I noticed this banner on one of my own apps while installing it for my mom on a new phone. The banner said "This app has fewer users than others…", almost as if they are discouraging users from installing it without even informing me. I looked it up online and it seems like many people have begun seeing this. I am linking a thread. If anyone from Google is reading this, such opaque policies are not appreciated!
This almost smells like a google throwing their hands up and saying "Well maybe it's a harmful app and they should use something else … I dunno, put a warning on it."
I see similar-ish warnings on Amazon about "frequently returned item", but I've no idea if it is true or why. Maybe an underlying vendor for the same item is bad? Amazon (who doesn't care about bad vendors as far as I can tell) just slaps a label on it and throws up their hands.
… These sorts of patterns do not help at all, and will hurt those who have critical need for apps without a lot of users.
Speaking as somebody, who owns some mid-grade thermal cameras that stopped production in the past few years after a decade run, that depended on and are solely controlled and run on apps that were removed from the app store or no longer can run on modern phones because they are in 32-bit format ; this sort of thing would further punish that type of software and only speed up its demise.
When you spend thousands and thousands and thousands and of dollars and resources into getting unique capabilities like that, that can only be controlled through Android apps often, and is the only way to get that capability for some (this will apply to multiple and I imagine with niche capabilities that only have one or two methods of Access)
– this hurts a lot of opportunity, and this type of dark anti-pattern is far too blunt
Typical Big-tech approach: the solution is a non-solution without giving much thought to it but looks good for the board of investors and/or stock owners and they can say "we are stopping scam apps on our marketplace" on the next slides created by marketing. They just don't give a shit. (Just read the book "Careless People" – read it if you are not convinced. Engagement over everything)
How does something like this ever get into production, especially at a place like Google, unless being hostile to new apps and developers is the plan? Or do they want to push potential developers into Google's double-dipping: pay them money to get on to the Play Store + pay a lot more money to get eyeballs on your app and thus more users.
A question for Googlers who may be responsible/adjacent – what is the intended function of this warning? It seems to be attempting to filter out low quality apps, but instead seems to be killing any attempt to change the status quo. If the app has fewer users than competing apps, the message Google is sending is "we don't need any new apps that do similar things to existing apps" and "if you're a small app, don't even think about unseating the dominant players."
Google's Play Store policies have been harebrained for quite some time – previously with the 15 reviewer approach they decided to make it even harder for developers with fewer resources to distribute their apps. It's ironic that even though the iOS App Store is arguably more of a walled garden, it's so much friendlier to human beings who are trying to build a product. But at this point it seems ingrained in Google to release self-defeating features (remember the finder network that prioritized "first of its kind privacy" over being able to find things?)
All this just confirms for me the fact that how important the web is, thankfully it is still open / neutral and a good mobile web app is important for smaller devs.
Thankfully the web has always been neutral, which has allowed all these monopolies to thrive and exploit it, otherwise who knows which proprietary app hell we would be in.
It would be great if they added something like a “frequently uninstalled app” label. That’s much more helpful for users. But I get why Google prefers this kind of warning — it supports their ad business.
(I really want “frequently uninstalled” label for games: because games are very often 100% different than what they show or describe)
Our company just got a warning that we have sixty days to release something on Play or have our developer console account closed. The email made it pretty clear that Google wants developers to continuously push new versions to customers. We have no new features nor bug fixes in backlog. There is nothing to update.
The only purpose of our software is to control hardware that our company makes. Nobody uses it for fun, they use it because they have to. If I had a say, I'd automate even larger parts of the customer workflow.
(Yes, at first we released a mobile PWA but ran into limitations related to push notifications and MDM support. We then created the native app, but our customers cannot remotely load APKs not signed by Google).
Very sad state of affairs on Play Store. Independent app developers are clearly not welcome there. I already pulled all my hobby apps from Play Store, just to sleep soundly at night without thinking how to pass yet another app review after update, when policies keep getting more ridiculous each time. To the point where one update finally was pushed to the store, and another got the same issue again.
The biggest question is, how does one closes their Google Play Developer Account? There is no button in admin for that.
