We have an app that exists in the Google Play store that was created by a developer who is no longer at our company. We own the app and want to remove it, but we don't know what Google account the developer used to publish the app to the store.
Is there any way we can find out what account the app is associated with? If we try to log in under Google accounts we think it might be, Google wants to charge us $25 per guess.
If we can't find the account, is there a way to have Google remove the app for us if we can provide sufficient evidence that it's ours?
If the developer is unavailable or uncooperative, and you can prove that this app includes your intellectual property, you can file a DMCA request with Google, asking them to remove it from the GP store. Read the warnings on the page carefully:
http://support.google.com/bin/request.py?&product=androidmarket&contact_type=lr_dmca
You can't pull down the application from Google Play if you don't have the access to the account which is used to upload that application. If you are lucky and the developer who uploaded the app typed his mail as contact developer mail in application in Google Play, maybe in this way trying to send a mail you can find the account which is used to upload the app, but you can't trust that, because most of the developers and companies have different mails for communicating with the customers and it depends on that.
But if you contact to Google and explain them everything and as I told above if you are lucky you can convince them to delete the app from Google Play. Or the best situation in my opinion is to contact the developer who upload the application and ask him to remove it.
Good luck!
Pretty rough situation. I'm not going to advice you to use a corporate google account in the future, but I think the easiest way is to speak with the developer in person. Then explain to him that there are several clauses in his former contract with you, which concern the intellectual property obligations, signed by him.
If you don't have any, or if he was hired on a freelancer contract, with no mentioning of the above, then you'll have the real deal in the court when he sues you for "his" intellectual property (being th application), uploaded by him on the Play Store.
Of course, this is the worse case scenario, but you should consider it.
If you have nothing left, you can contact Google, as Android-Developer above me suggested, but you risk a denial.
It is a really complicated case and I would like to see the result of it, when you settle the things out.
Related
I am publishing an apk on Google Play Store. But my apk is rejected because they say my app is violating Google Impersonation Policy. But they never mentioned what is the reason. I am publishing it to production. Then I found possible violations after I have read the policy.
As you can see in the screenshots, I am using logos of Whatsapp, Facebook, Viber for social sharing purpose. I am also using Football Team and League Logos. According to the impersonation policy, that can be the only possible reason why my app is suspended. But I think that logos should be allowed to use. In the policy, it states that if I am using logo or copyright thing of others, I can use them if I can show them the permission.
For Facebook logo, Viber logo and Whatsapp Logo, where can I get that permission? Besides, it is not possible to get permission from all football teams to use their logos. Then I found this link - How to check an app violates Google's the impersonation policy or not. In the green answer, it says if I tried publishing as Alpha testing, I will get the reason of suspended. So when I tried with Alpha testing on Google Play Store, it also suspended. But it does not mention the reason of suspended as well. Here is the email I received:
What is the possible reason my app was suspended? Maybe because of the reason I mentioned? If they are, how can I solve it?
To get the Q & A into an usable answer:
Photo's and logo's have copyrights on them. As a programmer that means you cannot use them without (explicit) permission from the owner. Country flags do not fall under that. Google checks for this before release.
Note:
If you contact the owner of an image and ask for permission use, they might ask for a usage fee.
If you use images that you get from an API, check the user agreement. If not clear contact the creator of the API.
Social sharing logo's and button will have details on this, but in general it makes very little sense for them to limit their use.
Why go trough all this trouble?
Pay people for their work, don't steal.
You can get sued if you use images without permission.
I'd like to republish my app using the same package name under a different account. Can this be done?
Background:
I have read many posts about people post about how they lost their keystore or were banned, and the solution provided to them was to republish their app using a new package name and a new keystore. This is not my situation or what I'm looking to do. I do have my password(s)/keystore.
The motivation:
I have published about a half dozen apps to the market, and now that they are growing in user base, I have realized it was a mistake to publish under my personal google account and now wish to do things as a company/LLC to protect my personal assets/account. To that end, I want to effectively transfer the app to another account. using a new wallet account, admob, etc.
I imagine this would be done by unpublishing from my personal account, resigning and then uploading under a new account.
Policy Considerations:
For those people that have been banned, they are obviously breaking some kind of terms of service by republishing the same thing. I am in good standing with Google currently and don't want to risk anything that might make them upset or give reason to ban. I can not figure out whether or not this is against their TOS/policies. Especially since I am trying to migrate towards that they were advocating.
(As an aside, if it were trivially possible, why wouldn't a malicious user publish the same content under numerous accounts?)
Goal:
Retain userbase and package ID so that when I release new versions under the new account all existing users on my personal account will receive those updates.
Resources:
Developer Program Policy; https://play.google.com/about/developer-content-policy.html
Developer Distribution Agreement; https://play.google.com/about/developer-distribution-agreement.html
(There are other agreements but those two seem most relevant)
Summary question: Can I accomplish this transfer without losing users?
