Google Play Store Mistakenly Removed KDE Connect (twitter.com)

Google's Play Store made a bad mistake on Tuesday, long-time Slashdot reader sombragris writes: KDE Connect, a project designed to enable seamless communcation and control between a desktop computer and a mobile phone, was suddenly removed from Android's Google Play store. According to a Twitter thread by Albert Vaca, KDE Connect's maintainer, the removal was allegedly because the app was in breach of Google's new SMS policy.

There's an exemption which applies to KDE Connect, but the maintainer was unable to contact anyone at Google to provide support. "There is simply no way to talk to a human being at @Google", he said.
Cintora also announced on Twitter that while trying to comply with the Play Store's new policy, he'd initially been stopped again by technical problems. "The @GooglePlay console gives me an internal error, so I can't upload the version without SMS support."

But on Thursday Cintora tweeted that KDE Connect "finally got approved, and SMS support is back in version 1.12.4, both on the Play Store and F-Droid!" Cintora credits this resolution partly to his Twitter thread, which got over half a million impressions.

Its last tweet now features a picture of a celebrating parrot.

Comments

Re: Hitlary

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course they do and their mug shots are better to look at :)

Direct link

[Vylen]

To the celebrating parrot

https://twitter.com/albertvaka...

Re: Direct link

[Anonymous Coward]

mmm worth

Re:Direct link

[Anonymous Coward]

Came here for this. Was not disappoint.

No way to talk to a human at Google ...

[kbahey]

"There is simply no way to talk to a human being at @Google", he said.

This is absolutely true.

My experience contacting Google is the same. A few years ago, I got an email from them (via Webmaster Tools) that my site has been removed from Google index due to "some or all of your pages violate our quality guidelines." This was a form letter, probably from a bot they have, and I think no human has reviewed the site nor the email.

I contacted them (via a web site, but can't remember which one) and asked them to point out which pages are in violation, and I would remove them. I got back an acknowledgement for "a reconsideration request". Then some time after that, the same email as the initial one (my site is in violation of quality guidelines). I contacted them again, saying if it is the 419 scam email examples, I have those to warn against falling for such scams. Again, I said point out which pages are bad, and I will remove them. Got an acknowledgement for reconsideration. Then finally got a notification that my site is back in their index.

Not a single human reply in all this. All form emails, automated. Perhaps there was a human that reviewed the site, but there was no interaction with one.

How long did this process take? April to September!

Unbelievable how a large company like this does not have any 'regular' customer support.

Re:No way to talk to a human at Google ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you want to talk to google? "Hi google?" "Yes, Burt Rossdale of 425 North Main st?" "uh..." "Did you enjoy "Softcore nights, legends of the Trump campaign?" "Uh...." "I notice you cleaned yourself at 14.37 mins.."

Re:No way to talk to a human at Google ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Unbelievable how a large company like this does not have any 'regular' customer support.

Of course they do. But you're not a customer.

Re: No way to talk to a human at Google ...

[Anonymous Coward]

They do have customer support. You, however, are not a customer: "a person or organization that buys goods or services from a store or business."

Needs to cost Google

[MikeRT]

"There is simply no way to talk to a human being at @Google"

We need the courts to start saying that if you leave "the computer" to deal with the other parties to a contract, you are fully guilty of whatever "the computer" does to them if they have no obvious recourse to a human in a position of authority to adjudicate against "the computer."

Re:Needs to cost Google

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical big government "solution" - what happened to letting the free market sort this out? In the end it's not as if anyone needs to publish their apps via Google Play.

Why not let developers make the free choice as to whether Google's services are good enough? What you're demanding is just more bureaucracy, higher prices, higher taxes, and more red tape. It's anti-business and, dare I say it, anti-American.

Re: Needs to cost Google

[astrofurter]

I agree, the better solution is for Uncle Sam to smash Google's monopoly. Separate Android from the Play Store from everything else Google does. Then let the free market sort it out.

Re:Needs to cost Google

[Miamicanes]

Because Google has decisively and intentionally made its services into infrastructure with a direct, demonstrable impact upon interstate commerce. Pretty much every single Supreme Court decision over the pasty century has reinforced and reaffirmed the right of Congress to regulate anything that significantly affects interstate commerce, including actions that themselves only involve actions taking place entirely within a single state (and only indirectly affect interstate commerce).

Here's an illustrative example. Suppose a city allows a private company to build toll roads through its present-day hinterlands, and agrees to exclusivity agreements that prohibit the city from building (or allowing others to build) any infrastructure that might "compete" with that company's toll roads for the next 100 years (with "compete" being interpreted as anything that might be an alternative to the road, including rail lines, bike paths, helicopter landing pads, or even dirt paths not blocked by fences and "no trespassing" signs). Fast forward 50 years. Land that used to be desolate swamp or desert has become the metro area's second (and maybe third or fourth) central business district. Most of the metro area's best job opportunities and residential areas are now there as well.

