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

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.