Hello, everyone.
My name is Yafit Becher, and I’m a product manager on Google Play.
I’m Anu Yamunan,
a product manager on the Android app safety team.
In this session, we will be talking about new features that Google Play offers
to help you manage policy violations.
We’ll also be talking about how Google Play gives you better visibility
into the app review process,
as well as help you stay in compliance with Google Play policies.
One of the ways we ensure a safe experience
is by enforcing certain policies for all apps and games.
Nobody likes to receive a policy violation, but they are essential
for making sure our users feel safe on our platform.
However, we understand that not all those violations are caused by your code.
Sometimes, they’re caused by third-party SDK code.
Today, we'll share how we've started building solutions
at the SDK level and how we are working directly
with the SDK providers so that we can help you
avoid issues caused by an underlying SDKs.
So let's get started.
We recently launched the publishing overview page
in the Google Play Console
to help you better understand the publishing process.
This page lists all the recent changes to your releases, store listings, and more,
and lets you know if these changes are still in review
or if they've already been approved.
Once changes are approved, you can publish them with managed publishing.
With this feature, changes go live when you decide,
instead of automatically after they’re approved.
We encourage you to submit changes long before your intended release date.
So you can give yourself time to review or make changes
without sacrificing control over your release schedule.
During the review process, our agents review your app content
and stored listings to make sure they’re compliant with Google Play policies.
These policies are designed to make sure that our billions of users
can safely enjoy your apps and games.
As a Google Play developer,
it's your responsibility to comply with the Play policies.
However, because of our platform and policies
are constantly evolving to create a safer ecosystem,
we know it can be hard to keep up with the latest requirements.
You have asked for improvements like
a centralized place to see all your policy violations and enforcements,
guidance on how to fix policy issues
and more advanced notice about upcoming policy changes.
We heard you.
We have spent the last year building a new dedicated policy
and program section in the Google Play Console.
The new policy status page allows you to manage your app compliance issues
in one central location.
You can find it under policy and programs in the left-hand navigation.
This page shows you if there are any enforcements
against your app, such as rejection, removal, or suspension.
You can also find a copy of the email you received
about the violation and how to fix it.
We heard from you that our policy enforcement emails can be vague
and that you wanted more details about how to fix violations.
In addition to bringing policy status into the console,
we're also providing more details regarding specific policy violations.
For example, if there was a policy issue
with your store listing, we'll tell you the specific image
or text where the violation needs to be fixed.
We've also recently added the ability
to appeal an enforcement decision and track its status right from this page.
And soon, we'll give you warnings
about potential policy violations and information
about how to fix them before the enforcement occurs
for specific types of violations.
Note that your inbox is the place where we send messages
about new policies and any policy-related issues.
Be sure to check it at least once a week and after submitting a release
so that you don't miss any important updates.
While those are some of the more recent and upcoming improvements
to the Google Play policy experience within the Play Console,
of course, the best time to fix a policy violation
is before you submit your app for review.
Here are some important Privacy by Design principles to keep in mind.
Number one, consider how your app accesses user data
and whether it's really needed.
Number two, ensure that your users have control over the data being accessed.
And number three, make sure users understand why the data is required
and how it's being used.
To learn more about the Play Console features I mentioned
or about building privacy-friendly apps, check out this course from Play Academy.
Whether you're designing a great app or game experience,
it's important to keep in mind that you are responsible
for all of its content, including those content
coming from third-party libraries and SDKs.
This is a requirement in the core app quality checklist.
I’m going to hand it over to Yafit now
who will tell you how we are helping you make the right decisions
about the third-party code from SDK providers.
Third-party software plays a critical role
in Android and contributes to a healthy, thriving ecosystem.
In fact, third-party SDKs are so prevalent in modern app development
that we’ve found that the majority of apps’ code
is actually made of SDKs rather than proprietary code.
SDKs are very helpful for productivity and maintainability
allowing developers to focus their time building original and unique content.
While we certainly bless third-party software usage,
it is not risk-free.
Once integrated, third-party software becomes an integral part of your app,
which can affect its performance, stability, and safety.
Furthermore, Play policy holds app developer accountable
to the entirety of their app code
whether it’s their own or written by a third party.
But we also know it’s not always easy
to stay up to date with all the SDK code you use
and that many app developers don’t have the tools
to effectively analyze their SDK’s behavior.
That’s why we’re starting to invest in building relationships with SDK providers.
We want to help them build better, safer SDKs while also improving their guidance
to app developers about their SDK choices.
Engaging directly with SDK providers is beneficial to the Play ecosystem as a whole,
as it lets us bridge the gap between SDKs and app developers.
We took the first step last year with the EAP launch of the Google Play SDK Console.
We have invited several large SDK providers to the early access program
and we are continuing to onboard more SDKs.
The SDK Console is a new front end
for SDK providers to register and manage their SDKs.
It enables direct, continuous relationships and allows us to influence SDKs at scale.
The SDK Console also lets SDK providers report issues with their previous versions,
see usage stats and gain visibility into crash reporting at the SDK level.
By establishing this direct line of communication,
we're now able to give you guidance about SDK issues in the Play Console
based on the information reported to us by SDK providers in the SDK Console.
Now, when there's an issue, we can send app developers
inbox warnings and give release-time nudges
to steer you away from problematic SDK versions
such as unsupported or non-compliant versions.
We can only give this guidance to apps that share their library dependencies with us.
Apps using the Android App Bundle
include a list of all code libraries that they use
including which SDK versions their app is using.
Starting from Android Gradle plugin 4.0,
this information is also included for APKs built with Gradle.
You can opt out of sharing your library dependencies with us,
but we strongly encourage you not to.
This information allows us to give you advice
on how to resolve issues caused by an underlying SDK
and avoid unexpected policy violations.
Later this year, we plan to expand our guidance
to app developers and help you make better, more informed choices about SDKs.
We want to help you with the due diligence
of the third-party services you are considering
and help alleviate some of the burden of choosing the right SDKs for your app.
We'll do that by establishing the new public destinations
for app developers to learn about popular libraries
across the Play ecosystem.
It will give you insights into things like SDK permission usage,
known issues, app compatibility, and more.
We'll also be able to tell which SDKs are already registered
with the Google Play SDK Console.
To start, it will only cover commercial SDK categories
but in the future, we hope to give you guidance
about a broad set of SDKs, including open-sourced one.
Stay tuned for a product announcement on this space later this year.
Building a safe ecosystem that our user can trust is a team effort.
We know that we’ve been asking a lot of you,
and we want to thank you for all the hard work and your patience.
It is our responsibility to support you and minimize the burden however we can.
And we hope that the features we’ve talked about today will be helpful.
Thanks for your continued support in making Google Play a trustworthy
and valuable experience for everyone.
Please keep sharing your thoughts with us
and keep an eye out for more improvements later this year.