One day, out of the blue, the company that owns the toll roads decides that certain individuals are no longer allowed to travel on its roads... even as passengers in vehicles driven by others... and deploys a network of private investigators and security guards to make sure that buses and taxis aren't carrying banned individuals as passengers (knowingly OR unknowingly). The company feels no need to explain why, and asserts both its right to exercise unlimited discretion in whom it accepts as customers (direct or indirect) and disavows any need to justify it.

That policy would almost INSTANTLY be swatted down by legal challenges, on so many possible legal grounds it's hard to even know where to start.

Yes, we had a similar debacle with the "No-Fly List"... but at least the No-Fly List was ultimately subject to constitutional safeguards. It was a hot clusterfuck of an unholy mess... but at least anyone who ended up on the list could feel confident that their case would EVENTUALLY be reviewed by real people who actually CARED about facts and evidence... which is more than you can say for anyone who's ended up on the receiving end of Google's automated wrath.

Putting it more starkly, suppose you were one day cornered by an evil, sadistic being with deity-like powers who told you, "I've decided to ruin your life as much as possible... but I don't want to be thought of as COMPLETELY evil, so I'll let you pick between two alternatives:"

1. You get put on the 'no-fly' list for a reason that will be readily apparent as an error the moment someone officially reviews your case.

2. Lifetime banishment from all services provided by Google (including indirectly, as the user of a service that itself depends upon Google services), with no right to review by a human... or any right to review and due process AT ALL.

As bad as #1 would be, I think just about everyone would agree that #2 would be ENORMOUSLY worse in the long run (and, on strictly narrow constitutional grounds, would severely harm your present and future ability to engage in interstate commerce... and in aggregate with others similarly affected, would have a significant effect upon interstate commerce overall).

Google doesn't have to be micromanaged by the government... but if it wants to be an inescapable provider of business infrastructure that's inextricably woven into the very fabric of America's economy, it needs to start ACTING like it, and respect the safeguards that have traditionally made America a safe place to do business. Google is presently engaged in arbitrary acts of economic violence that will ultimately harm our economy if allowed to continue unchecked.

No problem

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE Connect is a must-have app for me. I use it frequently.
But no worries. The app's not gone. It's still right where it belongs.
It's not like the Play Store's a monopoly or anything. Android is not iOS.

Re:No problem

[Miamicanes]

The fundamental problem is that Google has increasingly put indie developers in impossible positions by changing the rules, deciding to retroactively apply them to apps that were published via Google Play literally YEARS ago under different rules, then swooping down and suspending them without warning, and perma-banning any developer who gets "too many" apps suspended. And perma-banning (for life) the accounts of anyone whom their AI determines is somehow "linked" to the account that was banned for having old apps that were retroactively determined to be in violation of rules that didn't even exist at the time they were published.

It's as if Google sat down, read about China's "social credit score" (which dings individuals merely for "associating" with anyone whose social credit score is low), then enthusiastically decided to roll it out as the new model for all Google services. There are people who've invested literally YEARS of their careers in Android development who've not only had their portfolios and/or ad revenue cut off without warning, they've been rendered UNEMPLOYABLE as Android developers because any company that hires them would risk getting "linked" to them by association and punished as well. If you're American, you're at risk. If you're from a country like Canada, Britain, France, or Germany, you're at slightly greater risk. If you're from India or eastern Europe, Google will ban you on the slightest whiff of suspicion without a second thought. All with no meaningful route to clear your reputation (or even find out what exactly they think you did that was horrible enough to justify destroying your career), and officially... for the rest of your life.

Yes, Google really HAS become that completely evil and bad. Frankly, I'm shocked it hasn't been the plot of at least a few Hollywood movies yet.

I haven't personally gotten banned, but the extreme danger faced by anyone who develops Android apps and depends upon any Google service has forced me to step back from Android and intentionally minimize my future exposure to Google's potential wrath. Google has now taken it upon themselves to be judge, jury, and economic executioner... based upon algorithms with confirmed, known false positives and literally ZERO accountability or pretense of due process.

For a developer, the implications of getting banned for life by Google goes WAY beyond merely being unable to publish apps via Google Play. Getting banned ALSO locks you out of the entire Google Play ecosystem, so you can't use Play Location Services or Google Maps API for apps published independently of Google Play, either. It can result in the loss of access to every Android app you've ever purchased through Google Play, and could get you permanently locked out of any third-party web site that uses Google's authentication services.

And once again, people have gotten such bans not for publishing malware, but merely for having ever published an app that was completely acceptable to Google at the time it was published, but later failed to comply with Google's changed requirements. Most outrageously of all, Google won't even settle for allowing you to preemptively unpublish your now-noncompliant app, because even unpublished apps remain accessible to people who've purchased them in the past. There are documented cases of developers who've unpublished a now-noncompliant app from Play, then ended up getting that now-unpublished app suspended at some later time ANYWAY (possibly triggering a lifetime ban of the developer's own account).

