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Android App Removals Cast Doubt on Google's 'Openness'

Google’s pitch for the Android mobile platform rests on a single, oft-repeated word: “Open.” But to some Android developers, the search giant’s recent practices at its app store have been anything but open.

The company recently suspended the accounts of two high-profile programmers without reason or warning, removing all their published apps from the Android Market and effectively slashing a large part of their livelihoods.

“My income was cut in half,” mobile application developer ZodTTD (his web handle) told Wired.com. “But I feel that as a developer, not being able to use the Android Market or Checkout [Google’s payments system], that digs much deeper for me.”

The offending apps were emulation software for playing console games from different systems, such as PlayStation and Super Nintendo. Not coincidentally, Google pulled these apps at the same time Sony released a PlayStation phone in late May .

The removal of these apps is a sign that Google’s “open” regime is gradually crumbling, as the Android platform becomes more commercialized and entangled in corporate partnerships. Combine this episode with Google’s lockdown of source code for Android’s Honeycomb tablet operating system, and it’s no wonder why programmers and technology journalists have begun challenging Android’s claims of being open .

Android debuted in the fall of 2008 as the self-proclaimed “open” alternative to Apple’s closed iOS platform. In the name of openness, developers flocked to the platform in droves, and the Android Market ballooned in less than three years. Now host to more than 200,000 applications, Google’s app store is Apple’s only serious app-ecosystem competitor. Apple’s App Store now offers about 400,000 apps.

The word open speaks directly to the hacker ethos — open source software is made to be shared, pored over and freely distributed. Open networks were made to be entered, explored and (occasionally) exploited. Open markets, self-governed. For better or for worse, it’s pure libertarianism at its finest.