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back to article Apple kicks China's most popular browser out of iTunes

Qihoo, maker of the most popular web browser in China, has had all of its products kicked out of iTunes, though it's far from clear which breach of the rules is responsible. The company's web browser, security suite and instant-messaging client have all disappeared from the Chinese iTunes store, leaving the company with with …

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  1. Sean Timarco Baggaley

    Apple's T's&C's explicitly include the option of banning...

    ... because they want to.

    They don't _have_ to give you a reason.

    (To be fair, similar clauses exist in other app stores too. It's a generic get-out clause for handling edge cases.)

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    1. LarsG
      Reply Icon

      NOT NECESSARY....

      TO have a reason, as with all the small print

      "we reserve the right to change....." Because they can,

      but everyone uses that, not just Apple.

      However,

      And it would help if they had the decency to explain the reasons why they reject what they do.

      They don't have to tell us about it, but they should tell those concerned.

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  2. Wang N Staines

    I suspect there will be a product from Apple that offers similar/same functionality coming soon.

    They have a track record of banning product they copied.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Probably

      That'll be the terms of service mentioned in the article. I suspect that there's something else though. There are other browsers available in the App Store. I'd imagine it's some kind of copy right and IP thing

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    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Or products that copied them?

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Qioo was found gaming the app store rankings repeatedly.

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    1. Silverburn
      Reply Icon

      Interesting...if true. Care to name your sources?

      2 0
  4. Crisp
    Flame

    Lousy T&C's

    What is the point of getting people to agree to Terms and Conditions that are so vague as to be useless?

    1 0
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      So you can treat them how you like, with no legal come-back?

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    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      As per the terms and conditions...because they can...

      If people were a little more switched on in the first place and never signed up to iTunes or started developing iOS apps at all then Apple wouldn't be able to do it because their empire would be small and they wouldn't be able to demand as much without losing their entire developer base (Like Nokia did after screwing symbian developers without even the courtesy of one last kiss) ...In 2012 with Apple being the most recognised technology brand in the world they are pretty much doing everything short of bioengineering flying monkeys to deliver each app you download and profit from it. We (the consumers and developers) have lost all control over the Apple machine and anywhere you can find a million devs to leave apple they will be able to find 10million who want to join in, regardless of the T&Cs.

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      1. the-it-slayer
        Reply Icon
        Mushroom

        Eh?

        Yes, you could lose 10-100 quality iOS programmers, but you'd find 1 million lousy ones to go in place who just programme fart apps. Only so many of those apps on the iTunes app store are of any worth.

        As we've seen, the movement of mobile dev shifted really quickly because Apple offered a very tastey deal with provide a free SDK and dev on a small join-up fee.

        Who says that another new OS system couldnt become the next big thing for devs and Apple will need to suck up in order to not lose the clever bunch not moving ship?

        0 1
  5. Anonymous Coward
    Mushroom

    360 is no better than malware

    For example. It ACTIVELY stopped from trying to remove infected files from my wifes PC, and blocked MALWAREBYTES, TREND HOUSECALL and SPYBOT from working correctly.

    There is NO option to unintall it.

    It INSTALLED itself without consent after downloading a product by another author to which the 360 loader file had been attached.

    It cannot be removed except in SAFE MODE.

    MANUALLY uninstalling in SAFE MODE it worked only until reboot, when secret back ups repaired the install.

    Making a note of those back ups and also deleting them prompted a SECOND set of secret back ups to download and install it from fresh.

    HIJACKTHIS detected a secret data stream located on a second hard drive containing more mysterious files, deleting this finally stopped it from reloading, but I suspect only a full format will ever restore the system to a full functionality.

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    1. The Man Who Fell To Earth Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Trollface

      Next Time

      Try Comodo Programs Manager.

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    2. Quxy
      Reply Icon
      Flame

      Complain all you like about the Cupertino Gestapo...

      ...but 360.cn is pretty obviously spyware. Just turn on Wireshark and start watching the high volume of HTTP POST beacon requests to 360.cn and gov.cn addresses.

      If this was all it did, you might be able to simply block traffic to certain domains. But the fact that it's impossible to remove without reformatting the drive containing the OS -- worse than QQ and PPstream, in fact -- moves it from simply annoying to positively evil.

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      1. dssf
        Reply Icon

        QQ??

        Please tell more? I see QQ in people's contact info, but never used QQ. I also avoid using YIM and Skype, too. Don't have msn, and will not if I can avoid it. Kakao sucked down all my contacts and even showed me people I thought I'd left behind in my life, really pissing me off that google and sprint and htc do NOT provide us a vault to permit only CERTAIN, well-deliberated contacts to be reached into by some particular piece of software.

        So, how bad is QQ?

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    3. Paul Crawford Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Mushroom

      @Ian Emery

      The only safe option is to nuke it from orbit.

      Really, I mean this. In OS terms - use a boot CD to either run another system with AV software (such as the BitDefender rescue CD) or re-install windows from your own CD. Any advanced malware will stop other AV and if root-kit like will be virtually undetectable as well.

      You might have to get a bootable Linux CD or USB strik first if your machine is so shagged it cant get the BitDefender iso and burn it to a CD without corruption/interference.

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    4. Paul 129
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      Devil

      Cute

      I think we've all long since thought that AV can be worse than the viruses its supposed to protect us from. Black helicopter spotters have even suggested that the AV industry might even be responsible for viruses.

      Now someone has legitimised their virus as an Antivirus product!

      Full points!

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  6. scarshapedstar
    Thumb Up

    No reason needed

    They were probably trying to bring their own special brand of scareware/spyware/outright malware to iOS.

    2 1
  7. Manu T

    Perhaps Apple is right to do this.

    From reading the article about that particular chinese product. It behaves quite a lot like malware. Has anyone ever thought that Apple is doing the right thing to ban this kind of malware onto ppl's iOS devices? From what's written here I definitely wouldn't want those kind of chinese crap on my +700 euro cellphone.

    In fact isn't it about time we leave the chinese to to their own stuff. If they want to use spyware as their 'most popular browser' then let them but keep that crap out of here.

    SO I'd say. Good job Apple. At least someone is monitor the software on their market.

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  8. Spotswood
    Thumb Up

    Agreed

    Apple are the only ones monitoring this market and whilst their moves are at times questionable, I think we can all agree they've done the right thing here. I would be livid if that crap wound up on my phone.

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