The 'whine' was about being banned for life because of novice mistakes made without bad faith. How is one supposed to learn the ropes? It's like learning to drive in a country where driving schools didn't exist and the full extent of traffic laws applied to you. How possibly could the author learn what he was doing wrong?
TL;DR: Don’t trust companies with important stuff if you are not certain to have appropriate forms of recourse if they decide in a way you don’t like. Don’t ignore civil and criminal law because they’re just “rules”. Read the terms of service if you agree to them.
When his first app was suspended, Google should have given a better response when he asked what he did wrong. But to just continue forward doing the exact same thing he was doing before was asking for trouble. If Google wouldn't give him a clear answer, he should have asked his friends or the community.
Well yeah, repeated trademark infringement / impersonation; if Google wasn't strict about that kinda thing, the owners of those brands would sue them for millions, just as much as they were with Youtube. They're similarly strict with Youtube videos for that matter.
Is that impersonation? Basically his app let you have a "bookmark" that opened a YouTube provided channel.
Sure he seems to be naive about the trademark issues (but interestingly never mentions how much money was made, if any) but Google were highly flawed in their customer service/developer relations [as usual]. The trademark issue isn't entirely clear cut (but I wouldn't want to try and defend it in court) as it's descriptive of what it is. There's an exhaustion of rights angle too - like being able to sell Nike shoes and call them Nike shoes as long as they are really from Nike. My point I suppose is it's not entirely without complexity.
Google, how hard is it to have a pro forma response that says "You can not use other business names or trademarks, which you don't have a license for, as part of your app name.".
Yes.
>The 'whine' was about being banned for life because of novice mistakes made without bad faith. How is one supposed to learn the ropes?
The novice mistakes were made without bad faith, I agree. This is why his first app was suspended.
The reason he was banned however, was continuing to ignore warnings. He has no concept of what he did wrong—he's not someone I would want to do business with, either.
Google has the right to terminate a business relationship with partners who violate their terms and conditions and ignore their warnings.
Developer account with Google is not a birthright. The provision of it is a business relationship conditioned on following certain rules which the author broke multiple times and despite warnings.
Maybe listen to one of the many warnings he was given?
Please correct this error immediately or your account will be terminated. /s
"I emailed Google back and asked them to tell me exactly what I need to change to be compliant with the rules. Is it the icon? The name? The disclaimer? What? Google refused to give me any additional information. So, I just left the app in the suspended state and never attempted to update it since I really didn’t know what I needed to change".
Or he could have just searched the web - "(...) searching the web I find dozens of similar stories"
"For example, if your app displays the brand, icon, or title from another app [...] your apps can be suspended and your developer account terminated."
Not suggesting he was right, but you can't be apart of this community without noticing these things.
