Repeating this same line is just harmful noise at this point. Rather, we should - legally - demand more from tech utility platforms like Google, Facebook or Apple.
More like a strong disclaimer worth repeating for newcomers in the space.
These stories have come up several times over the years on HN and it is worth reiterating:
It is very risky if your product/company relies solely on another company's success and openness to you - especially if that company is not contractually obligated to continue providing you service.
Maybe HN users, but an increasingly overwhelming percentage of the general population prefers to download an app to do something instead of using a mobile website.
Various industry surveys, like the one from comscore in 2019 suggest otherwise. IIRC it found that most American phone owners install only 1-2 new apps per year. I think they would've gone to more new websites than that.
That study doesn't imply what you suggest. Yes, most Americans install 1-2 apps per year: Facebook, Instagram and similar, and that's all they ever use. That segment of the population doesn't use the mobile web either; they spend all of their time in 1-2 walled gardens and you're not going to reach them with an app or website.
Couldn't you create a web-first app, then have the "app" that appears in the app just install a launcher icon that launches a browser window pointing to your website? This method (PWA?) I believe also lets you launch the browser without the browser control bar at the top (so it appears as a local app).
The best part of this is even if your app gets banned from the app store, it is still accessible to anyone that wants to bookmark your URL, and I believe that users can also install the local PWA icon without having to go through an app store (I may be wrong about that, just starting to learn about PWAs and what is currently possible, and what is coming up).
You seem to know what you are talking about, but from my personal experience this does not see correct. To me, it seems that it used to be that way, but now people only download apps for very specific purposes.
Do you have pointers to data on this subject? I am very interested in this subject!
The current state of webapps on Android has made good progress on these issues:
Supported on all major Android browsers:
- Progressive Web Apps can be added to your home screen
- Web Push lets web apps receive push notifications (Brave's implementation is broken, but they try to support the feature)
Experimental APIs supported by Chrome for Android:
- Web Share Target API, which lets homescreen'd web apps receive shares from other apps (the share pane makes no distinction between sharing to a web app or a native app)
- Contacts APIs to read the user's contacts list
I think PWA's competitiveness will get a lot better once other browsers adopt the Web Share Target (or something like it), but I'm skeptical that they'll really take off as long as Apple continues hold off on implementing features that would make PWAs competitive with native apps.
Let's not go into hypotheticals about what might happen if google started... what, inserting spyware, basically, into their own open source browser engine?
Chrome and even Firefox have already begun political policing of their browsers (https://reclaimthenet.org/google-chrome-web-store-bans-disse...). The next step seems like it’ll be forced curation of the web or blocking of IP addresses, since they’re already knocking on that door.
They banned a sleazy-looking extension from their extension stores. That's a far cry from "forced curation of the web or blocking of IP addresses". And, if that happens? Someone will just fork the browser.
Why stop there? Web apps can trivially be taken down if your domain registrar, hosting provider, datacenter partner or payment solution decides to kick you out.
You have alternatives for those things though, in other countries if necessary. Ok, ok, accepting payments is hard -- if you're getting booted from your processors because, say, you're in a controversial industry, you might have to get creative (look at the US cannabis industry for such creativity).
There many hosting provider, datacenter, payment gatway to choose from. But just 2 appstore to use (technically android can have as many as you want, but how many pp use 3rd store right now?)
The problem I have with third party app stores is you have to open up permissions to install any third-party app -- you can't just say "Trust apps from the following app stores" (at least that I've found, although it has been a while since the last time I looked into it).
compare to china where google is blocked, which as a result has dozens of competing appstores. each phone brand has their own, and then some.
i do believe that if google didn't have an appstore that it forces android licensees to use, then we would have a similar variety of appstores world wide.
The same is true for Facebook. My website and ad accounts were banned one day without a reason. They said it did not meet community standards. There has been no recourse since 2 years.
I once tried to advertise on facebook. I was editing my ad, and when I was trying upload an image or something, it went into some sort of infinite loop of trying to reload the page. Then, seconds later, it was banned, taking down my business page and my personal account as well. Still down after two years and going through their "appeals" process, which involves trying to log in with my old password, saying it was a mistake, and nothing ever happening.
I got banned from Gumtree for a similar system. I was using a script blocker, uMatrix (but have since stopped because of the hassle), and the site wasn't coded to handle something with reCAPTCHAs not loading and the error messages were useless. Support said it's an automated system and for contacting them about the ban, they blocked my email as well.
There is no appeals process unfortunately. For the past 2 years I have been asking for an update regularly and the only response I get is an automated response saying that they have checked my ad account and there is nothing they can do about it.
My website is still blocked by Facebook's sharing debugger and my ad accounts with balance in them have been blocked without a reason given.
I'm completely in favor of everyone suing facebook for literally any reason, but to be clear, what would the legal standing/basis be for this small claims court?
