It has been several months now and days and days of work that we have been trying to get Google to approve that our users can access their Google Drive again through iA Writer for Android. (They suddenly cut it off). Last week we supposedly passed the last test.
This week they come back and want us to downgrade the scope to read only. Read only? It's literally a writing app!
I think we're not dealing with humans but with an AI that just keeps wasting our time. I'm flipping-tables annoyed.
So we tell them that our users (not us) need read write access to Google Drive so they can write their texts, and they want us to go through a scanning process that takes at least 6 weeks. One of the suggested vendors for the CASA scan is KPMG.
It probably costs more than what we make with an app that has more pirate users than regular ones.
Guys, we want our users to be able to access their Google drive so they can write and stop 1-staring us for something we didn't do.
Close to giving up.
They want us to do this CASA certification with KPMG or similar every year. In the mean time we're getting hammered with bad reviews as users think it's our fault.
Instead of fixing their crappy core frameworks (often people can't pay for apps they want, or they pay and Play Store forgets) Google keeps us busy updating this, complying that. I just sent them a stack of paper last week.
Both Apple and Google are squeezing devs with the same percentages. But at least Apple's stuff works.
@reichenstein Thank you for your insights. For the last decade I took out a Writer subscription and was surprised when the error message with the faulty connection to Google Drive came up. Your support was really nice and helpful.
I'm still not going to cancel my subscription because I want to continue supporting your ideas.
Again, thank you for describing the problem from the developer's perspective. It really helps me to understand this madness better.
Oliver Reichenstein
Sebastian