One Last Note about the Google Play Store
At this point, I think we can safely say that the Bike Law Pocket Guide is unlikely to ever make it into the Google Play Store. So, with that said, we are enabling side loading the APK to any Android device, and moving forward with the project on all of the platforms, just acknowledging that Google Policy implementation and decisions create a difficult situation for the Pocket Guide. What follows is long, detailed, and we suspect quite clear on the frustrations that we feel regarding Google, the Play Store, and their process.
If you do not want to get into that, now would be a good time to wander off and go for a bike ride. However, if you want the full nitty gritty details, read on.
Why the Pocket Guide?
Before we get too far down the rabbit hole, maybe we should talk about why we believe the Pocket Guide is even needed.
About 10 years ago, Dru was sitting at a bike advocacy summit getaway with a group of advocates from around the country. While sitting there, the realization that no matter what the advocates wanted to accomplish, it always circled back to a single core road block: educating the public, both cyclists and non. Education is hard, because you have people that think they know, people that do not want to know, and others that simply don't care, and all of that assumes that the subject material you are teaching is a static subject.
The result is too often that underfunded, understaffed, and constantly swimming upstream against the car primacy crowd cycling and pedestrian advocacy takes paths of lesser resistance working on statute changes, policy, and for lack of a better turn of phrase, "Tilting at windmills". Education falls through the cracks.
Educating when the laws are a moving target, with significant variation per state and a period where we are seeing annual changes to those laws across the country is even harder. Just finding the information reliably has become a chore all of itself, to the point where many times state provided information is stale. We knew something like this was needed 10 years ago, but for a lot of reasons, it never came to be. We simply did not have the time to get it done.
Built and Ready to Publish
After a good bit of development work, and far far more research, we had built the foundation of the Pocket Guide. An application that used your GPS location from your device, selected your US state and fetched the most recent codes for your state. We built the platform as native platform applications with full local storage of the laws you have looked up so that they would be handy when internet connectivity was spotty. Apple platforms came first, then Android, then Windows, and a VERY light version for the Web.
We truly thought that publishing would be relatively easy, there really is not a ton of complexity here, we clearly documented our sources, we made no claims to be lawyers and suggest contacting one for deeper questions, nor do we claim to represent any government entity.
We could not have been more wrong.
The Apple Platform(s) - mac, iPad, iPhone, vision & TV
Our initial submission to the Apple App Stores was rejected. Why? It did not provide additional functionality over a web search, not even the curated content justified it in their eyes. That was fine, we had most of the reporting module built but had suppressed it for the initial publication, because it was added complexity for limited short term value ( though we do think it has enormous long term value ). Rebuilt, updated with those modules turned on, resubmit and 7 days later, we were in the App Stores. Honestly, less painful than we expected based upon the stories that have circulated about the Apple 'Walled Garden' for the last 20 years.
The Microsoft Platform - Windows 11
Since Windows is a platform where installing an app does not, in most instances, require the App Store, we made the direct download available, and then kind of ignored the Microsoft Store for a couple of months, simply because getting through the setup process for publishing was a lot of work for what we were not entirely sure was much real gain. As it was, we had the Windows version done and available within a week or so of the Apple versions. When we finally got around to doing the Microsoft Store version it took 2 hours to work through the submission process, and less than 5 hours from submit to being available in the store. Combination of lower volume and simpler processes made that process pretty easy.
The Google Play Store - Android
This is where the story gets ugly. Our initial submission to the Google Play Store happened a week after the Apple version was submitted, and actually occurred on the same day the initial Apple version went live. It was rejected within a day, with suggested changes from Developer Support ( I am about 90% certain at this point, Google Support is really just an AI response that provides canned answers, no guidance, and if it is a human has absolutely no authority other than to tell you to make changes and resubmit ).
That rejection was over a single policy: the Misleading Claims policy.
1. Misleading Claims
To maintain our commitment to a transparent and trustworthy user experience, Google Play prohibits misleading claims or information in apps. This includes misleading information in the description, title, icon and screenshots. Apps must not misrepresent their functionality, or claim impossible features, even if labeled as a joke. You must also avoid improper categorization, false content about elections, and false claims of affiliation with governments or other established entities. For example, you cannot use "Official" in a title without the necessary rights. Please review the full policy to ensure compliance.
We don't allow apps that contain false or misleading information or claims, including in the description, title, icon, and screenshots.
Their remedy
If your app provides government-related information, you must provide the sources of the information in the app description and a clear disclaimer that you do not represent the government entity.
No problem at all, we made the appropriate changes. Added the disclaimer to both the app and the description, the in app links already. provided direct links to our sources, so we added those sources to the description as well. Resubmit.
A week later, another rejection. Same policy, different violation:
Your app provides government information but lacks one or more clear and accessible URL/link(s) to the original source(s) (for example, .gov domains).