It is possible to transfer the ownership of your apps from one account to another in google play store. I found a blog post that tells you the steps to do so:
Visit this link
Fill out the form completely and accurately
Select “Transfer Applications to Another Account” from the Issue Type drop down
Submit Form
Check your E-Mail and reply with the requested information
Forward the E-Mail to the person accepting the app/game transfer and have them reply as requested
Wait for Google to wave their magic wand
After digging deeper I have discovered this
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/checklist/3294213?hl=en&ref_topic=3450986
Which may be the answer to transferring. I haven't done it yet, though. Plan to respond when I know it works.
We run several apps in Appstore and Google Markets where users may download and play for free. We also have the option to make in-app purchases. What I am chasing is the data of how many unique users that have made a purchase. Unfortunately we dont have that information flagged and so far I havent found any standard report of how to get these out from itunesconnect and Google Wallet.
So basically I would like to extract all history data.
If you mean "How can I extract data about payments from unique users without changing my app?" the answer is that it's not possible. Google Play and iTunes offer sales information, not such insights about sales. The only thing you can do, which doesn't solve your current problem, is introducing a SDK such as Flurry and create events for purchases.
I have an application that I want to release for $x amount to the public, however, I want to allow the Google Developer Console Alpha/Beta APK to be downloaded for free. I want the testers to be able to download it for free? How do I do that?
Thanks in advance,
PS. I could swear I found the link on Google, but I can't seem to find it again.
Here is my conclusion (in short, no solution):
1- (Edit: unfortunately this point is not correct, you wont get the updates unless you download directly from the store.) The only issue is delivering the first APK to the testers, as they wont be able to download the application from the Play Store, however, downloading updates from the Play Store is doable and okay, (delivered APK must be signed with same key as Play Store APK).
2- If the application is never publicly released yet, testers must have some sort of a direct link to the application on the Play Store, as searching for it will never show up (even with package name: com.example.application). But after having the first APK, you can just look through the 'My Apps" section in the Play Store and find it.
3- Google sucks for not making this easier, especially given the triviality of the concept and the need for it.
Thanks everyone for your suggestions. But considering none of them were the answer, because there is no answer, I had to sum up my findings here.
Cheers.
After discussing this with a Google representative I found that there is a round-about way of offering the app for free to testers. The tester must initially pay for the app. However, it turns out that refunds initiated by the developer actually behave differently than those initiated by Google.
Google refund: License is revoked and the user will no longer have access to the app.
Developer refund: License is NOT revoked, the app will remain fully functional IF you are only testing for license response. If you verify Order IDs it will fail since the order status will have changed (this would be a custom implementation). For developers who implemented the recommended license verification example this would effectively yield a free app.
Caveat: I haven't tested this yet as my app is a couple months from release, but here's my chat:
me
Ok can you please explain the refund then. As I understood it a refund would deauthorize the user's license, so I assumed you meant refund outside of the Google payment system.
Artemis
If you yourself initiate the refund, the user will not lose access to the app in their library.
Unless you have designed your app to constantly check the order ID's status to trigger the revoke action or the like.
If a user initiate's a refund through Google, yes, they will no longer have the app in their library and they will lose access to the content.
me
OK, since I only check the license response from the server any refund I initiate will yield a fully functional and free app in the user's library?
Artemis
Well, I am unable to validate your app's code or what you have done in its design.
I am only able to confirm that if you refund a user's purchase for an app, that Google will not revoke the app from their library or their access to the app's content.
me
Excellent, perhaps I missed the documentation on this somewhere, but I searched quite thoroughly and most information states that the developer can NOT offer the app for free to testers.
This would be great information to add to the developer console help and the testing pages.
Artemis
That is true, you cannot offer the app as free to testers.
The app must be paid for, no matter what.
However, as with all apps, alpha, beta, or production, you are welcome to refund your users however you would like.
The google play developer console now give developers the chance to provide promotion codes offering a free app or free in-app purchases, perfect for providing a free app to Alpha and Beta users:
is there any way to give access to the statistics of a specific app on my google play developer account to a 3rd person?
I have various apps, one of them is developed for a customer and he asks access to the downloads and rest statistics.
At present, Google Play does not provide mechanism to enable access to a specific app alone, although you could give access to your whole Developer Console. The only thing you can restrict is the financial information. I hope this is not what you want.
In your case, you could provide screenshots if that is acceptable.
I ended up to use a google api to retrieve the statistics and create my web front end to show them to my customer.
You can find at http://code.google.com/p/android-market-api/ a php version of the backend.
kudos to this post too: Is there an API to get statictics on Google Play developer console?
As far as I concerned, there is now way to give access to statistics only to 3-rd person, besides giving him your account information. For my personal usage, I developed a widget for tracking some statistics of my application and eventually I released it on the market. So I think it will be helpful to you as well Applications Tracker Widget is the app which will help you