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Over the weekend, Google removed Kaspersky's Android security apps from the Google Play store and disabled the Russian company's developer accounts.
Users have been reporting over the last week that Kaspersky's products (including Kaspersky Endpoint Security and VPN & Antivirus by Kaspersky) are no longer available on Google Play in the United States and other world regions.
Kaspersky confirmed the issue on the company's official forums on Sunday and said that it's currently investigating why its software is no longer available on Google's app store.
I’m confused: Kaspersky just finished transferring its endpoint security software in these regions to a different company’s product via a software update. Kaspersky has sent messages out to customers saying that they are leaving this marketplace.
Given this context, I can see no reason why Google would leave their Android product available when they’re not technically allowed to sell it and Kaspersky has said that they won’t be selling it into these markets going forward. It does, of course, prevent Kaspersky from pulling another bait and switch and “updating” mobile devices to a third party product. That would be the reason for locking out the developer accounts.
Google has removed it across all regions. My play store is set to India, and they pulled it here as well. That's something of a global coup.
That’s really interesting. I wonder if it’s due to Google being a US company?
Yeah but that doesn't mean they need to enforce US laws in other jurisdictions where it means fuck all.
Actually, it may. The US has some odd laws where US companies have to enforce US restrictions globally. However, it wasn’t my understanding that Kaspersky was on any of the lists that would have resulted in this. Possibly it boils down to a Google ToS violation?
I’m sure we’ll be hearing more details this week.