We run a full audit of every source to ensure that none are dead links. We find a couple that are probably problematic for an automated tool because one responds exceptionally slowly and the other does not go to an HTML source, but instead PDF's of the statutes. We swap these two out to more reliably accessible sources. Resubmit.
Another week, another rejection:
Your app provides government information but lacks one or more clear and accessible URL/link(s) to the original source(s) (for example, .gov domains).
Same canned message, no details. We pushed back opening a support request. After some email communication, to issue starts to become a little more clear.
- **Unclear Identification of Source Link in the Description**
Your app's description includes a URL/link, but it is not clearly identified as the source of the provided government information. For clarity, the description should explicitly indicate the link's role as the data's origin.
We rewrite the description again to clarify the role of the source data links in the description. All 50+ of them, squished in a limited character length description field ( their limitation, not ours ). There are 540 individual links to the statutes, so that will not fit into the description regardless. We provide that description to the support team who lets us know that they cannot approve it, but they think it meets the policy demands. Update, resubmit.
Another week, another rejection:
- **Source Link is Not from Official Entity**
The provided URL/link for the source of government information is not from an official government entity. For greater trust and verifiability, it is crucial to provide links to official government entities as the source of government information. The current link provided does not meet this criteria.
Finally, something new to go with, but now things get complex. The definition of government information requires a .us or .gov based url. 9 states do not publish their code books to .us or .gov sites, some have private urls ( New Mexico, Colorado ), others only publish to the paywalled lexis.com ( Georgia being one of them ). Colorado only publishes to PDF, not html. The next best, publicly available resources is Justia.com and it has a 'are you human' CAPTCHA in front of it, as to several of the .us and .gov sites. Document all of this, do another audit to ensure that we are compliant, and remove the content for any state that does not have an explicit statute regarding contributory negligence, after another conversation with Developer Support. Resubmit.
Another week, you guessed it, another rejection:
- **Insufficient Sources Provided**
Your app’s description statement makes it seem like there are more than one source of information used without listing all of them.
This is because we articulated, in the description, the use of Justia when Lexis is the primary source and why. We push back to Support and get this gem in which we are told point blank what is required
In response to your inquiry regarding the number of Source of Information (SOI) links required, listing all 540 individual URLs is not necessary. You may provide direct links to the relevant authoritative government portal domains/index pages (e.g., the ~46 official legislative or agency portals), or a consolidated official government landing page that houses these records, provided the links are fully qualified, valid, and active. Additionally, all SOI sources cited within the app must align with the sources listed in the store description.
To ensure compliance, please adhere to the following requirements:
- Fully Qualified, Active URLs: All links must be direct, full URLs (e.g.,
https://[agency].gov/...) that actively navigate to official government sources. Generic mentions of domain extensions (such as.govor.us) or third-party databases (such as Justia) are not acceptable. - In-App and Store Listing Alignment: Any sources of information referenced or accessible within the app itself must align with the authoritative sources listed in your store description.
- Clear Role & Disclaimer: Clearly state in the description that these links represent the source of the legal/government data, alongside a clear disclaimer stating that the app is not affiliated with or endorsed by any government entity.
To be clear, if the above consolidated official government source for this information existed, the app would not be necessary, but ok, we get after it again. More work, published our own full audit results, make the changes that we can, and resubmit.
3 days later, another rejection:
- **Broken or Inaccessible Source Link**
The provided URL/link for the source of government information is not working or is inaccessible.
Now at this point, we ask for a specific link or links that we can investigate. No response. We check them, and they all work, from a browser operated by a human, if you click through the captchas. They do NOT all work if you use a crawler that honors crawler rules ( and cannot click the captcha ). Some time out fairly frequently ( Alaska ), but the unofficial sources at Justia are not viable replacements because of the 'Official Government Sources' portion of the policy.
So, we reach out one more time, this time via the appeals process, where they essentially tell us to do what we have already done, because:
your app contains a **source of government information link which is broken** in the description.
No, they won't tell us which one of the 46 that they find problematic ( we noted the two that we know to randomly time out in the initial appeal ).
We are now working through the description to try and find a solution to Google's concerns, but honestly, at this point we have invested 100's of hours into trying to support a platform and vendor for a product that has no source of revenue today. No ads, no sponsors, nothing. All we are trying to do is get accurate information out there. And the funny thing here is that we probably could comply with the policy if we were willing to provide misleading and stale information, because in the states that are currently problems, we can link to old state Depart of Transportation sources that no longer reflect current laws in those states.
Yes, that means, that by enforcing the policy as it exists, we could actively promote misleading and incorrect information.
Where things stand
So, while we will continue to fight the stupidity, our expectations of results from Google getting a clue are, shall we say, 'exceptionally low'. In the meantime, the side load .APK and instructions on how to use it are in process.