I have no experience with google customer support as a normal developer[1], but I guess there is a vast amount of this kind of arguably spamy apps submitted every day. On that scale it's probably hard and too time consuming to distinguish naive from fraudulent developers.
For me its difficult to believe, that someone who has been a developer for so long, really didn't think, that using another companies name in an app name, use their logo – and removing their ads(?)[2] – couldn't lead to some sort of serious problems.
The punishment might be too harsh, but defending yourself in this case with 70/80 rebelism and doing them a favor with "free advertisement" is just bizarre.
[1] I've worked in the advertisement team of the biggest swiss news site, and we got decent personal support from google. Unfortunately, i guess it is as always in life: If you're big, others will listen to you. If not, you'll be ignored.
Googles' model is to allow apps without pre-screening. This model (trust but verify) lends itself to having more spammy apps submitted to it (no proof, just an educated guess). Google is providing a gateway for others to generate income.
The OP stated:
1) They had a disclaimer in multiple places.
2) They reached out explicitly because they weren't sure where the real problem existed.
3) Only one app was notified at a time when multiple apps had been following the same style and none were notified until later. Surely Google would want to investigate whether the developer posted any other apps which might be in violation?
4) Was not trying to nor had any interest in making any money off of this set of apps.
It has been said, the OP was naive and should have pulled the apps after the first notice since they were just beta. But any corporation that is providing business support services really needs to fund a customer service desk with real people. The fact that people use google for businesses like this knowing this situation is really surprising.
