Hey! This is the Daily Overpass! My name is Eric and I make apps!
Now today, let's talk about some of the recent updates on the Google Play
Developer Console.
Now, if you develop Android apps and have apps on Google
Play, you may have gotten an email from the Google Play Developer Console last
week with changes to their policy updates. Now, we get these every so often.
They'll make certain changes, they'll send things out, for the most part. I just
ignore them. But, you know, this time, it was actually pretty interesting.
First of all, I don't know if you, guys, get this but every time I get an email
from Google Play Developer, part of me just sort of, you know, it just goes, "Oh, my
God!" Like my heart stops for a second because if you've ever gotten the
email that says your app has been suspended or temporarily suspended or
your AdMob has been stopped for whatever reason, a part of you just goes
into disaster mode. And that's happened - that's happened to be
just a few times, but enough so that every time I see the email from Google
Play, you know, part of me just sort of shrinks even though I haven't done
anything wrong. I think it would be the same like if the police
were knocking at the door, like if I look through the curtain, saw the police were
knocking at your front door, part of me would sort of freak out even
though logically, I haven't committed any crime. It's just sort of
like that. So, anyway, once I got over that little bit of shock that Google's
emailing, oh, it's just a policy update. I read through it and it's
actually - was actually pretty interesting. But very much like an
Apple thing. So, if you - if you look at that email, they talked about it made
some changes to the base guidelines and things like that. But you know, some of
these links are really interesting. First of all, there - have a bit more
guidance here on spam and minimum functionality. And so it says here on the -
if you go through that page it says, "We don't allow apps
that spam users or Google Play such as apps that send users unsolicited
messages," which makes sense. "or apps that are duplicated and low quality."
Now, that low quality thing sounds a little bit subjective. A lot like
Apple is, but I don't think we're gonna have as much trouble with it.
In fact, when I saw this spam area on the new - on the on the policy updates, the
first thing I thought was, 'Oh no. It's just gonna be like having to go through
that process again and the nightmare that we're having at the moment with
with Apple." And the stuff that we had in the past trying to make sure that it's
not low quality, but it's also trying to make sure that, yeah, like it's that
subjective nature of it. So, make sure that it's good enough for an
application. I mean, it makes sense from a user's point of view. I don't know how
they're gonna police that but, you know, some of these other things here are a
bit interesting. So like Message Spam, like you should be able to
send out SMS or email without the users knowledge, that makes perfect
sense. I mean, none of this stuff is really worries me. This Wizard Spam
area here, there's a section on Wizard Spam saying, "We don't allow apps that
are created by an automated tool to be submitted to Google Play by the operator
on behalf of other persons." So, if you have like a like an automated tool like
say AppyPie or business - what is it -BizApps or whatever, those
kind of things should go on your clients you know Google Play - on their own
Google Play accounts and not on your own, so, all this kind of stuff. And it
really makes sense that it shouldn't really affect. I mean, for me, it's not
gonna affect me too much because it's something I insist my clients do, anyway,
is to set up their own Google Play account, to set up their own iTunes accounts.
And the other thing over here, there's another tab here for Minimum
Functionality which is really - it's hardly anything. It's just - it really just
says, "Common violations: Apps that don't install, Apps that install but
don't load and Apps that load but are not responsive." So, yeah, for me the thing
that that I need to look in is the ANR request. So, one of my apps has -
it's not a high amount of ANRs, but is about - it's about two and a half percent
of users get ANRs on Ear Spy and the reason - and I went through, look through
it and try to find out what's causing that. It's really because we're checking
the App Store and validating purchases, it's just one of these things we need to
make sure the Internet's online and all those kind of stuff. So, little stuff like
tha,t but it's really interesting if you haven't looked at this, it's so
easy to ignore these emails, is to have a look at it and see what's going on. I'm a
bit concerned about the spam stuff just sort of the
broad terms that's being used, just because like with the App
Store - with the Apple App Store, it's obvious you get a good review, you're
okay. If you get a bad review, r you're not, it's a very subjective. But with
Google Play, you know, I think it's a lot more automated, so
hopefully, we'll be treated much more fairly. But anyway, I just wanted to bring
that to you guys' attention. If you haven't seen it, it's you know. very
interesting and all that stuff. So anyway, that's it for today. Also let me just - I'm
gonna try to get into habit of saying this each episode.
Don't forget to Like and Subscribe and all that - Comment and all this stuff.
That's it for today. That's it for this week and I'll talk to you, guys, on
Monday.