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I know this might be slightly offtopic but believe me, it is heavily frustrating to live in a country which is not among those that were "chosen" by the big G. The usual scenario goes like: you read on an Android Blog / Twitter / etc the breaking news about a cool new app or the latest awesome game. Whoohoo! You click the link, scan the barcode and your phone tells you it can't find the app in the Market. Booo! I don't really understand why the limitations are there but they're massively frustrating. And some of the limitations are downright stupid: why can't I find Google Earth in the market!? It's free, made by Google and can be interesting wherever you are. But no, they decided I don't need it.

This is why I'm asking for the most popular online petitions about this. I guarantee I'll sign / favorite / star them all. :)

Yes, I know there are workarounds like MyMarket and using foreign prepaid SIMs for payed apps, but these are way too technical for the average user and I'd prefer I Google would get their heads out of their bottoms and did this correctly. Do no evil? Well, geotarding is evil and creates lots of frustration.

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Not relevant to your main point, so only adding this as a comment. Regarding Google Earth what version of Android are you running? You might be seeing this problem android.stackexchange.com/questions/1375/… – GAThrawn Oct 4 '10 at 23:52
@GAThrawn: Nope, that wasn't it. I have a Galaxy S with Eclair (2.1). I've installed Market Enabler, downloaded and installed the app without any problems. It was killing my device though, so maybe that's why it was disabled in the market. Don't know. Frustrating anyway. – kitsched Oct 11 '10 at 12:31
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closed as not constructive by Al Everett Sep 8 '11 at 13:52

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3 Answers

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Releasing applications world wide means they have to have a 'legal' council in each country that would check whether their applications are 'legal' in those countries.

This costs a lot of money. Their are enough work arounds available to not be bothered too much by the 'geotarding'

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I will have to strongly disagree with you on this. If Apple can do it why can't Google? Lack of (financial) resources? I don't think so. Besides, less experienced users won't be looking for workarounds if their market will show them an error, they will conclude that the phone is broken. And this hurts the Android platform as a whole. – kitsched Sep 18 '10 at 11:04
@kitsched: The best Google could do, is to give reasons why the application is not available in the country, if they or the application developer decided that the app distribution is to be limited to certain countries. At most, this will alleviate the blame to the government. – Lie Ryan Oct 20 '10 at 3:57
I've noticed some free add supported version of applications not released where I live. It really 'other word for is bad' – Barfieldmv Oct 20 '10 at 12:57
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up vote 1 down vote

It would be nice if there is one unified marketplace. But there are many factors why we have many app marketplaces, and more are popping up. See http://www.digi-go.com/android/index.html The reason behind all these, IMHO, is everyone wants to control they store front to their customers. Carriers what to control it. So instead of working with Google, they would rather start their own, as the cost of running an app store, as I understand, is quite low as long as you get enough buy/sell going. I believe Apple gave a big chunk of revenue in exchange for access with all these carriers. Google is still negotiating. Apple App Store does not cover all countries either, I believe only 90 countries have access to Apple store.

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up vote 0 down vote

Are there petitions out there? Yes. Try http://www.thepetitionsite.com/ http://www.petitionspot.com/ http://www.petitiononline.com/

There are a number of factors at play to determine which apps are available to you. First, you may not live in an area where Android Market paid apps are permitted. You may be on a carrier that has completely blocked the Android Market. You may be on a carrier that has significantly restricted the apps available in the market. You may be using a handset that is not compatible with some apps on the market (either based on hardware or firmware). You may live in a region where certain apps are forbidden for legal reasons.

Personally, I would petition against a unified, same result for all app store as it would be a least common denominator app store by design. I like the diversity in that I can load apps from a variety of locations. Worst case scenario would be if some country required strict censorship rules (such as the ability to monitor all app traffic) and due to the unified market, all apps had to behave this way.

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