Why Was PhoneFusion Pulled from the Android Market?

Late last week, news broke that PhoneFusion’s Visual Voicemail app had been pulled from the Android Market by Google. Speculation has swirled since then about the reason why, but no explanation seemed to quite ring true. The extent of Google’s official statement is that “we remove applications from Android Market that violate our terms of service.”

However, after speaking with people with knowledge of the matter, we can rule a couple of speculative explanations out and take a stab at what’s likely the case. We’ll also see how Google could have avoided a lot of distress and bad press by handling the situation differently.

First, it’s important to note that PhoneFusion’s app is no newcomer; launching in November, 2008, it’s among the first apps Android users were able to install on their G1s. In their time in the Android Market, they amassed around 1,000,000 users. They even had been featured by Google on the old Android Market website, when it just highlighted a few featured apps in each category. In fact, Jonathan Hollander, PhoneFusion’s EVP and co-founder, noted that letting PhoneFusion know they were being featured was the only time Google had contacted them before this incident

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