The balance in their ad account belongs to them, not to Facebook.
Beyond that, the point is just to make them notice you, so anything might be good enough. Reporting to a regulator like the CFPB can also be effective if the case looks financey - I got my PayPal account back recently that way after they didn't like how I typed in a tracking number and banned me for life.
Yeah, SEO has become hell hole in the last 6 months. Crippled businesses across the board from what I've seen and heard on the grape vine.
After 8 years of SEO expertise I honestly can say that there's nothing about SEO these days that makes sense, pages are not being indexed for weeks at a time, spam/crap at the top result. Throw in the endless (and ambiguous) requirements to adhere to the mighty G's requirements.
> Daily reminder that your business/project/hobby should not depend on anything controlled by Google.
Note that this doesn’t mean don’t participate on platforms controlled by Google, it just means diversify your business so you have multiple income streams rather than just putting all your eggs in one App Store basket. Apps should really just be a client facing portal tied in to a whole ecosystem of solutions you provide.
f-droid doesn't have payments, Amazon is yet another faceless mega-corp that has had its fair share of sellers accusing them of various shady things.
Creating a Play Store alternative is hard for many reasons:
1) finance: the more countries you operate in, the messier it becomes. International taxes are one hard mess, KYC/AML regulations differ between countries, and to top it off there is the whole "international sanctions" issue especially regarding Iran (where it's fine and explicitly encouraged by the EU to do business with Iran, but any entity that has US exposure exposes themselves to liability in the US for violations).
2) vetting of apps against a constant onslaught of spam, malware, copyright violations: f-droid has it a bit easier since they require all apps be open source, but a commercial, widely used alternative will have to run static analysis, dynamic analysis (to catch runtime exploit attempts) and manual testing. All of this is expensive and requires expert knowledge of Android as well as IT security.
3) Implementation and hosting: an app store worth its name has a lot of binary assets to distribute to users (and again, you have to avoid getting into trouble with people abusing your service to spread illegal content, because there will be such cases rather sooner than later), the store itself has to be implemented, regularly adapted to account for changes in the Android core, you definitely want a focus on security to avoid some hacker distributing malware to all your users with a push...
4) Customer and developer support: it's a well-known meme that FB/Amazon/Twitter/Google are almost impossible to reach for ordinary people without raising a shitstorm on Hacker News or a well-funded lawyer team... but the key thing is, support is expensive to run.
Developers have no incentive to go the extra mile to publish on your store, because there are no users and it is extra work.
Users have no incentive to install your store, because there is barely anything on it.
OEMs have no incentive to preinstall your store, because you don't have any content (which devalues their product) and they don't gain anything from it. If they are willing to roll their own store, they at least rake in all the profit from it.
Developers like in-app payment methods because all they have to do is integrate an SDK for payment, and then they get a monthly payment on their bank account and a bill for accounting, that's it.
If you want to handle payments yourself, you'll have to:
1) implement user management to deal with storing what stuff a user has purchased, with all the GDPR and customer support (forgotten passwords, hacked accounts, lost MFA creds) headache that comes from that
2) find a payment processor that operates in all your target countries (no, Stripe and Paypal alone won't cut it), and integrate these (and hope they don't run into the same issue with Paypal, who are known for deciding on a whim to withhold funds)
3) Issue individual bills to customers, account for stuff like cross-border VAT, insanities like county/city sales taxes, deal with refund laws
4) deal with fraud attempts, angry parents, ...
5) Re-implement recurring payment schemes if your business model wants these
In the end, app stores (and ad SDKs) are a matter of convenience. Big shops like Epic, Spotify, Netflix can get away with running lots of this infrastructure on their own, but 99% of small devs don't have the time, knowledge and legal requirements to deal with that.
The problem with the Parler situation is more that their average user is too incompetent and inexperienced with computers to understand how to download something that isn't literally laid out in front of them.
I refuse to use Google Play or create a google account so I use The Aurora Store which replaces the Google Play Store.
If I want to download some independent apps I head to F droid store or Aptoide.
There are even more independent and alternative app stores, but these are the ones I use.
Oh, and don't forget about github and app downloads directly from the web.
F droid allows you to install without Google play.
This is why we need anti-trust action when it comes to mobile app distribution. Google and Apple have abused their duopoly in this market for over a decade, now.
>> android phone makers join force and create an independent app store
And why wouldn’t this App Store have any takedown policies? Or have to follow the same kind of legal restrictions? In the discussed example, this wasn’t even automated; an employee manually reviewed and chose to ban their app.
I guess all business/project/hobby websites should shut down then? Your website won't get very far at all when most people rely on google's search results, browser, and email service.
ICE40 board directly from the FGPA manufacturer. It's cheap has an open source toolchain and works without any additional hardware. Just plug it in and go.
