Last night Organic Maps was removed from the Play Store
Last night Organic Maps was removed from the Play Store without any warnings or additional details due to "not meeting the requirements for the Family Program". Compared to Google Maps and other maps apps rated for 3+ age, there are no ads or in-app purchases in Organic Maps. We have asked for an appeal.
If you don't know what Organic Maps is, it is an alternative to OsmAnd and google maps, more info on the official site (link) and GitHub.
Maybe an error? Honestly this is a weird one. I hope we will learn more in the coming hours.
You can still get it on the other channels, like F-Droid or Obtainium. Still, we all know that not being on the Play Store is an heavy sentence for any Android app.
I'd first heard of it yesterday when I saw it recommended here somewhere.
However, I wouldn't assume maliciousness over incompetence. It is Google after all... Anybody who has ever published anything on there has probably had it removed at some point. There's so many malicious apps and spurious reports, it could honestly be anything. The smaller your app, the longer it takes for an actual human to get involved and sort it out.
You can't download it from the Google Play store.
You'll have to download the .APK (application package, the installation file format for all Apps) from this url, there should be a tutorial to guide you further:
there are other apps than can access F-droid and everyone will soon start replying saying why they think their choice is the only reasonable one and everything else is the worst thing ever, but the official one under that link should be enough to get you started.
Seems to be still available on Apple’s store. And if Google intended to bury it, this is definitely Streisand Effect at work. Wish I’d known about this a few years ago when I was hiking more
@gencha No reason at all. It was probably wrongfully flagged by Google's AI based on some stupid wrongful training data. At least that's what I think though, because folks at Pushbullet (remember the app?) seem to be having similar problems about "not mentioning that they upload user data to their servers" even though they clearly mention this when the app is opened for the first time.
That makes sense, but my understanding is, what Google considers Family content is not an add-on to regular content. Your content is not also for children, it is catered towards them. This implies using dedicated Google functionality, special SDKs, and so on, to comply with law. So your product needs to be designed in a very specific way to be eligible. I'm not aware of how Google Play restricts children from installing certain apps, but you can always install an app through a parental supervisor account.
To me, this story seems like a lot of crying over a situation that is not fully explained.
Error would be if they removed GMaps or Gmail from Play store, this is sabotage.
Play store is 99% some kind of scum, but they found open source app that community likes and is providing service comparable to their app. Yeah, right.
If they don't want us to call it sabotage, they should be extra careful about apps that are providing same service as them.
It's too bad that it's not available without anti-features in F-Droid. I disable all anti-features in Settings so intially I thought OrganicMaps is not in F-Droid until I checked the website.
Yeah... I wonder if it's the same story here - devs trying to interpret the rules in their own special way and Google putting their foot down.
EDIT: as far as I can tell they kept referral links in the Google Play version and still claim to have no ads or tracking.
I guess they're still lying.
I would describe it as software that is not 100% open source, and/or connects to services that run is not purely open source software connecting through standard protcols. It can't have a proprietary connection.
Basically, if both the software and the service do not run reprodible builds of the software, it is an anti-feature. For example, Proton, Telegram and NewPipe are open source apps, but the source code for their servers is not published so it's a proprietary connection or servers run proprietary software, so those apps have anti-features.
F-Droid promotes free and open software, this also includes freedom from proprietary network services, ads etc. Look here for a list:
https://f-droid.org/docs/Anti-Features/