Indie App Developer Ditching Google Play Store, Google Policies Are Not Developer Friendly

A picture of a programmers workstation.

I have been making Android apps since 2012. Over the years I enjoyed the time creating apps. Learning how to code and diving into the app market. It has been a wild ride filled with excitement and also frustration along the way.

Creating Apps Is the Easy Part, Maintaining Them Is Another Beast

You must know how to code.
Know how to debug your software.
Ensure your software runs properly on the devices you are targeting.
Then after it’s published you need to learn how to market the app.
Offer customer support.
Create new features over time.
Debug your app some more.
Do app store optimization (new screenshots, changing keywords).
Regularly update the app with bug fixes and maintenance code.
Etc…

But wait, there’s more!

We have to read up on all the yearly news each App Store releases, and understand the new legalities.

I receive more e-mails from Google than Microsoft and Apple combined with new policies developers must implement. We are talking about receiving a few emails from Google every quarter of the year with new updates of policies that every app developer must adapt to.

So, on top of marketing, bug fixing, customer support, and maintaining your software, we must also adapt to changes in updated programming language syntax, legal regulations, outdated algorithms that require us to fix in our code that is now deprecated, and on top of that, debug once again with these new code “improvements” to ensure it all works on the higher Android versions.

Are You Exhausted Yet? Welcome To the World of Technology!

Luckily I thrive off of this nonsense. It’s like setting an unachievable goal and seeing if I can make it happen. When the app sales come in, yes it drives me to want to work harder but we all know app sales on the Android Google Play Store is pennies on the dollar. Everyone expects your app to be free.

Let’s Cover the Reasons Why I Ditched Google’s Play Store and No Longer Support Android Devices

Let me expose a loophole I used to hide my home address. Google requires developers to provide their “physical address”. This alone is ridiculous. It’s like Google hates indie app developers. Can read about it here. I had to use a private mailbox address (PMB) because Google shows your address publicly on every app listing. This protected me from people stalking me, or who knows what. Some people are just not right in their heads these days. It has now come to a point where I was paying more for PMB services than I was earning a year on Google Play Store. I don’t know about you but I value my privacy for myself and my family. This is the number 1 reason I’m no longer supporting Android.
Trying to figure out what Android versions you want to support in your app is a mess. Do you want to support as many devices as possible, or do you want to use the latest features? You can’t do both!
It’s a battle what should you choose?

Google has all this hype over the latest Android version available but only less than 1% of users are using it, LOL.

You try to target lower Android versions and Google Play Store warns you to target higher versions or you cannot update your app. Can read about it here.
Google has recently been enforcing weird rules out of the blue. They are so strict if your in violation they will shut down your account. It’s almost impossible to talk to a human.

I was flagged 2 months ago where I had to update an unpublished app or else I would be in violation. The issue was with an app that was unpublished for years but in fear of losing my account I had to update that free app to be in “compliance”. This meant updating the code, the libraries, old deprecated algorithms, etc… What a waste of time. Google said thanks for making Google Play Safer. Uh, WTF?
Google Play Store is a market of freebies. Nobody wants to spend 99 cents even if your app is valuable, they want everything free. Someone argued over the 99-cent app I had available back in 2013. I got so much hate from this person over 99 cents. It is amazing how hateful people can be. My solution to this was to increase the app price. The higher the price the less likely you’ll get hate mail from people. I never received this from Microsoft or Apple. I mean why complain over 99 cents? Ya’ll be spending $7 for coffee every day. At least app sales from indie developers go to feed our family.
Code changes: every year developers must adapt to changes fast. When I first started we used a software IDE for Java called Eclipse. This software took hours to set up. Then you have the learning curve of using it. A few years later Google finally built Android Studio, an IDE for developers to build apps for Android devices. So much better but it had a learning curve as usual. Then every year there are code changes, different app icon size requirements, new guidelines, and dependencies libraries change constantly.

Remember if you update to the latest dependency library, that means we must test our app additional times as it’s not uncommon our code that works great last time now breaks or we have to use another algorithm as the last one is deprecated.

That also means more testing not only on new versions but also on older phones that we don’t own. So at times, it’s a gamble if it all works. We don’t own all the variations of Android devices. We just don’t have the budget for it. I ran into issues with Samsung devices but all other Android devices worked fine with my code. What a nightmare that was. It was when Google released Android version 12. It was some weird crash on the app launch. Eventually, I was able to patch it in my apps, but it wasn’t an easy solution. All I can say is thank you Google and Samsung for causing unnecessary headaches to developers.

Conclusion

I can go on and on about why it is not worth publishing apps for Google but I figured we would stop here.

Looking back at my memories working with Android devices has been both a great experience and a pain in the ass.

Since I shut down my Play Store Apps (July 8, 2024), it is as if a big burden was lifted from my shoulders.

Now I can focus on being creative on other App Stores that have been lucrative to me, such as Microsoft and Apple. I have new apps and huge improvements coming!

Thank you to all my users who have and do support me today. I appreciate you and am always an e-mail away if needed. I wish Google was friendly to developers but unfortunately, I have to move on and discontinue support for Android.

P.S. I hope to see all my Android users switch to iPhone soon!

Cheers!