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Escaping Google's manual reputation penalty and resuming business as usual

(recleudo.com)
168 points fueloil | 1 comments | 21 Dec 24 14:24 UTC | HN request time: 0.207s | source
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throwaway743 ◴[21 Dec 24 16:53 UTC] No.42480697[source]▶
So sick of dealing with Google, between this, the play store, admob, etc. They'll punish you for the slightest things, have zero meaningful customer service/means of recourse, and in many cases don't have a way to even reach out to customer service (admob's email option is visible but throws an error every time you click it). Not to mention, they try to steer you towards their useless "community forums" that sre filled with "diamond users" who just spam copy/paste responses.

If your business depends on their services, you're fucked if you slip up in the smallest way. Have fun trying to get ahold of anyone who can help, unless you're lucky and have a friend who works there.

Side note, they're going to further penalize apps based on performance/ANRs, yet they haven't fixed the issue of admob's banner ads causing performance issues.

It just feels awful. We need more options that can actually help small businesses, not hurt or threaten them.

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1. mavamaarten ◴[21 Dec 24 17:17 UTC] No.42480863[source]▶
Yup. Dealing with Google often gives me strong "I'm being held hostage" vibes.

Our apps have been rejected from the Play Store for bogus reasons multiple times. Sometimes it's an easy fix (aka just release the same update but with higher version number - to get another bot or human to take a look), sometimes it takes a week, sometimes we've had to pull strings and had to escalate our issue through a contact at Google. But if you're a small fish, they will absolutely let you rot.