebGPU will never be like Vulkan as well, so games still need to be native.
Now if it is plain old CRUD style application, many that are webviews packaged as APK, sure.
https://progressier.com/what-web-can-do-today
Same! I ported my free iOS utility app[1] to Android because a lot of people were asking for it. Just before I could publish it, they closed my Play Store account for a year of inactivity. Now, I haven't been able to re-create the Play Store account. Every time I try, money gets debited from my card, but the process ultimately fails. TBF, the money gets refunded after a month or so.
I'm happy supporting iOS, macOS and web.
[1]: https://cleanlinks.app/en
I don't understand the link between publishing an app and freedom of the press
See for example Rosado et al. v. Blanche et al., 1:26-cv-01532[1] which is an active case addressing whether the US federal government suppressed the first amendment rights of the "Eyes Up" application developer by pressuring Apple to remove this application for crowd-sourced recording/reporting of ICE incidents. An injunction has been granted with the following finding:[2]
"the Court finds that Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their claim that Defendants violated their First Amendment rights through coercion of Facebook and Apple."
My reference to a press freedom index is due to a lack of "countries by freedom of software development" index. If such index existed, the methodology may have some commonality with a press freedom index.
Placing barriers in front of publishing of books, online content, software, etc all leads to some suppression of speech. The question is whether the benefits of the barriers placed outweigh the risks/negatives. In this case, why should anyone care what the passport number or residential address is of a student interested in a career in software development who is writing their first Android game?
[1] https://www.fire.org/cases/rosado-et-al-v-blanche-et-al
[2] https://www.fire.org/sites/default/files/2026/04/Memorandum%...
I'm not sure this is actually correct. From what I've read, if you're in one of the 4 countries where this rolled out today then you can still install unsigned APKs on play protect devices, but the device needs to enable sideloading and then there's a 24 hour wait. After that unsigned APKs can be be installed as usual
Had the exact same thing. Developed a small game, pushed it to iOS without much fanfare (well, other than having to pay the insanely high toll to get into the garden) and then turned to Android to do the same. Another toll gate at only a quarter the price - sure, lets pay that as well. But then we get to the point where they require images of government issued id and address verification. You can have my money, buddy, but that level of personal data for something small like a game? How about no…
Google take $25 once, Apple takes $100 every year. For hobby projects, the former is reasonable, and the latter is a dealbreaker.
I'm surprised Apple doesn't make you scan your ID since there are laws that force both Apple and Google to publish real names of developers on app store pages. And address too, if you charge money.
Imo even the $25 is too much or at least promotes inequality. Plenty of countries with developers where $25 is a full day's wages, but for the average American software dev $25 is almost nothing.
They do if you want to distribute your apps in the EU. And your physical address will be published as well.
With the changes they did recently, unless you find 12 people opting-in to google groups for your beta test and downloading a private build from a beta-tester link, keeping the app installed and engage with it for 14 conescutive days, your game is NEVER published on Play Store at all. And that is AFTER you submit government ID and paid the 25 bucks.
Only companies can now have instant publishes on the Play Store without that 12-tester limit.
It sucks, but it's more of a time gate and an inconvenience than an actual barrier. There are communities/apps where people do this for each other in an organized way, so you're pretty much guaranteed to pass after 14 days.
I published my first app a few months ago, and I hated 14 days part more than 12 people part.
> so you're pretty much guaranteed to pass after 14 days
Then why have it in the first place?
I don't complain about the money because my time to organize and go through this is worth more than the price difference. I'd rather pay 100€/year, same as on the Apple Appstore. Now I have to coordinate some fake weird closed-testing groups and hope I don't get banned for using unauthentic testers.
>Then why have it in the first place?
The inconvenience/effort is probably the point, likely to discourage people who aren't willing to put at least that much effort.
>and hope I don't get banned for using unauthentic testers.
I doubt Google cares about this, since they let apps for these testing groups into play store. Those apps organize people into groups, provide play store links, and buttons to open other people's apps, so all you do is just open and close each app once a day.
Since this takes like 30 minutes total over 14 days, I'd rather do that than pay $100 forever since I'm not made of money and it's less time than it would take me to earn $100 at my job even once.
