A couple of days ago, Samsung confirmed that it had added content and ad blocking features into its stock Web browsing app. Turns out, Google wasn’t a fan of that. According to a report from The Next Web, Google has pulled the app that was highlighted along with Samsung’s announcement. The app is called AdBlock Fast, and the company behind it was Samsung’s launch partner for the new set of APIs baked into its stock browser. After the update was released for Samsung’s app, AdBlock Fast saw tends of thousands of downloads, before Google pulled it from the Play Store. According to the developers of the app, they received an email from Google that said their app violated Section 4.4 of the Developer Distribution Agreement. As such, AdBlock Fast has been removed for a “policy strike.” As for how the section reads, this is what Section 4.4 of the DDA says an app can’t do: It’s an interesting result, considering that AdBlock Fast didn’t technically do this, as it was utilizing official Samsung-released API within Samsung’s app. Of course, the ad blocking software does “disrupt” pages as they load, as it removes the ads therein, so it could be this one element that Google took exception with. For what it’s worth, Adblock Plus, which uses the same Samsung API, is still available in the Play Store.
