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.
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.
If only……
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.
They do! They just hate it.
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.
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.
Probably not. Google is notoriously bad at customer support (for both devs and consumers)
Had to LOL at that understatement. Google invented the ultra-aggressively non-existent customer support model.
Wait, what was the question again?
I'm happy supporting iOS, macOS and web.
Now if it is plain old CRUD style application, many that are webviews packaged as APK, sure.
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.
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.
[1] https://developer.huawei.com/consumer/en/doc/start/rna-00000...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Press_Freedom_Index#Rank...
"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 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.
Only companies can now have instant publishes on the Play Store without that 12-tester limit.
I published my first app a few months ago, and I hated 14 days part more than 12 people part.
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, 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.
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.
Richard Stallman's Right to Read (1997) made a similar observation.
There are third alternatives, too (GNU/Linux phones).
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!
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!
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
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.
Go and vibe-code your mobile OS. Lol.