Google Pulls Visual Voicemail App Following T-Mobile Complaint

Posted 12/08/2011 at 3:56pm | by Ryan Whitwam

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It’s the nightmare of any developer. Some esoteric element of a developer agreement results in an app being yanked. The only difference this time is that it’s not Apple’s App Store that’s taking a hard line with a dev, but Google’s Android Market. The developers of the popular visual voicemail app YouMail were shocked when Google informed them yesterday that a complaint from T-Mobile resulted in the de-listing of the app. Yikes.

According to the email notification, YouMail was pulled because it was found to be “harmful to devices, networks or users.” T-Mobile apparently complained to El Goog that YouMail was causing network disruption. The folks at YouMail were perplexed at this, considering they have handled over 1 billion calls and no one has yet to complain. Some regional carriers even use the YouMail app as the official voicemail service.

Google chose not to just block T-Mobile users from the app, but to remove it completely. The developers are understandably upset, “We’ve produced an innovative and dramatically better voicemail product than they offer,” the YouMail blog said, speculating on T-Mobile’s motives. Do you think Google should restore the app?