They took away our freedom of installing apps on the devices we own.
the browser is the best tool we have now to fight the duopoly and its absurd rules.
Funnily, or depressingly, a lot of people here on HN are against the browser, either because "the UI doesn't look native" or because of security/privacy issues, with regular apps shipping with hundreds of MB or spyware you have no control of.
Let's push for the browser to become more feature rich, more secure and more universal. Or maybe for another OS altogether?
> the browser is the best tool we have now to fight the duopoly and its absurd rules.
The browser, this infamous neutral platform fighting against Google and Apple duopoly by having the two biggest browser made by... Google and Apple ?
Joke aside, the state of the web and browser is depressing right now. Sure, we get webusb and webgpu, and all new fancy spec, and are slowly turning the browser into the final portability layer of the OS. But at what cost ? All browsers are now chrome with a layer of paint. Safari only continues to exist because of iPhone, and everyone is apparently moving on from Firefox.
I keep using FF because I don't want the web to become a Google monopoly, but it's getting harder and harder. Google services that I have to use for work are becoming buggier and buggier on FF, I had big SaaS with bugs making them unusable on FF too. Even a government software I have to use... Nobody seem to QA on FF anymore.
From what I have seen, the WebKit team is actually pretty nice. They are more accommodating to outside developers than the Blink team. It still feels like the open source department at Apple while the Blink team is more like Google corporate development team 38 which happens to reluctantly publish source code.
Apple won't allow it. They've crippled PWAs on Safari and just let the tech languish, you can't have any other web engine on IOS other than Safari's WebKit, and it takes 6 steps to install a PWA on Safari (so you just know 99% never will).
I wouldn't say that it's "production ready" or anything, but I've recently tried KDE Plasma Mobile on an old phone, and it's actually good - not perfect - but I think that if I were to just gove it to someone to play around with, I wouldn't get a "wtf is this weird nerd thing?" response from them
Android used to be the open option for me. I moved to Apple because I got tired of buying a new phone every 12 months and dealing with really bad OS updates (bricked phones). It felt like a major sacrifice at the time. Looking back at android in 2026, I don't see any remaining upside.
Yes, fuck Android though I have to use an Android phone(and I don't want fucking Apple either). I pulled my hobby game from play store because they won't just let it be. Some new regulation now and then and threats to disable the app.
> I have to use an Android phone(and I don't want fucking Apple either)
There are third alternatives, too (GNU/Linux phones).
Yes, fuck it. This is beyond insane, apparently I cant distribute apps just in GitHub "releases" section anymore without Google's approval. I hope some EU antimonopoly something will fry their asses.
You still can distribute unsigned APKs via github, but the devices that install it will need to wait 24 hours the first time they enable sideloading in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand. After that they can install APKs as normal
I've been reaching out to my MEPs over this. I would encourage other EU citizens to do the same.
Honestly, I agree!
I paid my fee - $20 or $25, I can’t quite remember - but when I couldn’t reliably enter or find my physical home address via Google Maps because of some weird street-name issues, I never got to complete the process!
You might be able to fix those "weird street-name issues" yourself in Google Maps.
I just recently reopened an account that was closed due to inactivity.
Lucky me i manage different accounts, because the new way to get help for developers is to do that through play console.
But if your account is suspended, you get always redirected to a page that tells you the account is suspended.
Looking at other ways to get to the help portal.... when you select you need help for developers, yep you're redirected.
So because i have another developer account, i could open a support ticket. I had to write the same message to the fucking bot at least three times, which was funny because the answer was more or less a rephrasing of my message, and every time it would add the rephrasing again, and again.
At the fourth time something must have happened because it was escalated, and then i had my account back.
I was actually open to making a new account, which i wrote several times, it's only that i needed to get back the app IDs because you know, the app is installed in places.
Now, it's the first of october and i have constant nagging for unregistered package names on another account: this is for apps that are suspended for bullshit reasons, which i can't reinstate because the bot is in loop mode around the same wrong rule violation (like: i can't make a basic / pro version of my app now? pro version is too simillar so it must be blocked?) and i can't register the package name because it's suspended, an i can't reinstate it because loop. I can't delete it because it's suspended, an i can't reinstate it because loop.
