JavaScript Developers Left in the Dark After DroidScript Software Shut Down by Google Over Ad Fraud Allegations (theregister.com) 40
On the last day of March, DroidScript, a popular Android app for writing JavaScript code, had its Google advertising account suspended and a week later was removed from the Google Play Store for alleged ad fraud. From a report: David Hurren, founder of the non-profit DroidScript.org and of SoftCogs Ltd, a UK-based software firm, is baffled by the charge and asked Google to explain how it came to that conclusion and to reconsider its suspension of DroidScript. But his appeals have been answered by form letters and now the app, used by more than 100,000 developers, including students, teachers and professionals, is losing premium subscribers as well as ad revenue with no further explanation from Google.
The app had only a single banner, added "reluctantly added to cover our development and hosting costs," Hurren explained in a DroidScript forum post about the crisis. Denied access to ad revenue and details about the supposed infraction, Hurren set about creating a new version without the AdMob banner ad shortly after the AdMob account suspension, knowing this might also prevent DroidScript users from implementing AdMob in their own apps. But Google, on April 7, suspended the app on Google Play, preventing any new version from being released. Hurren said that means the app loses all the user-ratings, download statistics, and premium subscribers accrued over the past seven years.
The app had only a single banner, added "reluctantly added to cover our development and hosting costs," Hurren explained in a DroidScript forum post about the crisis. Denied access to ad revenue and details about the supposed infraction, Hurren set about creating a new version without the AdMob banner ad shortly after the AdMob account suspension, knowing this might also prevent DroidScript users from implementing AdMob in their own apps. But Google, on April 7, suspended the app on Google Play, preventing any new version from being released. Hurren said that means the app loses all the user-ratings, download statistics, and premium subscribers accrued over the past seven years.
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you rely on Google for any part of your income- you are at risk.
Over and over I read articles about people getting their income stream cut off. Or products being shut down. Or old hardware no longer being supported.
Twice I have had huge problems with Google stopping support on a product (Google Search Appliance, and one of their software projects). And you are completely powerless. No place to turn for an easy replacement.
Google is the worst company to consider as a 'partner' in any sort of business. I wish people would stop falling into the trap!
Re: Why? (Score:2, Troll)
I don't think Google is any worse here than any partner. The reality is if you rely on one vendor for your entire business, then you have put yourself at their mercy.
If you are Jack climbing into the cloud of Giants, you better make sure the Giants don't squash you on accident when they go for a walk.
Re: Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Most partners that you deal with, often have a support contract where they are to support and continue the product for a set period of time. You can plan you life cycle with your business partner. Google makes it easy to join in, and they will drop you like a hat, if they find out that it just wasn't as popular as they hoped it would be, or in this case some legal problems.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think Google is any worse here than any partner
Google is completely uncontactable. There is not only no recourse, but no one you can actually even ask about a decision. You can't find out what you did wrong, or what to do to fix it. It's as if a brick wall, on it's own, decides to just park itself around your car. Good luck asking it to move, or why it's there.
Google is objectively the worst "partner" to have in any situation at all. They have no contacts, no customer service, and no recourse. I'm not sure they can be called a "partner" by any def
Re: Why? (Score:2)
Good. Because partners with customer support tend to be harder to get support from than Google's automated systems. By choosing not to have human support, they've forced themselves into actually solving support problems instead of hiring low-wage foreigners to fumble through phone support while telling you about your local weather.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
The trouble is, Apple is similarly capable of wiping out the developer of any iOS app by blocking it from the store, and while Google seems to be particularly bad in terms of quality of service, there are no real protections for developers on either of the big mobile platforms..
Sooner or later, we have to acknowledge that a huge amount of the software people use today runs on those platforms, and that allowing the platform developer to also run an unregulated monopoly app store (or close enough in practice for the difference to be largely academic) is bad for both consumers and developers.
Re: (Score:2)
I wouldn't even consider using a Google API or Google Product that needs to have a lifespan of longer than 3 months.
Amazon App Store? (Score:2)
Are these developers able to move their app to the Amazon App Store, and retain (some percentage of) their paying users?
Google does not prevent the installation of the Amazon App Store on most Android devices, although Google will see logs of all users who install it.
This is exchanging one walled-garden for another. There are other app stores [wikipedia.org] but I would guess that Amazon will handle subscriptions the best.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Why? (Score:2)
How many guitars do you think professionals go through during a single gig?
Re: (Score:2)
That depends on if it's Pete Townshend or not...
Re: (Score:3)
Re: Why? (Score:2)
You ever think that the "labor" of a musician just isn't as valuable as you think it is.
