I don't know why Google Play Store/Android in general has a good reputation - in my opinion they got worse than Apple. I recently created apps for both stores, and the Google experience is so bad. Because I am an individual (sole trader) I cannot go down the business route - but need to go through the 12 testers route. That is, I need to find 12 people willing to join a google group, opt-in to beta testing, and have my app installed for 14 days at the same time before I can publish the app on the Play Store. This is ridiculous. I'd rather pay a lump sum as I did for the Apple Store: 99€/year, go through App review, publish.
I had to submit my id, private bank statements (we often don't have monthly utility bills in europe, so I had to submit bank statements) and click through a ton of wizards for compliance, and of course pay 25€. Still no publishing rights. Now I would just pay some clickworkers on Fiverr to fulfill the testing criteria, but that risks getting my account (and app) banned forever. Needless to say that google now has all my private data associated with my google account.
People always say walled garden to the Appstore, but at least the entry ticket has a clear price label.
Because the App is not open source - F-Droid requires OSS software. And yes, there is private repositories that users could manually add, but users won't find you by browsing the F-Droid appstore. F-Droid alone is a tiny fraction of users of Android, and F-Droid users that deal with private repos is a fraction of that fraction. Not worth to bother with that, no one is going to use your app then.
Makes sense, thanks for the context. :) I guess there might be a place for a F-Droid like service that basically stores signed blobs, added by app authors, in a secure manner. Kinda like Flathub - which has closed source stuff, like Steam or Discord.
littlecranky67 · · focus · HN ↗
I had to submit my id, private bank statements (we often don't have monthly utility bills in europe, so I had to submit bank statements) and click through a ton of wizards for compliance, and of course pay 25€. Still no publishing rights. Now I would just pay some clickworkers on Fiverr to fulfill the testing criteria, but that risks getting my account (and app) banned forever. Needless to say that google now has all my private data associated with my google account.
People always say walled garden to the Appstore, but at least the entry ticket has a clear price label.
m4rtink · · focus · HN ↗
littlecranky67 · · focus · HN ↗
m4rtink · · focus · HN ↗