Kongregate shocked by app removal

Kongregate CEO Jim Greer has declared he was shocked” by Google’s removal of his firm’s Kongregate Arcade app from the Android Marketplace.

The app allows consumers to play games from the GameStop-owned Flash games portal, but was pulled within hours of going live on Android, with Google claiming the marketplace would not be used to distribute another app store, according to Joystiq.

We were very surprised, especially since we had shown it to several people at Google in mobile,” said Greer. [It’s] a reasonable restriction. But to us, what’s really bizarre, to call [Kongregate Arcade] an ‘app store’ seems like a pretty extreme stretch.”

Instead, he describes the app as more akin to a web browser, offering access to mobile-formatted versions of Kongregate’s games.

We were just shocked,” he said. I’m not ready to say it’s a philosophical shift from Google; you could misinterpret our app and think those are all native experiences, but right now I’m just confused.”