> It feels like Google is unfairly punishing smaller, specialized developers in favor of mass-market apps.
This seems like a problem across Google generally. Search seems like it has been tuned toward the mass market in almost every query, which buries high-quality content, which is by its nature rare, specialized, and less well-known.
They have also tuned the features of Search in this direction, for example replacing queries with similar but more common text strings, and applying “did you mean” redirection more often, instead of just executing the search as typed. They now do this even if you quote the search string!
Google tests and tunes its algorithm updates. If an algorithm update results in lower prominence for sites they consider popular, they tune the algorithm to “fix” it. As a friend said, the modern Google would never release an algorithm update if it doesn’t put Home Depot on the first page for “buy power saw.” Result: a generous in-kind marketing subsidy for whoever is already popular. I’m convinced this is why Fandom and Quora still hang around polluting SERPs. They’re well-known because they’re well-known, like the Kardashians.
It’s tempting to anthropomorphize a company like Google, and assume that every behavior is part of some evil master plan. Just as often, it’s some small group of people within the company making a dumb mistake. I’d guess there is some team tasked with reducing the “app spam” problem, where there the store and (app review process) is crammed with thousands of near-identical apps, torturing the naive user with ads as they attempt to perform basic functions.
This targeting of this warning is over-broad, preventing honest new app developers from getting traction. That’s bad for the long-term health of Android’s app ecosystem, and a competitive disadvantage against iOS. There’s probably some other team at Google who is responsible for improving the development experience for Android, who hates this new warning.
Talking about the harmful outcomes of this warning, it’s good to get the news far and wide and try to get it fixed.
Analyzing why the thing got pushed in the first place, it seems to me a symptom of the challenge of coherently managing a hundred thousand employees.
It'd be great if Android devs could organize and push our reps (I know it's likely futile) or something to get Google to stop bullying us. It's exhausting dealing with the non-stop struggle they force onto us, especially as someone who's trying to make a living by starting (in my case) a one person business building Android apps.
Play Store/Dev Console:
– the pettiness of and delays by their production reviewers
– won't take action on obviously spammed negative (or positive) app reviews
– allowing expired/fraudulent payment options to take advantage of trials
– not showing all possible search results for search terms which cuts off a ton of other apps from having any visibility
– among many other issues with the Play Store/Dev Console
It's beyond exhausting.
Add to it the fact that Admob:
– won't serve 98% of requests with impressions, having any way to contact them for support or get meaningful support (also have left their contact options unfixed for years which feels like it's being done on purpose)
– will put serving limits on the smallest friggin things, serving limits when they allowed a single user from a country that gets flagged for serving limits all the time was manually blocked months ago from my account after my first encounter of serving limits for the reason of ads being served to users from that country
– will put serving limits even after adding your device's ID/Add ID as a testing device
– etc etc etc
Nevermind that we don't even know if they're actually serving ads or not in our apps and just pocketing what they don't report to us.
Google Ads:
– Block ads all the time for any reason. In my case, my app is purely a crypto market charting and analytics application (yeah I know crypto markets/charts are looked down upon here, but whatever I and others use it. It's not a gambling or trading app, just analytics. please save your hate for NFTs) and it doesn't allow transactions, trading or anything of the sort. Just data. But because "crypto" is in the name of my app, I can't use my app's name in ad copy, nor the word "crypto", etc. And the support team refuses to understand this or make an exception. Because of this policy I can't even show ads in certain countries or languages unless I find some convoluted workaround.
Everything with them has just been a non-stop uphill battle. It's soul crushing and makes you feel helpless and hopeless. They don't care about us even when we've been/are the substrate for the Play Store.
This article and the comments here are kind of scary. It feels like Google's only supporting apps that "drive engagement". That sounds like they want to force developers into producing stuff they can show ads in because they need more ads, not like they need more apps.
