CyanogenMod installer pulled from Play Store

That didn’t last very long. It’s been roughly two weeks since CyanogenMod’s one-click installer landed on Google Play, making the alternative open-source distribution of Android much more accesible to novice users. But now Google has formally asked the developer to pull the software from its store, claiming it violates the Google Play developer terms by actively encouraging Android users to void the warranty on their devices.

CyanogenMod promptly complied -- not that they had much of a choice in the matter. Its short run on the official Android app storefront still helped with exposure and landed them "hundreds of thousands of installations”, according to the developer, and they’ll still offer the installer directly from the official CyanogenMod website. In that case users will first have to navigate to their device’s security settings and manually allow installation of apps from third party sources. This adds a short extra step to the process but the rest should be business as usual.

The app guides users to enable “ADB”, a built in development and debugging tool, and then navigates them to the desktop installer which performs the installation of the CyanogenMod on their Android device.

Whether they’ll be able to work their way back onto Google Play is unclear. Our friend Emil Protalinski at TheNextWeb dug around and believes the app was pulled over Google Play’s system interference clause, which dictates an app that makes changes to a device with a user's consent must be able to reverse those changes either within the app or by uninstalling it altogether. CyanogenMod doesn’t offer such an option.

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