The list of artists is longer than the actually-readable part of the description. That blog post would be much less persuasive if this description had been included.
It is spammy. I split this string using ',', and I count 167 names. That is in no way close to "1 or 2 dozen of the most popular artists" number claimed by the author.
"Spammy" or not, A policy like this one is pretty subjective, and therefore can be used by the app store owners to reject whatever they wish, to cut competition off for example..
Google and Apple not only are the owners of the app stores, but also are publishers of applications onto those same stores.. giving a pretty bad conflict of interests .. that may be a bad news for people innovating in areas were you will have to compete with them..
Imagine if this was happening in the nineties, what Microsoft would have done with Netscape back then, with all this power, to let or not let the users of windows to choose what they want to install or not?
Im pretty sure the "app censorship switch" will get used here and there.. and this policy is just a example of a hole they could use for this reason
I get why Google suspended the app. That was excessive use of the keywords. What I don't get is why this seems to be an absolute suspension with no recourse. It would make a lot more sense if Google gave them a chance to change the listing to comply with their terms then reinstate the app when it did. Better for the developers and better for the users.
It definitely _looks_ spammy. I think what's absent from this discussion, though, is that these are bands with a 'taper' culture, and the app is only useful for these, niche bands.
If an Umphrey's McGee fan (I've seen them ~10 times; a close friend has seen them >170x) were interested in an app to play music on their phone, and could only search using vague terms, like "free music", the results will be mainstream and commercially motivated; not a good match for their actual desire, of listening to that one show they went to, back in '05.
For reference, the list "one or two dozen" artists is 167 of them:
Artists include: Grateful Dead, moe., Max Creek, Phil Lesh and Friends, Umphreys McGee, Disco Biscuits, Radiators, String Cheese Incident, Blues Traveler, 311, Jack Johnson, Smashing Pumpkins, Yonder Mountain String Band, Tea Leaf Green, Railroad Earth, Furthur, Ratdog, North Mississippi Allstars, Derek Trucks Band, Perpetual Groove, Drive-By Truckers, Mr. Blotto, Donna the Buffalo, Strangefolk, Brothers Past, Hot Buttered Rum, Jerry Joseph and the Jackmormons, Keller Williams, Sound Tribe Sector 9, Little Feat, Guster, Ween, The Breakfast, New Monsoon, Cornmeal, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, JJ Grey and MOFRO, Ryan Adams, The Bridge, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Dark Star Orchestra, Steve Wynn, Ryan Montbleau, Lotus, Greensky Bluegrass, The Dead, Zero, The Brew, Club d'Elf, Local H, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Of A Revolution, Jerry Joseph (solo & side projects), Infamous Stringdusters, Matisyahu, Camper Van Beethoven, Pat McGee Band, Garaj Mahal, Raq, Benevento/Russo, My Morning Jacket, Michael Franti and Spearhead, Cowboy Junkies, Animal Liberation Orchestra, Assembly of Dust, God Street Wine, Soulive, Dopapod, Steve Kimock Band, Moonalice, Mike Mizwinski, The Gourds, Steve Kimock, Charlie Hunter, Larry Keel, Acoustic Syndicate, Robert Randolph [and the Family Band], Dumpstaphunk, The New Deal, Toubab Krewe, Nate Wilson Group, Del McCoury Band, David Nelson Band, John Butler Trio, Karl Denson's Tiny Universe, The Codetalkers, Matt Nathanson, New Mastersounds, JGB, Lazlo Hollyfeld, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, Mickey Hart Band, Zach Deputy, Mysterytrain, Spin Doctors, The McLovins, Band of Heathens, Particle, Rusted Root, John Mayer, Low, The Heavy Pets, Mogwai, David Gray, Robert Hunter, Sam Bush, Mountain Goats, Big Head Todd and the Monsters, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, G. Love and Special Sauce, Glen Phillips, Kung Fu, Trampled by Turtles, Dirty Dozen Brass Band, The Motet, Lettuce, Gomez Warren Zevon, Big Daddy Love, Bushwalla, Emmitt Nershi Band, Garcia Birthday Band, Marco Benevento, Rubblebucket, Carbon Leaf, Elliott Smith, Virginia Coalition, indobox, Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad, Explosions in the Sky, Papadosio, Tim Reynolds, Bob Weir, Future Rock, Moon Taxi, Toad The Wet Sprocket, EOTO, Buckethead, Dubconscious, Rhythm Devils, Addison Groove Project, BoomBox, Roots Of Creation, Billy Corgan, Death Cab for Cutie, Indecision, John Brown's Body, The Pimps of Joytime, Donavon Frankenreiter Band, ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, Los Lonely Boys, Hank Williams III, DJ Logic, Zoogma, Alabama Shakes, Citizen Cope, Greyboy Allstars, Cosmic Dust Bunnies, Vertical Horizon, Telepath, The Verve Pipe, Pinback, The DJ Williams Projekt, Blind Melon, Gin Blossoms, Fugazi, 2 Skinnee Js, Tenacious D and many more.
