[petition] Google requires physical address to developers !!!

[frapel]

Probably you already know Google changed (again!!!) the terms and conditions for playstore and developers must accept and update their accounts accordingly.

I'm very tired of wasting my time in adapting myself to G madness, I would spent that time much more better in developing new useful Android apps and improving my existing ones.

Again don't wanna waste your time so... what I'm asking you ? I would appreciate your support in signing and spreading the following petition to the whole b4a and developers community:
http://www.change.org/p/google-remo...ir-physical-addresses-publicly-on-google-play

short url: http://goo.gl/n6xz4f

Maybe it will be useless... but who knows ???
Thank you in advance
Francesco Pellone
(droidiani)

P.S.
I think our b4a community is a strong one and counts many thousand developers that could sign the petition and show to Google they are important as indie developers too.

 

[sorex]

the first link ain't right.

 

[frapel]

the first link ain't right.

Thank you, I corrected it. Now the first link should work too.

 

[sorex]

ok, did my part (signing the petition)

 

[frapel]

ok, did my part (signing the petition)

Thank you !!!

 

[Informatix]

Unfortunately, Change.org is not the white paladin that everybody should trust blindly. It is a company with 150 employees around the world. Their business model is explained on their web site: they collect your name, your email and your address through petitions, and sell them to various entities, mainly NGO to publicize their action. It's not immoral or shocking at all but the ".org" is a bit deceptive. Petitions are their source of funding. Why not? If that helps people to have a strong social impact... The problem for me is that I find strange to sign a petition to avoid making public my physical address by giving my name and my address to a company that's going to resell them.

 

[lemonisdead]

Guys, Google does not deprive you of liberty. An independent developer pays taxes and has a tax ID.

He is used to communicate his address to his clients. He has a website that mentions this address. This new measure may offend those who sold illegally only.

 

[joseluis]

Guys, Google does not deprive you of liberty. An independent developer pays taxes and has a tax ID.

He is used to communicate his address to his clients. He has a website that mentions this address. This new measure may offend those who sold illegally only.

AFAIK Google already did that, sending the address to the clients who bought. The problem is that now he wants to display your adress publicly in the webpage for the whole internet and data scrapers of the universe. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[sorex]

Guys, Google does not deprive you of liberty. An independent developer pays taxes and has a tax ID.

He is used to communicate his address to his clients. He has a website that mentions this address. This new measure may offend those who sold illegally only.

I have a company with VAT/TAX number and I'll communicate my personal info myself to my customers.
Google doesn't have to publish it like that but what choice do you have if you want to use their store?
none since you have to agree to the policy change.

So the illegal part has not much to do with this. (altho I know not everyone plays it right with declaring earnings)

 

[Informatix]

Guys, Google does not deprive you of liberty. An independent developer pays taxes and has a tax ID.

He is used to communicate his address to his clients. He has a website that mentions this address. This new measure may offend those who sold illegally only.

What really bothers me is not to communicate my physical address to the rare persons that buy my app on the Google Play store. I contract with them and I find normal they get all details about the vendor. It is to expose publicly an information that can be collected by robots for spam companies (name them as you wish) and to let everybody know where my family lives (I'm not alone at home). As an independent worker, you can have a PO Box for your professional address; it's not allowed on the Play Store. Apart the fact that I had to suffer in 2000 from being easy to find in the phone book (now je suis sur liste rouge et orange), my main reason to disagree with this new policy is this modern idea, clearly expressed in interviews by the Google or Facebook founders, that our privacy is now something from the past. What the next step will be? The obligation to provide a passport photo of the developper(s) on the Play Store page?

 

[LucaMs]

What the next step will be? The obligation to provide a passport photo of the developper(s) on the Play Store page?

No, it will be the address of any of your relatives who can inherit in the event of your death.

We must find an alternative to Google Play.

 

[LucaMs]

Rihanna has the obligation to provide his address? I would like to complain about some songs I do not like and let me return the zero euro that I spent.

 

[lemonisdead]

What really bothers me is not to communicate my physical address to the rare persons that buy my app on the Google Play store.

You could use my business address if you wish

 

[Informatix]

You could use my business address if you wish

I would be stupid to use the address of someone else while I can create a completely fake company, with a fake address and phone number. Google does not check these informations. It does not even ask for a company registration number, which is mandatory in a lot of countries, like ours (except for "auto-entrepreneurs"). Publishing an address won't guarantee anything. And note that most of indie developpers on the Play Store are not professionals. They do not understand the reason to expose a data that they consider as private. It's not because they declare or not their income (if any) to their tax administration. In France, for low amounts and occasional sales, it exists a tolerance; for example, the Paypal account has not to be declared if there's less than 10000 euros on it (reference). French indie developpers that earn more than 10000 euros a year on the Android market are probably a handful. To publish on the Play store, the only illegal thing that they do is to say that they're a company while they're not.

