To play devil's advocate, I'm sure Google's intent is to prevent garbage apps from spamming or tricking users into paying money and the resulting PR backlash from having an app store full of shady apps.

As evidence of this, Google does allow donations if the publisher is a 501(c)(3) (see https://support.google.com/faqs/answer/75724?hl=en).

Nothing like opaque, zero due process take downs which change day-to-day unexpectedly until you wake and find your app is no longer in the Play Store.

There has to be a better way to handle these sorts of things.

Were they even notified beforehand?

A 501(c)(3) application costs at least $275 and takes 2-12 months to process. That seems all right if you're a SV SWE registering something on the side of your regular 6 figure income, but for a lot of folks around the world, that seems a largely no-go way to support their project.

If this is really an attempt at preventing garbage apps from spamming or tricking users, this is both overly broad (many false positives) and badly targeted (many false negatives). Why is it that iOS doesn't have this policy, and has significantly fewer garbage apps?

Maybe if Google were to allow third party app stores, folks could choose the one that fits their ability to evaluate the sophistication of apps themselves. For example, some folks might want to pay for extra security checks on the apps they use, while others want to install anything and everything under the sun.

So if I write a legit open source app and release it, and link to a donation page, that's wrong? I don't deserve some credit for my work?

Oh right, it's because Google wants me to have some kind of "pro" app that is effectively a license, that they can get their 30% cut of.

They don't give a damn about fraud via this method. They want their money.

You think a breakup will change anything?

Yes — if there were real competition between multiple app stores, some of which provided better systems of vetting than others (both for users and for developers), then the kinds of stores that had these policies would die off.

Then break-up is still not the solution. Microsoft didn't get split in the late 90's / early 2000's. Anti-trust case against Google / Apple seems far more appropriate and doesn't require new legislation.

All in all, that whole "break-up" argument is just political white-knighting by wanna-be elites (ie. Warren & co).

I don't follow this line of reasoning at all. By all accounts, Microsoft should have been broken up. They were convicted of abusing their monopoly position in a court of law. It was a travesty of justice that it was not carried out. Had this happened, the new companies would have been vastly more competitive, and the current state of computing might have been much better.

It's hazardous at best to assume the state of something with so much variables.

As for continuing being GAFA advocate (while still thinking they should be compelled to open up "Stores" to competition), vertical integration provides enough economy of scale to achieve ever greater complex things. Also, 1) you can't just "break-up" any GAFA. They're just gonna move out of State and be welcomed somewhere else, and 2) what you're asking put Government in a very awkward position as setting up both enough regulations to block new players, but also blocking player to achieve a certain size. Finally, this argument is getting awfully close to the "broken window" fallacy. You can't just "create competition" out of thin air.

You're right, you can't just create competition out of thin air. The competition already existed at that time. Part of the abuse of their monopoly position was to use the dominance of Windows to also capture other markets, including the Office market, Web browsers, etc. We would have had a far healthier ecosystem if the monopoly had been broken up. Look at where Lotus SmartSuite, Corel Office, StarOffice, and all the rest are today. They were not able to compete commercially in a market distorted by a monopolist, and today are shadows of their former selves.

Just because there was competition doesn't mean it was any good, nor that it was gonna last. Microsoft "decline" largely came from new technology they laughed at (smartphone and cloud computing) and to a large extend, missed on. Such an evolution is typical from the high inertia inherent to such a large structure. It forced them to evolve, for the better. Same will likely happen over time with Google/Apple, their structure will get more and more rigid, they will stop providing as much benefit to the user, competition will appear and their will be forced to open up. Apple is already starting to lose ground on the self-repair front, and both are more and more called out on the rigidity of their stores.

Amazon/Facebook is a different problem. Amazon is colliding with the old retail chain and weakening their power in DC (Amazon is not doing anything more that has been done in brick and mortar stores ~forever). As for Facebook, it is threatening Governments themselves (privacy is just just a convenient red-herring).

Or, they will all pre-emptively adopt stronger policies to avoid freeloading. OSS apps don't pay for bandwidth used in downloads, and Google is the one benefiting most from all the free apps on their platform. So if _they_ aren't comfortable with the situation, I can't see a breakup solving that.

Google will never care about the quality of an app store (for devs and for users) as much as a company with majority of revenue coming from folks using their app store. It's the fundamental problem with a monopoly business and breaking off the Google store from being the exclusive way to get apps on the Android platform will solve it because companies optimize profit.

How would breaking up google create multiple app stores? How would that actually work from a logistics perspective?

They're trying to prevent money laundering.

I don't see how this makes sense -- if someone wants to launder money, why would they need to find a donation link to their external donation system inside an android app?

I'm pretty sure they just want their cut.

Yup, I pretty much read it as this: "if you are operating an open source project then you should use ads for funding instead of donations or introduce paid features/upgrades so that we get a cut"