Episode: 1230
Title: HPR1230: Google How Could You
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1230/hpr1230.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 21:59:49

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Hello and welcome to this episode of Hacker Public Radio. A lot of you may know me as
Neodragon in cyberspace from when I participated in the Linux Basics Podcast or the Colonel
Panic Podcast or on IRC. Today's topic, Google How Could You? I'd like to start off by giving
you a bit of a backstory about Stephanie Chute. Her and her husband have been developing
Go SMS Pro themes, icon packs, live wallpapers, and a few other apps for Android for about
five years now under the company name SCSCREATIONS and have been in good standing with Google
for that entire time. You can find Stephanie on Google Plus by name and can also check out their
website which has a lot of the work that they've done at www.SCSCREATIONSDESCHuteDesigns.com.
I will put a link in the show notes as well. Most of the information in this episode I got from
an article posted on the 14th of April by Armando Ferreira on his website, thejoydefect.com,
titled When Google Betrays You. And again, I'll post a link for the article in the show notes.
I also spoke briefly with Stephanie on Google Plus about this and got permission from her to do this
episode. The thing is the Chutes have been earning about almost 100% of their income from selling
their apps and such on Google Play for the past five years, however on April 11th all that changed.
See, that's the day Stephanie got a letter from Google stating that her Google Play
Store account was pulled and that all of her apps had been pulled from the Google Play Store due
to noncompliance to the Google Play Store terms of servers or whatever the heck it is.
And then no other explanation was given as to why or what policy she violated or anything like that.
Stephanie has over the last few days made several attempts, multiple attempts actually,
to contact Google via phone, email, what have you, as well as posting stuff on Google Plus about
this in an attempt to get them to explain to her what she violated or why they pulled her account,
or whatever the case may be. Now, just the other day they sent her another email saying that
they had sent her prior notice and basically something to the effect that
all further attempts to contact them via email would be ignored. Now, for starters,
if you're Google and you're trying to make money off of the Google Play Store,
I don't think that's exactly the best way to earn people's trust and to get people to
develop apps for Android if you're basically going to ignore them when they try to resolve issues.
In any case, as it turns out, Stephanie looked back through her spam folder and get this.
Google originally sent a notice a few weeks ago about this,
stating that there were too many search terms, keywords in two of her apps and that she had
basically seven days to make a change and repost the apps on the app store. Well, guess what?
Their own Gmail, which she has a Gmail account, their own Gmail is what filtered out their email
to her to notify her that she needed to make a change on these two apps so that she could stay
in compliance with the Google Play Store policies. WTF! I mean, seriously, this is messed up all around.
And as I said earlier, Stephanie and her husband's main source of income. So at this point,
she's basically out of luck without any other means of income at the moment.
Now, as of yesterday, what they did was her and her husband went and are in the process of
migrating all of their themes and apps over to the Amazon app store in an attempt to continue to
pull in revenue and make a living doing Android development. But see, the thing is she's never had
any prior issues with the Google Play Store with Google in general. Her apps have always consistently
been voted into the top 100 apps on the Google Play Store. She's very prolific as a developer.
Her and her husband both. And she's always been voted up by many users and people who have
purchased her apps and so forth. So there was no prior indication other than the supposed two apps
that she used too many key words in the search terms that would indicate or give any reason
for Google to have pulled her account. Plus, this isn't the first time this has ever happened.
There was recently 60,000 apps pulled from the Google Play Store in an effort to, quote, unquote,
fight spam. In addition, if any of you listen to the HPR New Year's Eve show this past January,
you might remember that corenomical, aka Philip Nubrow, the founder of CrunchBang Linux,
had a similar run in with Google and ended up losing a month's wages because of it. If you haven't
listened to the New Year's Eve show, I strongly urge you to go back and listen to it to get the
full story. As you can see here, Google has a track record for pulling people's Google Play
accounts and not giving a thorough enough explanation as to why and not responding well enough
when those people try to resolve these issues with them. Now, as far as Google as a whole,
I know they have done a lot of good in the past, including bringing Linux to the masses in the form
of Android and Chrome OS. And I know they have a crap ton of money to throw around and they are
pro-open source. But does that really give them the right to treat those that help create revenue
for them like this? No, it doesn't. So my goal is to reach out to as many listeners of HPR as well
as the other podcasts I contribute to in an effort to not only make people aware of what is going
on, but also to ask a favor of all of you. If you feel that what Google has done to Stephanie
and to others is ingest or immoral in any way, I encourage you to reach out to Google via phone,
email, Google Plus posts, mentioning them on your own podcast even or any other legal means,
not only to get the point across that we won't stand for this kind of behavior from Google,
but also to persuade them to reinstate Stephanie Chutes a Google Play account so that she can start
earning income from it again. And I know she is migrating her apps to the Amazon App Store.
But let's face it, there are more Android users that access and buy apps from the Google Play Store
than from the Amazon App Store. I'm not biased, it's just a fact. She may get income from it,
but she has been doing this for five years. She basically has to start from scratch
on the Amazon App Store. So she probably won't get the same level of income from it
that she did from the Google Play Store. So please reach out to Google any way you can
and let's see if we can't get her account reinstated as soon as possible. And to Stephanie and her
husband, I just want to say that our thoughts and prayers are with you. Now I would like to take
a moment and give a shout out to all those that were injured or killed in the Boston
bombings earlier this week and to their families and friends. I want you to know that I'm more
and for your loss and my heart, thoughts and prayers go out to you. I hope that all those injured
will be able to make a speedy recovery and that you will get all the help and support that you
need to get you through this time. And now for the housekeeping, please feel free to send me
any feedback you have. Good or bad. You can reach me via email at linuxgeekster.stall
at gmail.com on Google plus at Matthew Stahl on IRC. My nick is Neo Dragon and I'm usually
hanging out in the pound augcast planet channel on IRC dot free node dot org or you can hit me up
on twitter at neo dragon 34. I apologize for any issues or inconsistencies with the audio. I'm
still learning the ins and outs of audacity and I'm somewhat of a noob when it comes to audio
production. And once again, this is neo dragon and thank you for listening to this episode of
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