The Blog For Entrepreneurs

ChilliFresh is an Australian company that creates apps for the iPhone, including the recently banned Wobble, which provides pictures of women’s breasts.

“I’m now worried the eco-system is run by puritans and is not fair to all players,” developer Jon Atherton said on its website. “And worst of all it is not a secure source of income. It can drop to close to zero if they decide to change the rules,” he added.

The firm was making £320 a day out of its apps, a figure which has dropped to £5 since the ban, he said. “On Friday evening we got an e-mail out of the blue which basically said, thanks very much but we don’t want you anymore. Apple said it was removing all overtly sexual apps,” he told the BBC.

This is my point, the big companies on the web are so big, and you rely on them so much, you have no chance of winning against them.. ever. Take Google; Adwords sent me an email the other day saying I had violated policy. I sent them one back saying “How have violated policy, I have not used the account for six months” They sent one back saying “Read or terms and conditions and do not contact us again”. I shit you not, ‘Do not contact us again’.

I was polite and said “OK send back my balance” (there was$39 on my account) I was given the instructions of how to do this. Google then sent back $15 and will not respond to emails asking where my other $24 is. No wonder they are making $20bn a year.

Now I am sure that if I ended up speaking to someone in Google, you know – a real live ‘Googler’, they would be sweetness and light and tell me this was all a mistake, problem is, Google is so huge unless you are a big dog no one will take your call. And that, my entrepreneurial friend, is not a good sign.

The banking crisis of the last 18 months was caused by too much power in the hands of too few people in the banking sector; it was the biggest Ponzi scheme ever. The Internet is going the same way, when a firm is just able to change the rules at a moment’s notice without any real recourse to do anything about it the time is right to start being careful who you deal with in that sector.

The fact is I happen to agree that Apple should be more careful with their apps, for the sake of kids who may be able to download these adult applications, but I use this latest flexing of the muscles as an example of corporate power gone mad.

In the outside world it would also spell opportunity… chance for a little player to beat the big dogs on price and service…. can that ever happen to the behemoth that Google or Apple has become… I don’t think so… gulp!

Regards
David
@OneLifeNoFear