A few months ago, Amazon started including access to its Appstore in its main Android app, essentially enabling users to purchase Amazon apps (which would typically be used on the company’s Fire devices), and use them on Android devices.
In other words, this provided Android users with a place to get apps other than Google Play, which of course hosts true Android apps.
Google apparently didn’t take too kindly to this, as there are reports out now that Amazon has pulled its app with the Appstore access in it. From the sound of it, Google forced them to remove it after some changes in wording to its own policy.
The policy used to prohibit apps whose primary purpose was to distribute apps outside of Google Play. Clearly, Amazon got around this by making its Appstore a feature of its main app, so that it wasn’t actually the app’s primary purpose. The policy was changed to prohibit any apps that do “have a purpose” of selling apps outside of Google Play.
Frankly, I can’t imagine that Amazon was really selling many apps this way in the first place. Android users have plenty of apps to choose from in Google Play, and for the most part aren’t really looking for additional marketplaces.
Still, Google has always billed Android as an open platform (which is why Amazon’s exists in the first place). This move isn’t exactly of an “open” nature.
Obviously it’s all about competition (which is thriving, according to a new report commissioned by Google), and Google considers Amazon one of its main competitors – its top competitor, in fact, when it comes to search.
Android Police has the full story on the Amazon app removal.
Image via Amazon