While this isn’t quite on the level of Amazon’s 1984 nonsense, Google did just demonstrate their willingness to remotely detonate apps they deem malicious. In this case, it was a couple dummy apps put up by a researcher — probably trying to figure out why people download what they download. At any rate, he took them off the market after a while, and the Android security team decided to nuke the remaining installs.

I’m not calling attention to this out of disapproval, though. It’s part of the terms of service and these weren’t books people had paid for, like in the Amazon situation. But it’s good to know that the capability is there, for good or ill, and someone does have their finger on the button. That’s likely to be the case with almost any service provider from now on, so get used to it.

[via The Register]