Over the weekend, Samsung announced that they would be updating its bundled browser with ad blocking support. Note that Samsung won’t actually be blocking ads themselves, but rather they are offering up support for plugins and third-party apps to do it, kind of like how Safari on iOS is dealing with ad blockers.One of the apps that was announced at that time was Adblock Fast, but it seems that Google was not a fan of the app and has since pulled it from the Google Play Store. According to an email that the developers received, “I reviewed Adblock Fast, com.rocketshipapps.adblockfast, and found that it violates section 4.4 of the Developer Distribution Agreement. This particular app has been disabled as a policy strike.”
So what is section 4.4? Basically it says that apps can’t “interferes with, disrupts, damages, or accesses in an unauthorized manner the devices, servers, networks, or other properties or services of any third party including, but not limited to, Android users, Google or any mobile network operator.” We suppose technically it does disrupt websites by removing ads, but this is based on an official Samsung API and sanctioned by Samsung.
In a statement provided by Google, “While we don’t comment on specific apps, we can confirm that our policies are designed to provide a great experience for users and developers.” No word on whether the developers will find a way around this, or if Samsung might get involved, but for now it looks like if you missed out on download Adblock Fast, you’re out of luck (or you’ll have to find its APK from elsewhere).
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