Table of Contents
Key Takeaways
- iA Author, well-liked throughout many platforms, was taken offline from the Play Retailer as a result of Google’s API entry restrictions.
- Google’s new audit requirement led iA Author builders to take away the app from the Play Retailer.
- Regardless of Google’s crackdown on low-effort apps, iA Author’s emphasis on the consumer expertise didn’t shield it from being eliminated.
In all of Android Police’s years of overlaying the Android world, we’ve seen simply how troublesome it may be for unbiased builders to create, preserve and replace some nice apps in digital marketplaces. Clearly, there’s no greater digital app retailer than Google Play, which has been the default app market on Android gadgets because it launched in 2008. With its pre-installed nature comes multitudes of issues for Google, nonetheless, because it was discovered responsible of illegally monopolizing the Play Retailer final 12 months within the Epic v. Google verdict. With all that being mentioned, Google doesn’t all the time make it straightforward or play good with its app builders, and that has not too long ago triggered the creator of a preferred writing app to take it offline.
iA Author is an especially well-liked markdown modifying app obtainable throughout many alternative platforms, corresponding to Home windows PCs, iOS gadgets, and Android smartphones. For years, it has used an integration with Google Drive and Google Docs to make workflows simpler for those that primarily use that ecosystem. Nonetheless, iA Author’s API entry to Drive on Android was revoked “a few months in the past,” and after steady irritating conversations with Google, the event staff has determined to take away the app from the Play Retailer (by way of Daring Fireball). As of right this moment, nobody can obtain the app that hasn’t already, because it has been faraway from the storefront. Present customers will retain their entry.
iA Author’s battles with Google
It’s a disgrace that iA Author has now been taken offline from Play Retailer servers. The ultimate straw is alleged to have been Google’s new requirement for iA Author to go a yearly Cloud Software Safety Evaluation audit. This is able to have necessitated the hiring of a third-party audit vendor like KPMG, and it will have price “about one to 2 months of income” for iA Author’s builders. 5 years in the past, Google cracked down on app entry to Drive recordsdata within the title of consumer privateness. The crackdown has continued.
iA Author has plenty of strengths, corresponding to its skill to trace what you wrote and what you copied and pasted from different sources. It places plenty of emphasis on sustaining authorship, and it permits you to hyperlink notes from different websites and functions, deal with particular person sentences you’re typing, and extra. Whereas Google started cracking down on low-effort Play Retailer apps in August, iA Author was definitely not one in every of them.