I was more sympathetic before I read the part where he had listed "1 or 2 dozen of the most popular artists available through Vibe Vault so that users searching for their music could easily find the app on the Google Play store."
If he says 1 or 2 dozen, I hear at least 13, and probably close to 24. Listing 20 popular artist names in your music app's description specifically to increase the chances of people seeing your app when doing a search for one of those artist names does sound like excessive keyword usage to me. I could see naming around three just to point out that music from well known artists is available as well as indies.
I do still sympathize somewhat because the Play Store process is horrible, and at the very least, it seems reasonable he should be informed, "Hey, you are spamming artist names, cut it down to five or less please" then get his app reinstated rather than the vague "you done bad now you shall PAY".
EDIT: I saw the cache copy of the description made by another commenter. Now I am MUCH less sympathetic. Maybe he meant 1 or 2 gross instead of dozen? There are 167 artist names crammed in at the bottom. I doubt many people would feel that is reasonable.
I feel like I wasted my time reading that. It amounts to a big "Boo hoo!", makes tons of unsubstantiated and emotional assertions ("I can guarantee you that no one ever really gave any consideration to our arguments", the "the process is bullshit"), and the real solution is to just resubmit the app with a non-spammy description. How hard is that?
The appeal says "We don't profit from it, and thus have no incentive to spam." So change the description!
Google is doing a lot of things wrong, but this is not one of them. Look at the apps's description and decide if it's spammy by yourself.
Artists include: Grateful Dead, moe., Max Creek, Phil Lesh and Friends, Umphreys McGee, Disco Biscuits, Radiators, String Cheese Incident, Blues Traveler, 311, Jack Johnson, Smashing Pumpkins, Yonder Mountain String Band, Tea Leaf Green, Railroad Earth, Furthur, Ratdog, North Mississippi Allstars, Derek Trucks Band, Perpetual Groove, Drive-By Truckers, Mr. Blotto, Donna the Buffalo, Strangefolk, Brothers Past, Hot Buttered Rum, Jerry Joseph and the Jackmormons, Keller Williams, Sound Tribe Sector 9, Little Feat, Guster, Ween, The Breakfast, New Monsoon, Cornmeal, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, JJ Grey and MOFRO, Ryan Adams, The Bridge, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Dark Star Orchestra, Steve Wynn, Ryan Montbleau, Lotus, Greensky Bluegrass, The Dead, Zero, The Brew, Club d’Elf, Local H, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Of A Revolution, Jerry Joseph (solo & side projects), Infamous Stringdusters, Matisyahu, Camper Van Beethoven, Pat McGee Band, Garaj Mahal, Raq, Benevento/Russo, My Morning Jacket, Michael Franti and Spearhead, Cowboy Junkies, Animal Liberation Orchestra, Assembly of Dust, God Street Wine, Soulive, Dopapod, Steve Kimock Band, Moonalice, Mike Mizwinski, The Gourds, Steve Kimock, Charlie Hunter, Larry Keel, Acoustic Syndicate, Robert Randolph [and the Family Band], Dumpstaphunk, The New Deal, Toubab Krewe, Nate Wilson Group, Del McCoury Band, David Nelson Band, John Butler Trio, Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe, The Codetalkers, Matt Nathanson, New Mastersounds, JGB, Lazlo Hollyfeld, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, Mickey Hart Band, Zach Deputy, Mysterytrain, Spin Doctors, The McLovins, Band of Heathens, Particle, Rusted Root, John Mayer, Low, The Heavy Pets, Mogwai, David Gray, Robert Hunter, Sam Bush, Mountain Goats, Big Head Todd and the Monsters, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, G. Love and Special Sauce, Glen Phillips, Kung Fu, Trampled by Turtles, Dirty Dozen Brass Band, The Motet, Lettuce, Gomez Warren Zevon, Big Daddy Love, Bushwalla, Emmitt Nershi Band, Garcia Birthday Band, Marco Benevento, Rubblebucket, Carbon Leaf, Elliott Smith, Virginia Coalition, indobox, Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad, Explosions in the