Re: (Score:3)
When this happens, the only way to get your Google (or Apple) account back is to create an article on some (or many) techie sites, and hope someone working for Google / Apple notices the story.
We live in the age where 99% of the time the algorithms are ok. If mistakes matter, companies assume that they will get resolved by the press or by law suits.
Re: (Score:1)
Who is this again ... Tuttle or Buttle?
Re: (Score:2)
you think the algorithms are right 99% of the time? really?
Eggs meet Basket (Score:1)
I don't think there's anything wrong with Android development as long as you realize it is a toy operating system where Google is in charge of Google Play (a vertical monopoly) and, if they don't like you for some random reason, you have no recourse available.
I agree that creating a business dependency on a third-party is a dangerous, bad idea. Every business should have a working, tested backup plan available if any of their dependencies suddenly decide to pull the rug out from underneath them. Always be
Google vs Apple (Score:2)
At least when Google kicks you out people can still download your app from your website in the traditional way. And they will if it is important enough.
With Apple's walled garden, you are stuffed.
No mystery here (Score:3)
Things like DroidScript threaten unify the app market. A simple single page web application which can serve as a website, iphone app, and android app, all working at native level speed, would make the concept of an app store and its ridiculous 30% overhead obsolete.
The google play store and the itunes store are more of a barrier to the app industry than a benefit these days. Its time to end their reign.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
The entire lot should be regulated, and Google should be FORCED to provide full telephone support for ANY user or business. AND for them to provide escalation points, which end up at 3rd party arbitration, or some legally binding decision that Google, Apple, et al, must abide by.
I would not, at all be surprised if this was shutdown because of some insider support scrotum at google doing a deal on the sly to get app X shutdown via shady means where possible, and not an actual google process.
But where can you
Avoid somone elses frameworks. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is an argument I often get with Junior Developers, who get their hand on some cool library or framework, that makes their development much easier. I often have to shoot them down stating things like, we don't have a support contract for this framework or library, so in 5, 10 or 20 years from now we are going to have to replace it and re-code huge portions of the product, by at that point, it would be tricky to change, as why we did what we did, will probably be lost.
Just code using the standard libraries, and built in features. It may be a little harder to code, and take a bit longer. It ends up being more supportable over time. As you can just fix the code, vs having to rewrite large portions because of some 3rd party license, or major security issue.
I had to rewrite entire programs, because the source code was lost over time, and what stopped it from working on the next version of windows, was some crappy Third Party Date Control made in VB back in the 1990's and was compiled for 16bit.
Re: (Score:3)
I had to rewrite entire programs, because the source code was lost over time, and what stopped it from working on the next version of windows, was some crappy Third Party Date Control made in VB back in the 1990's and was compiled for 16bit.
Sounds like you used to be a Quickbooks dev for Intuit.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
So we wrote our own framework like you said, and 15 years later only one developer really understands it because he was one of the original developers and the others have left. So unlike with third party frameworks, we can't just hire someone who knows the framework.
But the good news is that it's job security for him!
Re: (Score:2)
You're unlikely to have built a framework in the implied sense - a vast one that 99% of whose features will not be used by your software. You'll have built a "framework" for the problem you have. Unless, for some reason, you spent many millions building a monstrous scaffolding shell around your problem. Then I'd have to ask how the heck that happened.
Now you may not be talking about a framework. You might mean a very complex custom solution to your complex problem, which is different. Happens a lot in logis
Frameworks cause more work than they save (Score:2)
+1. And those huge frameworks often do not save that much work. By the time you figure out what they really do. And then debugging your code when things go wrong becomes desperate posts to StackExchange. Forget performance analysis.
Any framework or third party library used needs to justify itself by saving a significant amount of work.
Re: (Score:2)
I realize that any sort of training or education for employees, even for internal tools is just so last Tuesday (Employers expect people to be born with instinctive in-depth knowledge of their widget flocculator) but it sounds like well past time for that one remaining developer to be assigned an apprentice.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm guessing your framework is a lot like my 'frameworks'. Just a huge pile of custom functions, methods, included files, etc. etc. Basically whenever I find myself writing the same code repeatedly, I standardize it in some way and add it to the list of "things I wrote a long time ago that I no longer fully understand, but I use them every day."
I find these things to be hugely valuable. And when they last 15 years, that is a giant success- not a problem. Because very few frameworks in use today were bein
Re: (Score:2)
If you haven't heard of technical debt [wikipedia.org], then your opinion on this matter is worthless to me. Good day.
Re: (Score:2)
Just because something is old does not mean its value is (now) negative. Or are you arguing that "everything older than arbitrary date X is by definition broken, not scalable, not secure" or something?
