Requirement threatens to break the bank
To prevent a data grabbing snafu along the lines of Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal, Google is asking developers who use sensitive Gmail APIs to pay for a security audit that proves their apps play by the rules.
And the cost – anywhere from $15,000 to $75,000 or more, every year – could put some smaller companies out of business.
„The impact is massive,“ said James Ivings, co-founder of SquareCat, in an email to The Register. „We are a small company and are facing the likelihood of shutting down in face of the charges, as they are currently well beyond our means. Out of the thousands of apps using the API I think our situation will be very common.“
His company makes, among other things, a bulk email unsubscription app called Leave Me Alone.
Google announced its privacy policing plan in October, 2018, three months after a Wall Street Journal report about how developers of apps that interact with Gmail messages – such as email analytics biz Return Path – have programmatic access to sensitive email contents and metadata.
The change followed years of being criticized by competitors, and of lawsuits over its algorithmic parsing of consumer Gmail messages to refine the ads delivered through the service, a practice Google repudiated in mid-2017.
The revised Google API rules took effect on January 15,2019 and apply to all new apps implementing Google’s APIs. Apps that existed prior to this date have until Friday, February 15 to begin the application review process.
Applications that fail to submit an application by February 15 will no longer be able to add new users on February 22 and face revocation on March 31.
„We introduced the new policy to better ensure that user expectations align with developer uses and give users the confidence they need to keep their data safe,“ a Google spokesperson explained in an email.
The situation underscores the business risks of relying on platform rules that are subject to change at any time but not subject to neutral oversight.
The only option for those dissatisfied with the changes is to take their business elsewhere. Ivings said it may be that his firm will be forced to „pivot to supporting other services exclusively, such as Outlook, instead of Gmail, abandoning a large portion of our users.
