Don���t Put All Your Eggs in One Basket

I am glad that the fight between Google and the developers of Terrariaappears to have been resolved.However, the effects of the ban on Terraria���s primary developer remind me that notall solo developersrealize the potential impacts of distributing apps through the Play Store.

If you are an ordinary person doing ordinary things, it is highly unlikely that Googlewill have a need to ban your Google account. Saying that you use Google for emailand movies and calendars and music and file storage and games and document tools and so onis not completely ridiculous.

Once you decide to distribute your apps through Google, though, that situationchanges. Now you are doing something that Google deems risky, and theirbot-and-cheap-labor vetting process means that you are at an above-average riskof having your account be banned. And due to the opaque nature of their banningprocess, it is not safe to assume that you are being banned for any actual violationof any actual terms of service. In the end, they can ban you for any reason they feel like.

So, if you are going to distribute apps through the Play Store, you owe it to yourself to:

Stop using as many Google services as is practical, and

Aim to isolate your app-distribution Google account(s) from any personal account(s) that you may have

The biggest service by far to get off of is Gmail. Losing access to a movie you boughtthrough Google Play is unfortunate. Losing a chunk of your ability to communicatewith the outside world may have a far greater impact. There areplenty ofotheremail providers out there. Gmail has not been ���head and shoulders���better than the competition in quite some time. I abandoned Gmail many years agoand have not missed a beat. When I get dragged back into Gmail by a client, my reaction toit is decidedly ���meh��� ��� the competition has similar features and capabilities.And the competition is unlikely to ban you because of issues with your app.

Google Drive and Google Docs are the other major areas of risk. Basically, you are givingGoogle an easy way to hold your data hostage. Use other cloud storage providers. Use otherdocument tools, including (gasp!) ones that run on your own hardware.

For whatever remains, you need to recognize that your access to those Google servicescould vanish at any point. That���s not even necessarily tied to your apps. For example,back when I ���drank the Kool-Aid���, I set up commonsware.com as a business accountwith Google. Google apparently has no way to reverse that action. After I discontinuedmy business account, commonsware.com remains incapable of accessing most Google servicesthat have ties to their business services (e.g., Docs, Drive). Life goes on.

One way to help minimize the risk is to keep your personal and ���business���Google accounts separate. Even if you have not set up a business for your app and donot think of yourself in business terms, it is best to treat your interactions withGoogle as if you were running a business. Distribute your apps under a separate Googleaccount. Try to minimize ���mixing business with pleasure��� by using your personal accountfor app-related activity. Ideally, Google���s banhammer will have no idea that yourpersonal account has anything to do with this app that they dislike.

Most solo developers will not run into any problems. However, the semi-random natureof Google���s enforcement actions means that even developers that are sure theyare doing the right thing might encounter problems. Do yourself a favor and tryto minimize the effects of distributing apps through the Play Store��� even ifall you are doing is writing a puppy adoption app.Google does lots of good things, but not everything that Google does is goodfor you.

In other words, Google is not your friend.