Kongregate ban from Android Market "bizarre"

More details have emerged about Google's surprise barring of Kongregate Arcade from its Android Market.

The GameStop-owned app acted as a hub for free Flash games hosted on Kongregate.com, but was removed from the Android Market mere hours after release "for unknown reasons."

Kongregate boss CEO Jim Greer has since told Joystiq that Arcade was pulled because "they claim you can't use their app store to distribute another app store - which is a reasonable restriction.

"But to us, what's really bizarre, to call [Kongregate Arcade] an 'app store' seems like a pretty extreme stretch."

Greer claimed that the app had been shown to a number of Google representatives prior to release, who had responded very positively, "but they weren't the decision makers, unfortunately."

Drawing attention to the number of dubious applications on the Market, including "Game Boy ROMs and things like that", Greer claimed that "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."

Arcade was, he maintained, "playing content in a browser" rather than acting as an App Store. It is possible Google has become more sensitive to the concept of any potential Market rival, due to a recent announcement from Amazon that it would release its own alternative Android app store.

Google allows alternative stores to be installed on Android devices, but not via Market. Arcade thus remains available for manual install from Kongregate.