Fucking brillant!
... just developing for Linux has always had it's own attraction: the one of being free to do what you want.
Did you thing it was still the 2000's or something?
That you were still free to write code, put it out there and have people use it freely?
A decade ago, I made a joke comment to a friend that you were soon going to need a carry permit to operate a compiler.
Joke's not so funny in 2026.
A decade ago, I made a joke comment to a friend that you were soon going to need a carry permit to operate a compiler.
Richard Stallman's Right to Read (1997) made a similar observation.
Right to intelligence, is he same. Denied with clear discrimination on same grounds (It may be used for malicious purposes :) which is also true, so access was/is/will be restricted to limited resources. Hard to swim against the stream unless you fly above it.
So, the guy that HN loves to mock and poke fun at - Richard Stallman - was utterly correct after all.
Yes, rms was always correct. Freedom must never take a backseat to convenience or this is how it ends.
Don’t forget “imitate”. HN comments are often indistinguishable from rms screeds, in sentiment, misogyny, and agenda, and political extremism.
rms isn't a misogynist. He is a political extremist though, for the political cause of free software.
> So, the guy that HN loves to mock and poke fun at - Richard Stallman - was utterly correct after all.
Yes, he was correct indeed.
But the fact that the message was broadcasted by a dude rocking the personality of a psychotic 4 year old and the general looks of ... let's not go there ... basically prevented everyone with a normal outlook on life to pay attention.
There's this famous chapter of the Little Prince that depicts this exactly, "asteroid B-612" :
https://www.patternrecognition.asia/jin/prince/english/lpe04...
I switched to GNU/Linux on my GPD MicroPC 2 ;)
The GDP MicroPC 2 ships with Windows. How is that relevant?
Honestly, beyond my deGoogled Android smartphone and a GNU/Linux laptop I am looking around for pocketable device between those. Mecha Comet looks like a perfect fit, but it is not released yet.
Why does anyone even dev for G or A - unless you get a big pay check from either ? Every time I look into mobile dev I just go “yep, NOPE!” and go to have a shower. And it seems to just get worse and worse? Are both app stores going to be full of just unusable vibe coded crap in few years time?
Because at my work, clients want the general public to be able to install their apps sometimes, and my department does native apps, a different department does web stuff. If you want Joe Public to be able to install your app, you have to go through the Google or Apple stores.
However, we don't directly dev in Kotlin or Swift, we use Unity, which can export directly to an APK, or an XCode project (which has to be compiled a second time which is a nightmare). Sometimes we have to write native plugins to access device specific features (Last time I needed to was to access the FoV of the device's main camera), but it's not common, Unity has great support for most things you want to do out of the box
EDIT: I forgot, there are some situations where we supply an android or ios app to clients through our own app store, but I believe that devices have to be "enrolled", especially for ios. Generally though, Joe Public will want apps through the official stores
The app I am trying to publish is a PWA but needs a CORS policy bypass for which I have created a small proxy. This proxy needs to be running natively on the device.
Either because their vision of what they want to make needs a mobile form factor and can't be a website (possibly due to marketing causing users to reject mobile websites), or (and I suspect that this is the bigger driver) the pay from the stores (even after the ridiculous 30% cut + bureaucratic insanity) makes it worth it (possibly under the category of getting "a big pay check", but it sounds more like you mean employment).
Because you develop for your users devices obviously
> Why does anyone even dev for G or A
Because personal computers are a legacy platform for nerds and programmers, and smartphones are the most widely used consumer computing platform in the world. This desperately needs regulation. Unfortunately the EU is currently regulating the duopoly into law, making their phones necessary for ID verification, so we're probably completely fucked for at least a decade or two before we even have a chance, but that's still not a reason to shrug our shoulders and accept it.
I won't call it exactly legacy.. Nerds still provide an attractive market. :-)
Another person discovers the binary certificate cartel.
Users will go use Apple. The next round of enshittification is on. As no competition with "open" anymore.
Go and vibe-code your mobile OS. Lol.