CyanogenMod Installer Removed From Google Play Store

sfcrazy writes "[Wednesday] Google asked the CM team to voluntarily remove the [CyanogenMod installer] app from the store or they would be forced to remove it administratively. CM team chose to remove the app voluntarily. According to the CyanogenMod team, Google initially said that the app was in violation of Google's Play's developer terms. When the CM team reached out to the Play team, they found that 'though application itself is harmless, and not actually in violation of their Terms of Service, since it 'encourages users to void their warranty', it would not be allowed to remain in the store.'" You can still install manually, though.

Where's the outrage?!

[Anonymous Coward]

If this were Apple removing an app, everyone would be complaining about the walled garden!

Voluntarily?

[jbmartin6]

This doesn't' seem all that voluntary to me. My reaction was yeah sure you go ahead and remove it, why should we do you any favors?

Re:Where's the outrage?!

[MrLint]

How about being outraged on the premise that installing of software is a warranty violation. I'd not be at all surprised that Verizon was involved.

Reached out

[Alioth]

They didn't "reach out to Google", they contacted Google. Using "reached out to" in this context makes it sound like they are trying to make an emotional appeal to an elderly stroke patient. The perfectly usable verb "contact" is also one word instead of three.

Re:Where's the outrage?!

[Vanderhoth]

Well, the CM team is free to distribute their app in other ways. Apple is a little more strict about only allowing apps from their store to be installed. I know jail breaking and all that, but if you're going to jail break your apple device you should already understand the risks and be technically savvy enough to do it.

Google shouldn't have to allowed a known "potentially" dangerous app in their store. Anyone with the expertise required to use this firmware can go and get it from the Cyanogen website. It doesn't need to be advertised in the app store for non-technical people to download. Without researching it I'm sure a laymen would think firmware is some kind of a game and could mess up their device without knowing it. Then who's going to take the blame. I suspect it would be Google for distributing it, a laymen will never take responsibility for using something they didn't understand.

Re:Where's the outrage?!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're the first post and you're wondering where the outrage is?

Re: Where's the outrage?!

[Yoda222]

So you have basically the choice between a phone (or tablet) where you can install stuff that you don't want and one where you can't install what you want.

Re:Where's the outrage?!

[Vanderhoth]

Modifying device firmware should never be a one click download from an app store. If you want to modify your devices firmware than you should know how to "download from a site into sd card, tick a box in some settings, get a file manager to navigate to app and tap click to install it" otherwise there are going to be a lot of spoiled teens out there with broken phones and tablets and parents blaming Google for messing up their kids $400+ device.

I really want to say just getting their story on /. is a good way to gain traction with the people that actually have the expertise to use this product, but I'm absolute miffed by the number of comments, already, on this story where the commented doesn't know the difference between software and firmware and doesn't understand why that would void a devices warranty.

FDroid, Yandex, Amazon, direct download...

[coder111]

There are plenty of alternatives to the official Google App Store.

I'm not sure if it's a good thing they removed it from the official store or not. If it was up to me I'd probably allow it with big red letters saying "THIS WILL VOID YOUR WARRANTY AND MIGHT BRICK YOUR PHONE". OTOH people installing stuff from official Google App Store don't expect these things to happen, so maybe it's a good thing for the masses that this app was removed... And tech-savy people will find ways to get Cyanogen installed anyway.

--Coder

Re: Where's the outrage?!

[Oliver Wendell Jones]

And there are ample anti-malware/anti-virus apps available for Android in the Play Store. I'm on my 4th Android phone and have installed all kinds of software, legit and less so, and have yet to encounter any malware or viruses. Know how many are available in the Apple iTunes store? Zero. If they allowed one to be listed, it would be admitting that their precious iPhones are vulnerable.

Re:Google is a pile of shit

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, just like the USA is the world. No, I'm not getting used to it. If all you use the Internet for is to like, give thumbs up and watch kitten clips, sure. I get it you don't want to block the anal probing.

Re: Reached out

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrongo. The phrase "reached out to" was used because it's become the trendy way to say "contact". It's showing up in all kinds of copy, news and otherwise, and it's revolting. It's PR speak at its worst and you're witnessing its universal adoption.

Re:Google. The new Apple/IBM.

[Bogtha]

If by 'encourage(s) users to void their warranty'" you mean "use the thing you paid for however you see fit in concordance with a thousand year history of English, Formal and natural law, then yeah, I guess you could say it voids your warranty.

Oh do fuck off. Warranties are limited in nature. It's got nothing to do with stopping you from doing what you want with your own property and everything to do with the fact that if you fuck up your own phone, it's not the manufacturer's problem to solve.

Seeing as the user is the product being sold, Google can't have their products (users vis a vie control of the user experience) just walking off the plantation, now can they?

Google deciding not to distribute an application is not akin to making you into their slave. Pointing out that a warranty might be voided if you do certain things is not akin to making you into their slave. All your analogies to "walking off the plantation" do is highlight that you have absolutely no sense of perspective on this matter.

Re:Google is a pile of shit

[Anonymous Coward]

This post really highlights what's wrong with the world today. Let me guess... You also don't care about being tracked or spied on? Because you do nothing wrong. So you don't have anything to fear. Right?

I feel okay with this.

[pla]

The peripheral legal implications aside, and at the risk of sounding like a Google apologist, I really can't say I have any problem with this.

The sort of people who want to install CM will still have absolutely no problem going to the website and doing it manually. This presents no barrier to them exercising their choice of how to use their hardware.

On the flip side of that, having it in the Play store presents something of an outright danger to people who don't know any better (aka "the vast majority")... "Oh, a new version of Android? Hey, I have an Android, I should grab this!". Ten minutes later, their battery dies, or they get sick of watching the installer screen and interrupt it. Oops! Partial brick-time, and now Google (via Samsung/HTC/etc, via Verizon/Sprint/etc) gets to deal with thousands of self-inflicted warranty issues.

Again, at the risk of sounding like an apologist, Google has made compromises that let power-users do whatever the hell they want, while providing 99% of the "walled garden" experience most users want.

Re: Where's the outrage?!

[Minwee]

Know how many people get viruses or malware on their iPhone (without jailbreaking) ... 0.

Looks like you don't know enough people. It has been done, without jailbreaking, and we only know because the developers publicized that fact themselves. [gatech.edu]. If you want to keep the same answer, perhaps you could rephrase the question as "How many times that Apple admit that they served up viruses or malware in their App Store?"

So you think its better to run extra software, waste more ram, cpu and storage space ... so that you don't get something that iOS users just aren't going to get in the first place?

But what if I don't _want_ a misplaced sense of security based on faulty assumptions?

You utterly fucking fail at understanding security. [...] The only known threats on iOS devices have come to jailbroken phones and the jailbreaks themselves.

It [arstechnica.com] ain't [forbes.com] just [skycure.com] a river [arstechnica.com] in [theregister.co.uk] Egypt. [arstechnica.com]

And that's not even considering threats [pod2g.org] that [arstechnica.com] come [phonearena.com] from [apple.com] Apple [independent.co.uk] itself [forbes.com], without any need to install apps or change settings. Something magical happens and things just work.

Until then [I] just make it obvious [I'm] nothing more than a fanboy.

No argument here.