It also feels a bit like how software people STILL haven't figured out how to deal with a product that has a finite development cycle. Which is to say, a piece of code that is done and doesn't need any changes. You don't have Hardware stores forcing supply companies to come out with a new version of shovel every year right? A shovel is a shovel. There are probably 8 different types for various uses and within those perhaps two or three variants. So 24 or 30 variant of 'shovel' and your done. Some software can be like that too.
The subtext though that Google is actively hurting their developers for unspecified goals which look like they are desperate to make more money but it certainly could be some other thing. It reminds me of all the wailing about people whose web pages fell in the rankings because they hadn't been "updated" but when you've got the most useful description of say the scientific method on the web, why should you need to update that? It hasn't changed. And yet the 'older' your page got, the lower and lower it ranked.
I was involved in mobile game development for several years, but I’m no longer active in that field.
In my opinion, one of the reasons they do this is to maximize Ad revenue. In this case, it’s obvious that if you see this warning on your product page, the quick fix would be to spend money on Ads to gain a few more users as soon as possible. This also creates a competitive bidding situation across the market, as more developers buy ads, forcing others to do the same to keep up.
> Many users download our app to solve a specific problem (car issues), use it once successfully, then naturally don't open it again until needed months later. Low daily engagement doesn't mean low quality – it means the app successfully solved the user's problem!
What level of Enshittification is it if you actively penalize other apps for not enshittifying enough?
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28 Comments
pk97
I noticed this banner on one of my own apps while installing it for my mom on a new phone. The banner said "This app has fewer users than others…", almost as if they are discouraging users from installing it without even informing me. I looked it up online and it seems like many people have begun seeing this. I am linking a thread. If anyone from Google is reading this, such opaque policies are not appreciated!
duxup
This almost smells like a google throwing their hands up and saying "Well maybe it's a harmful app and they should use something else … I dunno, put a warning on it."
I see similar-ish warnings on Amazon about "frequently returned item", but I've no idea if it is true or why. Maybe an underlying vendor for the same item is bad? Amazon (who doesn't care about bad vendors as far as I can tell) just slaps a label on it and throws up their hands.
_fat_santa
Why does it seem like Google is trying to kill Android, or at least their app ecosystem.
– They now require a DUNS number to submit an app
– You now need 10-15 people to "QA" your app before submitting
– Now this.
It just seems that Google wants the "major" apps and nothing else.
anothereng
both app stores are not friendly to developers.
LWIRVoltage
… These sorts of patterns do not help at all, and will hurt those who have critical need for apps without a lot of users.
Speaking as somebody, who owns some mid-grade thermal cameras that stopped production in the past few years after a decade run, that depended on and are solely controlled and run on apps that were removed from the app store or no longer can run on modern phones because they are in 32-bit format ; this sort of thing would further punish that type of software and only speed up its demise.
When you spend thousands and thousands and thousands and of dollars and resources into getting unique capabilities like that, that can only be controlled through Android apps often, and is the only way to get that capability for some (this will apply to multiple and I imagine with niche capabilities that only have one or two methods of Access)
– this hurts a lot of opportunity, and this type of dark anti-pattern is far too blunt
dboreham
So we're done with correct English now?
xnx
Is Google Play like the Apple app store where Apple takes a smaller cut for apps with fewer users?
If so, there's obvious financial incentive for Google to push more people to a smaller number of apps.
aquir
Typical Big-tech approach: the solution is a non-solution without giving much thought to it but looks good for the board of investors and/or stock owners and they can say "we are stopping scam apps on our marketplace" on the next slides created by marketing. They just don't give a shit. (Just read the book "Careless People" – read it if you are not convinced. Engagement over everything)
sometimes_all
How does something like this ever get into production, especially at a place like Google, unless being hostile to new apps and developers is the plan? Or do they want to push potential developers into Google's double-dipping: pay them money to get on to the Play Store + pay a lot more money to get eyeballs on your app and thus more users.
suddenexample
A question for Googlers who may be responsible/adjacent – what is the intended function of this warning? It seems to be attempting to filter out low quality apps, but instead seems to be killing any attempt to change the status quo. If the app has fewer users than competing apps, the message Google is sending is "we don't need any new apps that do similar things to existing apps" and "if you're a small app, don't even think about unseating the dominant players."
