The Android market may be growing at an impressive rate but that doesn’t mean all of them will stay put on the site. Google has pulled on their rubber gloves of late by starting a mass clean up of apps that they feel breach their guidelines. One major casualty has been emulator apps with a number being removed over the past couple of months, today another developer had their apps removed and developer account closed down. A move that has some app developers looking over their shoulder.
Yong Zhang’s emulator app was based on the snes9x emulator, it was removed today without warning to the developer. Google has simply responded by saying ”Thanks for checking in. We don’t provide comment on individual apps or developers. I can confirm, though, that the apps that were removed were in violation of Android Market policies.
An article on Android Police revealed the story of ZodTTD, another developer who had their emulator app removed by Google. Apparently, his app was not removed due to an open source violation but a trademark infringement. Sony has sent a letter to Google explaining that the app contained a PSX4Droid logo, Google’s promptly responded by removing the app and ZodTTD’s developer account entirely.
It seems the big brands are getting better at protecting their intellectual property, developers will have to be wary when creating any new apps and content going forward if they do not want their apps removed without warning.
Did Android moderators do the right thing here?