iA announced that it will no longer develop the Android version of its iA Writer focused writing app because of Google policy changes. (iA Writer is one of my favorite Markdown apps.)
"A couple of months ago, Google changed its API policy and revoked iA Writer's access to Google Drive on Android," the company explains. "By freezing up Android's main storage option, our app was frozen in carbonite. It still lived, but we couldn't move forward before resolving it."
What follows is a long story, but the short version is that Google kept moving the goal posts on iA: It repeatedly changed the requirements iA had to meet, told the company that it's app would only get read-only access to Google Drive-when a document creation app obviously needs write privileges-and then changed the rules again when iA complained.
"In order to get our users full access to their Google Drive on their devices, we now needed to pass a yearly CASA (Cloud Application Security Assessment) audit," the company continues. "This requires hiring a third-party vendor like KPMG." According to iA, the cost of this audit, combined with the cost it incurred trying to update the app, would amount to one or two months of revenues. Not the app's revenues, the entire company's revenues. And this would be a recurring, annual expense.
iA Writer has been available on Android for seven years-there are versions for Mac, Windows, iPhone, and iPad as well-and it has tens of thousands of users on Google's mobile platform. But this issue over Google Drive was just the latest in a long series of problems iA has experienced with Google, including a much higher rate of piracy than it sees on any other platform. Some of the examples iA provides are incredible, including the sheer number of devices it needs to purchase to ensure its app works properly everywhere.
"Developing for Android, you navigate an asteroid field," iA explains. "Bugs surface across thousands of device types, Android versions, and flavors -- One UI, MIUI, OxygenOS, Pixel Experience, you name it. And before anyone says this is the price of an 'open' OS -- well, we don't have this problem on Windows. Each flavor of Android brings its own quirks. Even if we buy the troublemaking devices, the issue often turns out to be a problem with a specific subflavor or software version that's impossible to reproduce. It's like playing Whack-a-Mole, and the moles just keep multiplying."
Ultimately, iA came to the obvious conclusion: It just doesn't make sense to continue developing and supporting its app for a platform on which almost no one pays for it, piracy is rampant, and the platform maker keeps imposing expensive, additional rules, taking away its control of its own app. If regulators force changes on Google that change how Android works, it may return. But for now, iA Writer for Android is "frozen in Carbonite" and will not be updated along with the other versions of the app.
As a fan of iA Writer, I am excited to discover that the company will soon deliver a major Windows 11 update. That's fantastic: I love the app, but it's lackluster on Windows, especially when compared to the Mac. But I'm surprised to discover how terrible Android has been for the company.