Google's Play Store policies have been harebrained for quite some time – previously with the 15 reviewer approach they decided to make it even harder for developers with fewer resources to distribute their apps. It's ironic that even though the iOS App Store is arguably more of a walled garden, it's so much friendlier to human beings who are trying to build a product. But at this point it seems ingrained in Google to release self-defeating features (remember the finder network that prioritized "first of its kind privacy" over being able to find things?)
rockyj
All this just confirms for me the fact that how important the web is, thankfully it is still open / neutral and a good mobile web app is important for smaller devs.
Thankfully the web has always been neutral, which has allowed all these monopolies to thrive and exploit it, otherwise who knows which proprietary app hell we would be in.
tlogan
It would be great if they added something like a “frequently uninstalled app” label. That’s much more helpful for users. But I get why Google prefers this kind of warning — it supports their ad business.
(I really want “frequently uninstalled” label for games: because games are very often 100% different than what they show or describe)
dkkergoog
[dead]
redbell
This was discussed a couple of weeks ago on reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/1jddo84/the_new…
anilakar
Our company just got a warning that we have sixty days to release something on Play or have our developer console account closed. The email made it pretty clear that Google wants developers to continuously push new versions to customers. We have no new features nor bug fixes in backlog. There is nothing to update.
The only purpose of our software is to control hardware that our company makes. Nobody uses it for fun, they use it because they have to. If I had a say, I'd automate even larger parts of the customer workflow.
(Yes, at first we released a mobile PWA but ran into limitations related to push notifications and MDM support. We then created the native app, but our customers cannot remotely load APKs not signed by Google).
butz
Very sad state of affairs on Play Store. Independent app developers are clearly not welcome there. I already pulled all my hobby apps from Play Store, just to sleep soundly at night without thinking how to pass yet another app review after update, when policies keep getting more ridiculous each time. To the point where one update finally was pushed to the store, and another got the same issue again.
The biggest question is, how does one closes their Google Play Developer Account? There is no button in admin for that.
snowwrestler
> It feels like Google is unfairly punishing smaller, specialized developers in favor of mass-market apps.
This seems like a problem across Google generally. Search seems like it has been tuned toward the mass market in almost every query, which buries high-quality content, which is by its nature rare, specialized, and less well-known.
They have also tuned the features of Search in this direction, for example replacing queries with similar but more common text strings, and applying “did you mean” redirection more often, instead of just executing the search as typed. They now do this even if you quote the search string!
Google tests and tunes its algorithm updates. If an algorithm update results in lower prominence for sites they consider popular, they tune the algorithm to “fix” it. As a friend said, the modern Google would never release an algorithm update if it doesn’t put Home Depot on the first page for “buy power saw.” Result: a generous in-kind marketing subsidy for whoever is already popular. I’m convinced this is why Fandom and Quora still hang around polluting SERPs. They’re well-known because they’re well-known, like the Kardashians.
krunck
Alternative app distribution systems are the future. I love you f-Droid.
aoanevdus
It’s tempting to anthropomorphize a company like Google, and assume that every behavior is part of some evil master plan. Just as often, it’s some small group of people within the company making a dumb mistake. I’d guess there is some team tasked with reducing the “app spam” problem, where there the store and (app review process) is crammed with thousands of near-identical apps, torturing the naive user with ads as they attempt to perform basic functions.
This targeting of this warning is over-broad, preventing honest new app developers from getting traction. That’s bad for the long-term health of Android’s app ecosystem, and a competitive disadvantage against iOS. There’s probably some other team at Google who is responsible for improving the development experience for Android, who hates this new warning.
Talking about the harmful outcomes of this warning, it’s good to get the news far and wide and try to get it fixed.
Analyzing why the thing got pushed in the first place, it seems to me a symptom of the challenge of coherently managing a hundred thousand employees.
throwaway743
It'd be great if Android devs could organize and push our reps (I know it's likely futile) or something to get Google to stop bullying us. It's exhausting dealing with the non-stop struggle they force onto us, especially as someone who's trying to make a living by starting (in my case) a one person business building Android apps.