Google has NEVER been known for particularly caring about anyone who falls victim to its policies as collateral damage... but this is seriously the kind of thing that's going to end up putting Google on the receiving end of a class-action lawsuit that would probably end up getting appealed all the way to the US Supreme Court (basically, asking the court to decide whether a company that intentionally injects itself into so many cross-cutting aspects of interstate commerce ought to be held to a higher

Re: No problem

[Anonymous Coward]

"dystopian bureaucratic evil"

So what you're saying is, Google is the ideal model of Corporate Progressive governance?

Re:No problem

[shplopt]

There are so many high quality open source apps on F-Droid that I honestly haven't touched Google Play in at least a year. I'm sure there are specific circumstances where someone might need something from Google Play but for the general smartphone user it's entirely unnecessary.

Re:No problem

[Anonymous Coward]

One example is there is not Brave browser on the F-Droid store (or not yet but I don't know if there are any plans to "clean" it up or provide builds at all)

It is firmly in version 1.0.x and useful - it has the functionality of anti-crap extensions integrated.
You can install this in a couple minutes on someone's phone.
I would install Firefox instead but I didn't want to install extensions and investigate issues, figuring that mobile versions of sites are tested ONLY on Chrome and iOS Safari. Brave is a Chromium clone with its own GUI that is adequate as well and a rare true cross platform browser (Mobile and desktop)

Google will talk to their customers

[FeelGood314]

However most of us are not Google's customers. We are their products and as products we are strictly a commodity. We are easily replaced and not worth the cost or effort of a human interaction.

Re: Google will talk to their customers

[Anonymous Coward]

Even with AdWords or whatever theyâ(TM)re calling it now, see if you can actually speak to someone thatâ(TM)s not an Indian sending a form letter. Still impossible.

Yeah, Google is a shit company

[Anonymous Coward]

Errors in their products
Scammers using their products
Support is nonresponsive/nonexistent

Because there is no "the computer".

[Anonymous Coward]

It's always a list of commands or another logic that somebody told it to do. That somebody is the person who is doing those things.
If I use a hammer to bash in somebody's head, his wife won't say "The hammer killed my husband!!". Shell say "You killed my husband!".
The computer and the chainsaw are merely tools.

In the case of software, it's quite easy. Every instruction is part of a software package. Every package has an author.
And if the author is an organization, then the one being sued is every single person in there. (Fuck people hiding behind a "legal person"! If you decided to be part of evil, you get to hang with evil too! Board, CEO, employee, cleaning lady, janitor. So such organizations become toxic when they do evil.)

i don't think that would even be legal here.

[Anonymous Coward]

At least in Germany, and I think the entire EU, you have to have some kind of imprint page with contact data, so one knows who to sue or contact in case of problems.

Ah, I just checked, and on google.com there's an "About Google" link, and at the bottom of that page, there is an imprint link, leading here: Google Imprint. So apparently, you can even call them, but it goes to Ireland. And there's a Germany-specific e-mail address.
They also give the large number of messages as a reason to use their usual web-based forms.

This is a case of them having their own filter bubble, IMHO. where they think what they predicted people would contact them about is good enough because those are the only things people can contact them about.

Re:i don't think that would even be legal here.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's only for Germany. Even going to the google.de page from another country hides the link.

Re:i don't think that would even be legal here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Google Ireland Limited
Gordon House, Barrow Street
Dublin 4
Irland
Tel: +353 1 543 1000
Fax: +353 1 686 5660
E-Mail: support-deutschland@google.com

Problem solved. You're welcome, Google.

Use Windows 10 and all your problems are solved.

[Anonymous Coward]

James Kelly from Microsoft here. Installing KDE and unlicensed Linux software is considered illegal tinkering of your Microsoft computer, and once we figure out how to force Windows updates on Linux, we're going to erase your data and install Windows 10, like the good Lord intended.

Of course, we're not going to give it to you for free, so we'll scan your hard drive for credit card numbers and charge you $99 for a Windows 10 S license. With Windows 10 S, you can only run approved Apps from the Windows App Store, which prevents you from illegally tinkering with the operating system.

The robot tellz you what to do

[Anonymous Coward]

In our militaristic, violent, police society, it was only a matter of time before abuse of authority was automated.

Sieg Heil (imagine in robot voice)

Re: Hitlary

[Anonymous Coward]

You rapist! Looking at pictures of women is RAPE. Rape, rape, RAAAAAAAAPE!

Sounds convenient

[jennatalia]

"Mistakenly"

FAIL!

[Anonymous Coward]

HAHAHAHA! Total fail.

There was no collusion. The witch hunt is over.

Now the fucktards like you are trying to move the goal posts: "Butbutbut Obstruuuuction!".

Go fuck yourself.

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