Microsoft removes some Web Apps from the Windows Phone store while coming to its defense

In recent days Microsoft has been publishing a series of applications in the North American Windows Phone Store under the name of Web Apps These are not they were well-known websites packaged as Windows Phone apps and offered for free by the store team. The move was not without risks and some have ended up becoming a reality.

The first of the possible problems of these Web Apps was the degree of agreement of the owners of the websites converted into Windows Phone applications.And it seems that some have not liked it as much as they expected in Redmond. Without going any further, one of them, Southwest Airlines, has confirmed to Neowin that requested Microsoft to withdraw the application

Southwest Airlines was followed soon after by Cars.com and Atari Arcade. In these last two cases, it is still not clear if the withdrawal responds to similar complaints by the respective owners of each of the websites or for other reasons unknown at the moment.

Microsoft tries to defend itself

Microsoft has not been slow to step up and in similar communications sent to different North American media they have tried to defend their Web Apps as a fully transparent move that many website owners could welcome:

Although the latter is true and Microsoft never seems to have wanted to hide that these applications were nothing more than the websites of the different companies, from Redmond they do not clarify whether or not they had been notified in advance. In view of the response from some of them, it seems that this has not been the case and one finds it difficult to find Microsoft's reasons for acting on its own.

I'm not going to say that it was coming, but it was that it was coming. Still not trying to supplant at any time the companies that own the different websites, Web Apps did not stop using brands and content owned by them The minimum required would have been to have their explicit approval earlier. In this case, Microsoft seems to have misjudged the scope of its actions.

Via | Neowin | The Next Web