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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."
Pulled from the market, but nothing saying it can't be installed manually... Or am I wrong?
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.
It does seem that you have the best of both worlds with Android.You can download through the Apps store and know that there will be some degree of vetting and rogue software removed. If you want something outside you can do that too, but have to judge the source yourself.
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.
insight through the mind
How do you make the distinction of online content, like e-books, flash games, podcasts? All are "online content", yet reader applications are allowed to go online to fetch the content (or even sell it). In my honest opinion, the only rule should be to exclude competing "Android markets", not content providers.
UPDATE: Google responded with a statement standing by its decision to pull the Kongragate Arcade app. “Applications in violation of our policies are removed from Android Market,” Google said. The reasoning comes down to the fact that the Kongregate app, while it acts much like a browser, has the ability to cache games for offline play. That elevates it into a competing software distribution platform offering outside content, something the Android Market terms of service prohibits. It’s likely that a simpler app that listed Kongregate games and launched a traditional browser could get approved. Or if the games were submitted as individual apps, they would also fly. It seems a distinction is being made here between digital content like books or music and mobile apps, which is why Kindle and other services don’t appear to be in danger of being pulled.
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
How do you make the distinction of online content, like e-books, flash games, podcasts? All are "online content", yet reader applications are allowed to go online to fetch the content (or even sell it). In my honest opinion, the only rule should be to exclude competing "Android markets", not content providers.
The difference, as far as I can make out, is that ebooks and podcasts aren't applications in themselves, only data files. Flash games are interpreted and can be made to do almost anything. Google doesn't mind having Flash applications or games in its store, but it doesn't want a store (or other distribution center) inside its store for applications or games.
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
Google Marketplace: "My house, my rules."
Android Phone User: "My phone, my rules."
Apple App Store: "My house, my rules."
iPhone User: "My phone, Apple's rules."
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
Apple says "We don't like it so you can't use it!"
Google says "We don't like it so we will not distribute it. You're of course free to get it elsewhere."
Big difference. Huge actually.
Kongregate gets tons of visits every day. All they need to do (which they are) is advertise on the site - and you can just pick it up from there.
Big deal.
I learnt about this app from their website, and I picked it up from there - I didn't need to trawl the store either.
I think their worst feature is that they seem to delight in waiting for a fair amount of cash to build up before just deciding to yank an account. Basically just stealing the money. It'd be one thing if they just warned you beforehand, but it's not uncommon for them to just do it out of nowhere. No warnings, just out of nowhere locking down an account. What's more annoying is that there seems to often be little logic to it. Sometimes they'll give warning after warning, months and months of it given to people spamming the market with their crap. Other times they'll just yank peoples accounts and money with no notice. And you can guess how probable it is that they'll even bother to reply to any questions about what's going on. When it would be rather nice if they'd instead give you a shout about a problem beforehand. So, you know, YOU CAN ACTUALLY FIX IT. I've been doing android development for about half a year now. And in that time, talking to others doing the same, I've gone from being a bit of a google fanboy to finding them very annoying at times. I love android, it's a fantastic mobile operating system. But google's market is just annoying to me in a lot of ways. Especially when people tend to portray it as both a bastion of freedom and an open place where the benign leadership actually cares.
Everything will be taken away from you.
Agreed.
How many times can people continue this inane dribble.
wah wah wah iphone is closed and baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad wah wah wah.
Don't you think we all have heard everything so far and made our decision on what we prefer?
OK, you're right, we were all posting hoping to convince you you to make a non-iphone decision, but now you've let us know what you think, we'll shut up.
Considering that the browser can be used to install "offline-useable" webapps, and somewhere in the web there might be a page that links such offline capable apps (the main villain here seems to be a small Californian company by the name of Google???), so the browser is clearly in the business of providing an alternate market place, right?
(Actually, postulating that there are more than one such page, I guess it's a case of an emergency, pull the browser, it can introduce multiple alternate market places, plus these can use alternate payment methods, ...)
So will Google be remote-destructing all instances of webbrowsers with support for Google GEARS, HTML5 or similar on Android devices?
I just found it in the Android Market, Downloaded it, and Installed it. I'm playing it right now. Evo 2.2.
The difference, as far as I can make out, is that ebooks and podcasts aren't applications in themselves, only data files. Flash games are interpreted and can be made to do almost anything.
I don't know, PDFs can do just about anything these days. Isn't that the reason we get all the malware through them?
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.
This isn't wholly true you know. Apple says, 'you can't have this through our store which is the only way without hacking to get it on our OS. You can have it if you hack the OS or install a different OS, but we won't support you."
I realize this may seem like nit-picking but it's important to note that Apple doesn't actually stop anyone from getting an app legally, they just make it inconvenient if you want to use their mobile OS on the hardware they sell. The point still stands though.
I'm still waiting for Google to decide it's time to create a new, better store that incorporates the advantages of a vetted system for all apps with the advantages of many sources and no completely banned apps. It is certainly possible to build such a system, although it may be complex. It would be nice to see them leapfrog Apple on this front.
They don't stop you? You must be mad. They try to stop you every single update by stopping jailbreaking. You're wrong.
Unless AT&T, TMobile, Samsung, LG, Motorola, et al, decided that sideloading apps was bad for their bottom line.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
They try to stop you every single update by stopping jailbreaking.
Actually not every update breaks jailbreaking, and usually if you just wait a week or two to update you can re-jailbreak.
Remember that Apple doesn't really care about jailbreakers, but they do care about security holes that jailbreaks rely on to get in.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
iPhone User: "My phone, Apple's rules."
You can jailbreak at any time. Any device you physically control is always under your own rules.
On Android, if it's "your rules" why can you not update many Android phones to FroYo?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Apple says "We don't like it so you can't use it!"
And then you download it from Cydia, just like you'd download an Android app from somewhere else.
Android in fact is hampered by not having as well known an alternate application store.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They try to stop you every single update by stopping jailbreaking.
No, they try to fix security holes every update. If they were serious about stopping you from running unapproved apps on iPhones they'd lock the hardware to the OS.
I'd never heard of the app until it became a news item by virtue of being pulled from the Market. So, now the app gets advertised in the multiverse that is slashdot, tweetscape, et al. It has acquired a fresh "hotness" for at least 15 minutes.
Uhh, is this a bad time? I can come back later.
You dont know what is best for me.
Interesting since the chief Android Market guy said yesterday that they welcomed the Amazon store because competition would be good for the market.
or else!