You can have technical debt today from new code you wrote yesterday, when what you wrote for PHP 8 suddenly gets neutered because someone found a massive security hole and the PHP team deprecates a library function from the next release (yes, this is a contrived example). And at the same time, there will be co
Re: (Score:2)
I dont' even understand remotely how you can use an app on a phone to do any sort of development. Unless of course you plug the phone into monitor and keyboard. Maybe they've got amazing vision with telescopic corneas and extremely tiny fingers in order to type in what is needed easily and swiftly.
I have also noted in the past the silliness of relying on third party scripts coming from third party web sites. It abdicates a company's responsibility to provide the best possible service to their customers.
Re: (Score:2)
This greatly depends on the project. There are many, many applications out there where you can use a framework that has a few thousands of man-hours already put into to make the project take say 10-20 hours instead of 200-300. Across a variety of similar projects, assuming you wanted to regard this as a situation where you might build up your own "core" of a framework or base application you'd base your other projects on, you'd probably end up spending several hundred hours on your core and probably twice t
Re: (Score:2)
This is an argument I often get with Junior Developers, who get their hand on some cool library or framework, that makes their development much easier. I often have to shoot them down stating things like, we don't have a support contract for this framework or library, so in 5, 10 or 20 years from now we are going to have to replace it and re-code huge portions of the product, by at that point, it would be tricky to change, as why we did what we did, will probably be lost.
I had to rewrite entire programs, because the source code was lost over time, and what stopped it from working on the next version of windows, was some crappy Third Party Date Control made in VB back in the 1990's and was compiled for 16bit.
Why not use open source? That would have solved it.
Re: (Score:2)
Why not use open source? That would have solved it.
Maybe, but Open Source does have it's own problems...
Also, Commercial Software does not always mean totally closed source. It may be quite possible to get at least part of the source, if you sign an agreement not to sell copies of it to anyone else. In some development systems it is even part of the install.
Re: (Score:2)
This is an argument I often get with Junior Developers, who get their hand on some cool library or framework, that makes their development much easier. I often have to shoot them down stating things like, we don't have a support contract for this framework or library, so in 5, 10 or 20 years from now we are going to have to replace it and re-code huge portions of the product, by at that point, it would be tricky to change, as why we did what we did, will probably be lost. ...
Just code using the standard libraries, and built in features.
These days, it's almost impossible to not use some libraries. But what I have learned is, if at all possible, don't use any library that you do not have the source for.
Sometimes, like for databases, that -is- pretty much impossible. But so far as you can, don't depend on DLLs that you can't compile.
On the other hand, if you are designing for cellphones, then have at it. It will only last for a year, anyway... 8-}
Re: (Score:2)
This is an argument I often get with Junior Developers, who get their hand on some cool library or framework, that makes their development much easier. I often have to shoot them down stating things like, we don't have a support contract for this framework or library, so in 5, 10 or 20 years from now we are going to have to replace it and re-code huge portions of the product, by at that point, it would be tricky to change, as why we did what we did, will probably be lost.
Just code using the standard libraries, and built in features. It may be a little harder to code, and take a bit longer. It ends up being more supportable over time. As you can just fix the code, vs having to rewrite large portions because of some 3rd party license, or major security issue.
I had to rewrite entire programs, because the source code was lost over time, and what stopped it from working on the next version of windows, was some crappy Third Party Date Control made in VB back in the 1990's and was compiled for 16bit.
Of course building your own framework means in 15 years time your solution is badly out of date and you spend all your time maintaining and fixing your framework instead of adding features to your product.
I've seen a lot of home-grown frameworks rife with bugs and security issues because the inhouse authors simply didn't have the time and resources to do a good job.
Of course being excessively tied to a framework, especially the wrong framework, has a host of problems. But overall I think it's better to leve
Google waves hand ... (Score:3)
DroidScript ... had its Google advertising account suspended and a week later was removed from the Google Play Store
This isn't the app you're looking for ...
It doesn't take much, and there's no recourse (Score:5, Interesting)
Many years ago we had a blog of our travels. It was a small audience of mostly friends and fellow travelers. We put an ad banner at the top hoping to get some small amount of money to offset the hosting costs. After about 6 months we got a communication from Google that our account was suspended and that I would have a lifetime ban from ever using Google Adsense again. On our next installment we wrote about that in passing, along with more tails of our travels. One friend emailed us telling us that it might have been him as he always clicked the ads, sometimes multiple times, in a misguided effort to help us out. Apparently that's all it takes to get bounced from Google. And unless you're a major player for a huge audience, there is no recourse.
Next month : Google announces app for JavaScript (Score:2)
1 year from now : Google sunsets its app for writing Javascript on Android.