The new Google's policy is supposed to protect the customer but I can't see how. As a customer of the Android market, I have no mean to check whether that indian or hungarian company really exists. They can say what they want about them. A real customer protection would be to force sellers to prove their address (with an official document). And a much better protection would be to filter apps to remove all that junk from the Play Store. But you need to hire people for this and people want to be payed. Less profit in the end.

 

[lemonisdead]

I would be stupid to use the address ofsomeone else while I can create a completely fake company, with a fake address and phone number

In fact I do agree about the fact and in the same time I do not agree about the moto.

In my opinion Google wants for the indie to provide what installed devs already provide : support, pay taxes, responsability to the end customers.

You even can take an address where phone calls are replied and the postman can deliver letters. Not a fake company : a company that can be contacted and responsible of the apps for the end customers.

 

[Informatix]

In my opinion Google wants for the indie to provide what installed devs already provide : support, pay taxes, responsability to the end customers.

I don't see the relation between that and a physical address published on a web page. Google is known to provide a very bad support (in fact, I don't even think they have a support team for their products). And everybody knows their address...

You even can take an address where phone calls are replied and the postman can deliver letters. Not a fake company : a company that can be contacted and responsible of the apps for the end customers.

That's not realistic for most indie developpers. Do you really want to create a company, bother with the administrative paperwork and, at the same time, provide support for a bunch of customers that paid a ridiculous amount for your app ? Not me. Once, I contacted the author of a musical app to encourage him to improve his app. He politely declined for a very good reason: he spent 5 months of his free time on this app and he earned less than 1500$ since he published it one year ago. He doesn't want to spend more time on it; he wants to enjoy his free time. I completely agree. I cannot ask anything for an app that I paid 3 euros. And I really don't care where he lives.

 

[lemonisdead]

Google is known to provide a very bad support (in fact, I don't even think they have a support team for their products).

Am sorry, again I can not agree. Their support for paid products is excellent: quick and polite.
We do not speak about the same experiences.
A physical address is for the end customer the guarantee to have a way to be listened and provided what he has paid for.

And again I do agree about the experience of the free app paid developer.

In both cases you are right. But in my opinion Google does nothing special about the indie dev privacy

 

[Informatix]

Am sorry, again I can not agree. Their support for paid products is excellent: quick and polite.
We do not speak about the same experiences.

Paid products? Out of curiosity, which ones?
For most Android developers, Google is the company that takes 30% of their sales and asked them to pay 25 euros to enter its market. Do they get a support for all that money (we speak of millions of dollars here)? No. There's no support at all. No phone number, no email, no contact form, nothing. I experienced that a few months ago when I tried to ask a simple question about my developer console. Obviously, Google does not care about the legal requirements for their page for french customers (there's no phone number). And more amazing: when your app is banned or your account suspended, people reported that you have noone to talk with. You're alone with an automatically generated email.
It's not only a problem with the Play Store. I reported a few bugs in their OS in 2012/2013 but I stopped; most of the time they don't react. A bug in their Scrollview was still there a few versions later despite I explained how to fix it in my report and you can see other bugs still unfixed despite they were reported one or two years ago. In many forums or blogs, there are complaints about the fact they don't listen to the developper community. That's not just a personal feeling. How many times did the developpers ask to have the possibility to give a free copy of a licensed app, or to offer reductions, or simply to delete an app from the dev console?
I don't like Apple but it seems that's very different for IOS dev.

A physical address is for the end customer the guarantee to have a way to be listened and provided what he has paid for.

Ok, but what's the need to make it public for anyone? A lot of people can read my page without buying my app. They are not my customers.

 

[MarcTG]

In fact I do agree about the fact and in the same time I do not agree about the moto.

In my opinion Google wants for the indie to provide what installed devs already provide : support, pay taxes, responsability to the end customers.

You even can take an address where phone calls are replied and the postman can deliver letters. Not a fake company : a company that can be contacted and responsible of the apps for the end customers.

So you mean that someone will bother sending a letter for a $1-2 app? Last I checked a post stamp was $0.46 ($0.49 soon)... What's wrong with just sending the developer an email? When did that become old fashioned?

What does any of this have to do with paying taxes? Doesn't Google already take care of that... What's the next step, posting the earnings of each developer publicly? This is just ridiculous!

Fake company? Contacted? seriously? Is using an app so urgent that needs a customer to call a company and get customer support!! Are we still talking about that app that costs a couple of bucks? As far as I am concerned, I buy the app try it, if I like it then I keep it, if not I get a refund and move on.

 

[LucaMs]

Am I wrong or the expiration date was September 30?

So now we should read the private addresses of the developers in the pages of Google Play, but it is not.

I think that Google will take a step back.