Sky, Papadosio, Tim Reynolds, Bob Weir, Future Rock, Moon Taxi, Toad The Wet Sprocket, EOTO, Buckethead, Dubconscious, Rhythm Devils, Addison Groove Project, BoomBox, Roots Of Creation, Billy Corgan, Death Cab for Cutie, Indecision, John Brown’s Body, The Pimps of Joytime, Donavon Frankenreiter Band, …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, Los Lonely Boys, Hank Williams III, DJ Logic, Zoogma, Alabama Shakes, Citizen Cope, Greyboy Allstars, Cosmic Dust Bunnies, Vertical Horizon, Telepath, The Verve Pipe, Pinback, The DJ Williams Projekt, Blind Melon, Gin Blossoms, Fugazi, 2 Skinnee Js, Tenacious D and many more.
If I were to put out an app that gave you access to research journals, should I not list the journals that I give you access to? I, honestly, don't see this as spammy. But I must confess that I don't really know much about Vibe Vault so maybe there is something I'm missing. Or maybe there is a separate "contents" page in the app store listing where that would be appropriate.
To me, "spammy" would be listing unrelated or marginally related things, to show up in edge-case searches. Perhaps "DJ, party, entertainment" etc. would be spammy. Listing your contents? I respectfully disagree.
So in other words, become a FB/Twitter/Play/App store and put yourself at the top of the pyramid. Now you get to be the company changing the API and banning users, but we still haven't actually solved the problem for the users of web services.
This happened to a small game of mine. I included the instructions of how to play the game, and those instructions required the use of the same word a lot of times. I too had my game suspended, but realized that it must have been the use of the word, and because I couldn't figure out how else to explain the rules without using the word a lot, I just had to remove the instructions from the description completely - but that did the trick, and the game did get put back in Google Play.
However, this did happen before the Dev Center design change and I WAS able to go in and modify my game's description and that's how I noticed what the problem must have been. I think they should at least allow read-only access to the app's info so you can legitimately investigate.
I didn't include this info above, because what happened and what I did may not both be agreed with by all.
I think the big difference between how this situation was handled and how I handled it is that in this situation the author seemed to argue that what he did was acceptable. They already said they don't think it was.
I wouldn't assume that they would come back with more info about the violation, and I doubt they would change their interpretation of the violation.
I believe that when I wrote in, I explained what I thought the problem might be related to (and a few other possibilities) and agreed to change it to be compliant. It may not be what's best for my app, but it's kind-of a David and Goliath situation, so I decided to do what they wanted so my game could stay in the store.
I pretty much agree with the approach. I don't want to think other developers are getting special treatment, so I shouldn't either, so they are going to to be strict with, and stick by their rules.
In the late 90s Google dominated its competition largely because they were susceptible to keyword stuffing. In the following decade they allegedly heaped on layer after layer of algorithms to determine the best rankings beyond simple page rank.
Today, they use nothing more than simple keyword scoring to power their Google Play search.
This algorithm is so simplistic anyone over a certain threshold must be completely purged from the store, even if the app is highly rated by many users. No other alternative means exist.
Is Google's search algorithm really as complex as they've been telling us it is?
Last night at 3am google decided to take my app down.
The best part is, my app was not even live!!
It was in draft mode. My description and screenshot were not final, and were semi-complete placeholders. Before publishing the app I would have obviously made sure it complied with everything.
