alt Hacker Newsgoogle seem to have the multi-pronged attack on android devs going on atm. They are seemingly trying to take down as many apps and dev accounts as possible.. Anyone know why?
1. doxx yourself of they kill your account
2. re-build every app with pointless newer api version literally every year or it gets taken down.
3. Push an update or a new app or they kill your account.
..
My guess is enshittification, some random exec is trying to save a few pennies in server and storage costs.
..
I'd also say that google makes so much money from ads and data-brokering that everything else they do is not vital for their survival and thus undergoes a sort of "genetic drift" where they just make random decisions.
Replies
> 1. doxx yourself of they kill your account
Combat abuse. I don't think this is a solvable problem, so obviously this won't be a silver bullet. But maybe will it impose more cost on the abusers creating a nicer app store experience for everyone. Or maybe this only imposes cost on the honest ones? I don't know how much validation they do.
> 2. re-build every app with pointless newer api version literally every year or it gets taken down.
Fix vulns. This also gets rid of abandoned apps. It also probably provides an "opportunity" for the dev to agree to new T&C.
> 3. Push an update or a new app or they kill your account.
This one seems shakier to me, but it might feed into an effort to get rid of abandoned apps. But I disagree with this being healthy for the ecosystem, if that's actually the reason.
I'm not trying to defend google, but from working in FAANG, some of this is obvious. None of these things save a significant amount of server or storage costs. Some of it is clearly anti-abuse and efforts to defend themselves from the constant stream of crap that tries to make its way into the app store.
> everything else they do
Google isn't like some dude (sundar) making decisions. It's a bunch of millionaires and billionaires making decisions. There's some high level guidance, but the difference between different divisions is 100% based on who's running that particular show.
Google cut off their own revenue legs with AI suggestions instead of ads.
Thats okay, they jumped the shark when the imperative for ads took over.
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background political lobbying. its part of the effort from most of the west (not the US yet) to verify users on devices to 'protect kids'