I'm guessing it is more that the different teams do not talk to each other, and Google must not have a good, standard review process.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

That would still be institutionally malicious, if not the result of malice by any single person involved.

Having a separate review system that provides different and more favourable treatment for (equivalent) internal apps is in and of itself an abuse of the store.

Never attribute stupidity to that which is adequately explained by self-interest.

It's extremely convenient that Google had an oopsie that's entirely aligned with their own interests.

I mean, this could be as simple as internal app teams not going through the same form, or not getting re-reviewed automatically because it's assumed they'll speak up if they add anything objectionable. And Fleksy's point about being targeted for their increasing use count wouldn't require intentional targeting either - that could just be an automatic "trigger an extra review when user count grows enough".

Which doesn't make it acceptable, obviously. It just means that malice isn't required for unfairness - all it takes is Google fixing the dumb mistakes which hurt them faster than the ones that hurt others.

Letting your own apps bypass the review process sounds pretty anti-competitive to me...

Yeah, that was a weak example on my part. If they're actually skipping the normal review process, that's either malice or unreasonable negligence. And the Google Play followup of "your app is mature and should be PEGI 16" implies a human paid actual attention to this case, which makes it seem much less innocent.

I guess I can imagine some special cases that wouldn't be Google treating itself differently, like triggering reviews when a publisher's largest app crosses a size threshold and assuming established publishers can trusted more generously. But honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if Google just carved out an internal exception.

And the PEGI 16 request goes beyond "not the same treatment as Gboard" to "objectively incorrect review outcome", so regardless something is fishy...

Oh yeah, because if this was Apple no one would pile on.

At a certain point (and both Google and Apple are big enough) it becomes their fault. You should have good enough policies. It’s been 10 years or so since the app stores launched. This isn’t new stuff anymore. It’s not untrodden territory.

It’s laziness at best, and that shouldn’t keep getting excused.

Not just malicious, this is anti-competitive behavior. Something a monopoly would do.

The word "fuck" is in the dictionary. That does not mean it is universally appropriate.

Continuing this metaphor: what age rating would you give to a dictionary containing the word "fuck"?

I think dictionaries must not be age rated.

That's my point. Every Unicode character may not be universally appropriate, but it's just as silly to age-rate a dictionary as it is a keyboard that simply contains a list of Unicode characters.

I believe there are contexts where it's allowed, being part of Unicode I assume wouldn't be illegal.

While certain uses of the symbols are not illegal, they do have a negative effect on age ratings / classification board approvals (relevant to this discussion).

A famous example, is that Wolfenstein 3D was outright refused a rating in Germany. Arguably it may have been legal as artistic use, rather than propaganda promoting an unconstitutional organization, but that was not sufficient to get a rating.

The swastika symbol in Unicode is the Buddhist/Hindu swastika, not the Nazi swastika (which is tilted at 45°).

There are many swastika characters in Unicode, with different contexts, none of them being Nazi specifically. That's not to say that usage of any of them would inherently preclude them from being subject to section 86a.