Google found issue with that and took down my app. Now I've been running around trying to get a hold of someone to look into this.
Haven't found anyone yet. Its frustrating because we were 2 days before launch. The screenshots and description was just being toyed and internally just tested.
Now we have investors to answer to as well as other people who are annoyed at us for delaying the launch at the last second.
Another lesson for developers OP didn't list is: make the description of your app in the store part of the development tree, so that it can be reviewed by anybody if ever the app is removed from the store.
To be fair, this is a terrible example to bring up.
This is somebody who published a whole bunch of apps named after other content creators, who subsequently ignored Google's warnings that his account would be terminated, and who seems surprised when his account was terminated.
There's a genuinely important discussion about the "walled-garden" style of software distribution and the ramifications that this can have on developer freedom, but I'm not convinced this fellow is a good example to run with.
Well I totally disagree, Its a very fair example. We are talking about re-appeal process here and Google's way of handling it. The guy lost his play store account, wallet account and what not and on top of that his appeal was not even read(far away from reconsideration) by a human. I remember how google blocked my Adsense account and all my re-appeal request fell on some deaf ears of a lousy program which simply denied restoring my account. Its simply Gangster like behavior!!
I see his main point as being that the few closed mobile ecosystems (Apple, Google, Microsoft) do not offer the same checks and balances we have gotten used to in the public domain. You pretty much sign away your rights (or, better: expectations of rights) on first use, when you agree to them having final jurisdiction without (at least affordable) appeal.
But the thing is, I'm unsure what to do. Those massive infrastructures bring software to the masses for free or little and bring huge opportunities for developers. It's hard to imagine someone forcing Google and Apple to give developers some sort of 'due process' within their ecosystem. Who would force them and why? And 'due process' exists outside the ecosystem, but you signed the EULA, remember?
Anti-trust would say: alternatives exist. They're small, but they exist. I really don't know which approach would guarantee user rights better. But my feeling is that this trend is bad for choice in the long run.
Apple gets a lot of crap for censoring their store, but my experience is that they at least provide good feedback when they have a problem with something. With iOS you are usually also safe once it is accepted which is better than finding out later (once you have reviews and downloads).
I see Google's point about keywords..as because I could simply list artists accessible in Amazon's MP3 store for an app which would boost search SEo fro the app but place an unfair advantage to other music apps
I agree with the keywords list. No one should be allowed to spam artist names no matter the application. While the ban being permanent over a description is a bit overboard, I agree with the reason why.
Anyone could take a dump on the welcome mat, too. That would be "unfair" to the vast majority of people who would like to walk in the front door without stepping in crap, however. Google are trying to keep the platform usable and pleasant for its users. Sometimes they may be overzealous, but the effort is still worthwhile.
How is it 'slightly less so'? In what way is it open at all? I see no different between this behavior and Apple's behavior except that Apple has a (slightly) more human appeals procedure.
And frankly, users buy Android for the Apps, so what good is the platform being open if the store is not?
What caught my attention was this statement in the article:
> I suppose now that Android is a lot more popular than it was when we started developing Vibe Vault, it is no longer a priority for Google to treat the Android community with a modicum of care or respect.
Oh, there was a time when Google did treat the Android community with a modicum of care and respect? There was a time when they gave you detailed reasons why they pulled your app, and would actually give serious consideration to your arguments for reinstating it? When was that, exactly?
Is there any cache of it anywhere? Where it could be criticized more deeply to see if maybe others can help identify the issue.
That is really unfortunate and not sure if there is much you can do about it now. I do wonder if they secretly discriminate against ad free and free software for lack of money?
It was a bogus DMCA complaint. It would have made the peoe claiming content ownership look again and either proceed with legal action or stop.
If the proceeded with legal action and it was bogus they then have pretty clearly crossed the boundaries required for the criminal element of bogus DMCA complaints.
I agree it's a frustrating and sub optimal situation.
For me, the only acceptable restriction of what kind of Apps people can make, sell and run on any device is the restriction set by law (ideally one that came into place through a democratic process).
App Stores with a specific profile are absolutely fine IF competing App Stores exist and operate on a level playing field on that platform.
I have to admit, it does look pretty spammy.