Kongregate App Pulled From Android Market

itwbennett writes "Last week Google took a page from Apple's book and pulled the Arcade by Kongregate app from the Android Market for violating its terms of service. In particular, the part that forbids distributing 'any Product whose primary purpose is to facilitate the distribution of Products outside of the Market.' As Kongregate's Jim Greer explained to Joystiq, the app is essentially a custom web browser that loads in a Flash game from the mobile version of Kongregate. Plus, it will cache the game so you can play offline. And this may be the feature that got it yanked, speculates Ryan Kim at GigaOm."

What's wrong with this?

[dlevitan]

Last week Google took a page from Apple's book and pulled the Arcade by Kongregate app from the Android Market for violating its terms of service.

Except that on my Droid I'm still allowed to download the app from Kongregate's website and install it, no matter what Google thinks. They can even update their app automatically, or, even distribute more than one app. I have apps like that on my phone. Of course, they don't get the exposure of Google's app store, but there's nothing inherently wrong with Google saying "We don't want that in our app store". As opposed to Apple, I choose what can and cannot be installed on my phone, not Google/Apple.

Re:What's wrong with this?

[RagingMaxx]

I think Google is trying to protect developers on what is still an emerging platform.

Plus, operating the App Market is not without cost, and Google takes a cut of all app sales to pay for that. If Kongregate or Steam or anyone else released a free app which allowed software download through an alternate channel, Google would basically be distributing their competitors products, for free.

Google cannot just have 'pure' motives, they must also be tempered with pragmatism.

Re:It does seem that you have the best of both wor

[creativeHavoc]

I agree, Google says "we will not sell this through our app store" whereas Apple says "you cannot have this app." There is no reason to liken Google to Apple here.

Re:Says it all, really

[jo_ham]

Android Phone User: "Give me Froyo!"

Some Android Handset Makers: "No! Buy a new phone!"

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Also note that rooting the phone to install 2.2 solves the problem, but so does rooting an iPhone to solve the "Apple' rules" problem.

Still, the level of hypocrisy seen in these comments is just hilarious. Google are taking the exact position that Apple have taken: deciding what will and won't be allowed in their online store, and yet the twisting and contorting by the Apple-bashing folk to justify this as somehow different from Apple is amusing. The last time this happened was when a serious bug appeared for Android (sending text messages to the wrong people), and there were a flurry of posts trying to downplay it as "not serious" or "this hasn't affected me so it's not an issue" and even "I haven't seen this bug so I doubt it's genuine".

Any criticism of the Android platform/ecosystem, no matter how deserved or accurate, is met with a volley of fury and justification from slashdot at the moment. There's a term that was coined for just such behaviour: fanboys. Of course, fanboys only exist in the Apple camp, right?

I'm not deciding one way or the other whether this is a good decision, but it is a decision made based on the rules of the store. Nor do I think that the inability to install non-App Store software on your iPhone without rooting it is necessarily a good thing either. It is interesting to watch the reactions of people on both sides though.