Mar 31, 2009 06:50 AM
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Developers are reporting a mass delisting of Android tethering apps from the App Marketplace, after being informed that such apps breach the Developer Distribution Agreement. That's your cue for righteous indignation, internet!
It's not yet clear if all tethering apps have been pulled from the Marketplace, but a some have—and we know why. Though the developer of Wifi Tether for Root Users—one of the apps that got pulled—doesn't reprint his entire exchange with Google, he tells us that their reasoning invokes T-Mobile's terms of service, which (surprise!) prohibit unofficial tethering.
These actions surely won't sit well with many, but it would have been naive not to expect them, at least a little. For all the "open" trappings of Android, the G1 is still a subsidized phone. Protecting their own interests and arguably counter to the OS's ethos, T-Mobile locked the phone, like all carriers do. Likewise, to capitalize on tethering plans (or alternately, to minimize data traffic) they're now demanding that Google pull apps that endanger their business interests, despite the fact that anyone can just download these same apps independently of the store and install them anyway.
But that's obvious. What's not obvious is why they doing this now, and why they allowed these apps in the first place, setting a precedent for the Marketplace's independence from carriers' dictates that they now have to break, making asses out of everyone involved. [False Dichotomies via Android Community]
Send an email to John Herrman, the author of this post, at jherrman@gizmodo.com.
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