Apple exerts famously tight-fisted control over what apps make it into its iTunes App Store. Now, one Android app developer has learned, Google can play that game, too.
Kongregate, a popular website featuring Adobe Flash-based games, had an app in the official Android Market for less than 24 hours before Google pulled it down.
Google removed the Kongregate Arcade app on Wednesday afternoon, citing a violation of the Android Market Developer Distribution Agreement.
Although Google didn't elaborate, it's likely that Kongregate violates section 4.5 of the Developer Distribution Agreement. That's a non-compete clause which states developers "may not use the Market to distribute or make available any Product whose primary purpose is to facilitate the distribution of Products outside of the Market."
The Kongregate app hosts Flash games created by thousands of outside developers. In other words, the app is in effect routing around the Android Market's approval process, setting up its own distribution system for Flash-based software.
“It does seem like a pretty extreme distortion to call something that plays content in a browser to be the same thing as an application store,” Kongregate CEO Jim Greer said in a statement given to multiple news outlets. “By this definition, we don’t see why apps like the Kindle or other music apps aren’t across the line.”
Google's policy is reminiscent of Apple's infamous no-Flash policy on iOS devices. Apple has stated publicly that it disallows Flash due to the platform's proprietary nature, security issues and performance-related problems. But there's another, unstated reason why Apple doesn't want Flash: It's too dangerous for a company that wants to maintain control of its products and software to let a platform like Flash become accessible to the iOS. If Flash developers were to do what Kongregate did with the Android Marketplace -- code games in Flash and load them to a web page, which the Marketplace app redirects users to -- Apple would lose control of the iOS platform. That could introduce security risks but would also cut into Apple's revenue, as it would provide developers with a way to distribute software while avoiding paying the percentage that Apple takes on app sales.
Google, however, is being more straightforward with their approach. Rather than unleashing a torrent of words on us like Steve Jobs did with his no-Flash explanation, the DDA clause boils down to two hyphenated words: "Non-compete." Don't release apps that have the potential to take customers outside of the Android Marketplace economy.
Pointing at others who may or may not be breaking the rules, however, probably won't help Kongregate much in this case. But the company hasn't completely given up hope for reconciling their differences with Google.
"While Google has pulled [the app] down temporarily," Greer told Wired.com in an email statement, "we will work with them to make the app available in their Market."
It's not as if Kongregate is completely exiled from all Android OS-running handsets, either. It took me only a few minutes to sideload the Kongregate Arcade app onto my smartphone by accessing Kongregate's web site directly through my phone's browser, although to do so I had to deactivate the safety option prohibiting users from downloading apps from unofficial Android app stores. And there's always the option of putting the app up on alternative, unofficial Android app markets.
But being banned from the most popular market for Android apps is obviously undesirable for Kongregate. At least the company has a pretty good idea of why Google is objecting to its app.
Photo: Kongregate app/Gamestop.com
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