Developers of popular apps such as AdAway and Ad Blocker have started receiving messages from Google that their apps are being removed from the Play Store, effective immediately. Google justifies this crackdown on ad blocking software using section 4.4 of the Play Store Developer Distribution Agreement, which read:
4.4 Prohibited Actions. You agree that you will not engage in any activity with the Market, including the development or distribution of Products, that interferes with, disrupts, damages, or accesses in an unauthorized manner the devices, servers, networks, or other properties or services of any third party including, but not limited to, Android users, Google or any mobile network operator. You may not use customer information obtained from the Market to sell or distribute Products outside of the Market.
Developers started announcing the take downs on Twitter, with developer jrummy16 tweeting, “Got a notification from Google and it looks like all Ad Blockers were removed from Google Play today.” The message going out to all affected developers appears to be the same:
This is a notification that your application, Ad Blocker ★ Root ★, with package ID com.jrummy.apps.ad.blocker, has been removed from the Google Play Store.
REASON FOR REMOVAL: Violation of section 4.4 of the Developer Distribution Agreement.
After a regular review we have determined that your app interferes with or accesses another service or product in an unauthorized manner. This violates the provision of your agreement with Google referred to above.
All violations are tracked. Serious or repeated violations of any nature will result in the termination of your developer account, and investigation and possible termination of related Google accounts. If your account is terminated, payments will cease and Google may recover the proceeds of any past sales and/or the cost of any associated fees (such as chargebacks and transaction fees) from you.
If your developer account is still in good standing, you may revise and upload a new instance of the application that is compliant with the developer terms. Before uploading any new applications, please review the Developer Distribution Agreement and Content Policy.
If you feel we have made this determination in error, you can visit this Google Play Help Center article for additional information regarding this removal.
The Google Play Team
There appears to be little to no wiggle room here, as ad blocking apps clearly do break the agreement that all developers agree to follow before listing their apps on the Play Store. Granted, this doesn’t necessarily mean the end of these apps altogether, although app developers – and the people who want to use these apps – will have to start getting a little more creative about distribution. Google can’t legally pursue these developers, so they will still be free to distribute these apps in other places.
Of course, questions can be raised about the openness of Android: how Google can do something like this to a platform that is supposed to be completely free and open source? The short and simple answer is that Android can only be open to a point – Google still has to have certain restrictions in place to protect its users’ information, for example, or in this case its own pocketbook. After all, Android’s sole purpose is to be a delivery tool for Google to push more of its own products – and ads – into the hands of consumers.
What do you think about this move by Google?
[Twitter via Android Police | Pastebin]
I remember when they did something similar a couple years ago with a lot of the popular game console emulators (even though owning an emulator isn’t illegal at all, as long as it doesn’t distribute propritary BIOS’ and so forth). A lot of the “oid” ones went bye bye and many thought it was because it was stepping on the toes of the forthcoming Sony Xperia Play.
I can sort of understand why Google did this. A lot of developers depend on the revenue derived from ads in their free apps. Of course, this also helps Google, itself, too, because they do advertising up the wazoo. Either way, it’s not too hard to sideload the apk, just stay safe and make sure you have a good copy.
Editing hosts manually, here we come!
Bah. There is no question about the openess of Android because Android is not affected by this at all. Just the Play Store that is operated by Google.
Androids openess means you can install all the app stores you like and you can even sideload any app you like. Google does not (and cannot) control where you go from there.
I agree, the openness factor is that you can still easily download an apk of any of these apps and install it on unrooted Android. And of course, these apps were technically breaking the rules, and unless users want to pay for otherwise free content and apps, they can’t really expect to use ad blockers for long. If everyone used ad blockers, then the ads would be worthless and creators would have to charge for apps and content. Personally, I don’t mind ads in free apps at all, and if they really bother me or I like an app I’ll buy the ad free version, and not rely on an ad blocker app.
google flexing their muscle. got to be careful not to piss off the wrong people though.. look at HTC. one day you are hot, you support the dev community, then make a few changes, and next year… profits down!
The ones wanting ad-blockers, which only really work on rooted phones, will just pick them up from the usual location…
Many of the popular custom ROMs, have that feature built in regardless.
Not a HUGE issue, but it does cut revenue for those developers that had pay versions… I suppose that you could view it in Google’s eyes as, if you cut my profits, I’ll cut yours…