Phandroid app pulled from Google Play (UPDATED)

According to Derek Ross on his Google+ profile, Phandroid’s official news app has been taken down from the Google Play store without any warning.  He and his Phandroid team received a very generalized autoresponse email explaining that their app had been banned.  When they reached out to Google for more details on their violation, they were greeted with this reply:

[blockquote]“We have reviewed your appeal and will not be reinstating your app. This decision is final and we will not be responding to any additional emails regarding this removal.”[/blockquote]

If you go to the Google Play store and search for their app, you will get to see this “Not Found” error page.

If you are a fan of Phandroid this is some very disappointing news.  Not on their end, but from Google’s.  It seems pretty odd that Google would throw down the banhammer on an app in their “open” app store that was developed by a dedicated Android site that helped bring Google’s OS into the social limelight.

No other info is known right now.  If you’d like to help out or learn more, head on over to Derek’s Google+ page and +1 and share his post so that it gains some public awareness.  Whenever any updates start rolling in I will make sure to edit this post!  Good luck Phandroid guys, I’m rooting for you.

[label style = “purple”]Via:[/label] Derek Ross Google+

UPDATE: Someone in Derek’s thread mentioned that Rob Jackson’s Google+ page had some more information on the issue.  If you don’t know, Rob is the head honcho over at Phandroid as he is the founder of the site.  As stated on Rob’s post:

[blockquote source=”Rob Jackson”]”they mentioned that we were in violation of Article 6.2 in the developer agreement which relates directly to Brand Guidelines. My best bet is that they disapprove of the name “Android News” [/blockquote]

Some believe that if you want to develop an app with the word Android in the title and have it abide by the guidelines, you need to include “for” before the word.  So basically an app goes from “Android News” to “for Android News”.  Pretty interesting as this all plays out.

[label style = “green”] Via:[/label] Rob Jackson Google+

UPDATE 2: Derek let us know on his Google+ post (the same one as before) that Google has in fact reached out to them in person and unlocked their app.  I guess they really do just have to change the name for it to clear the automated verification.  Oh well.  Yay for automated messages!  As of today June 10, 2014 at 11:00 p.m, the app is still not up on the Play Store.  Eventually it’ll be back and everything will be right in the Android world.

FINAL UPDATE:  Everything is back to normal.  Phandroid is once again in the Google Play Store awaiting to be downloaded by all of you people.  Rob Jackson said that it really was due to the naming of their app.  Glad everything worked out!

[label style = “green”] Via:[/label] Rob Jackson Google+ update post

[label style = “blue”]DOWNLOAD:[/label] Google Play Store link