Play Store/Dev Console:
– the pettiness of and delays by their production reviewers
– won't take action on obviously spammed negative (or positive) app reviews
– allowing expired/fraudulent payment options to take advantage of trials
– not showing all possible search results for search terms which cuts off a ton of other apps from having any visibility
– among many other issues with the Play Store/Dev Console
It's beyond exhausting.
Add to it the fact that Admob:
– won't serve 98% of requests with impressions, having any way to contact them for support or get meaningful support (also have left their contact options unfixed for years which feels like it's being done on purpose)
– will put serving limits on the smallest friggin things, serving limits when they allowed a single user from a country that gets flagged for serving limits all the time was manually blocked months ago from my account after my first encounter of serving limits for the reason of ads being served to users from that country
– will put serving limits even after adding your device's ID/Add ID as a testing device
– etc etc etc
Nevermind that we don't even know if they're actually serving ads or not in our apps and just pocketing what they don't report to us.
Google Ads:
– Block ads all the time for any reason. In my case, my app is purely a crypto market charting and analytics application (yeah I know crypto markets/charts are looked down upon here, but whatever I and others use it. It's not a gambling or trading app, just analytics. please save your hate for NFTs) and it doesn't allow transactions, trading or anything of the sort. Just data. But because "crypto" is in the name of my app, I can't use my app's name in ad copy, nor the word "crypto", etc. And the support team refuses to understand this or make an exception. Because of this policy I can't even show ads in certain countries or languages unless I find some convoluted workaround.
Everything with them has just been a non-stop uphill battle. It's soul crushing and makes you feel helpless and hopeless. They don't care about us even when we've been/are the substrate for the Play Store.
nottorp
Yeah, google isn't a harmful monopoly at all, as this article clearly shows.
AlexanderTheGr8
Off-topic to the comments here, I am impressed by how the poster has described their issue so eloquently!
They mentioned 6 reasons for why they have an issue with the banner : each of the 6 is a valid concern and put very eloquently and clearly.
I suppose I only noticed this because I am used to speaking/writing/reading/listening mid-quality English in day-to-day life as a programmer.
ChuckMcM
This article and the comments here are kind of scary. It feels like Google's only supporting apps that "drive engagement". That sounds like they want to force developers into producing stuff they can show ads in because they need more ads, not like they need more apps.
It also feels a bit like how software people STILL haven't figured out how to deal with a product that has a finite development cycle. Which is to say, a piece of code that is done and doesn't need any changes. You don't have Hardware stores forcing supply companies to come out with a new version of shovel every year right? A shovel is a shovel. There are probably 8 different types for various uses and within those perhaps two or three variants. So 24 or 30 variant of 'shovel' and your done. Some software can be like that too.
The subtext though that Google is actively hurting their developers for unspecified goals which look like they are desperate to make more money but it certainly could be some other thing. It reminds me of all the wailing about people whose web pages fell in the rankings because they hadn't been "updated" but when you've got the most useful description of say the scientific method on the web, why should you need to update that? It hasn't changed. And yet the 'older' your page got, the lower and lower it ranked.
darepublic
Lack of transparency adds to the kafkaesque nature of it
strobe
I was involved in mobile game development for several years, but I’m no longer active in that field.
In my opinion, one of the reasons they do this is to maximize Ad revenue. In this case, it’s obvious that if you see this warning on your product page, the quick fix would be to spend money on Ads to gain a few more users as soon as possible. This also creates a competitive bidding situation across the market, as more developers buy ads, forcing others to do the same to keep up.
kazinator
How do they measure users? If I install the app, but never use it, do I count?
If I uninstall it, do I still count or not?
VoodooJuJu
[dead]
xg15
> Many users download our app to solve a specific problem (car issues), use it once successfully, then naturally don't open it again until needed months later. Low daily engagement doesn't mean low quality – it means the app successfully solved the user's problem!
What level of Enshittification is it if you actively penalize other apps for not enshittifying enough?