News: Fake Siri for Android gets approved and later removed !

Apple’s voice controlled assistant Siri has been growing in popularity day by day and some developers of Android and Windows Phone are quite eager to capitalize on it and are outing apps which try to mimic the looks or features of the Apple’s popular voice recognition software, some create for the fun of it although Apple’s team has acted quite sternly on such developers. On December 28,2011, an app developer successfully submitted an “official” Siri for Android app in the Android Market and yes, it did actually get listed. But Google acted soon and the app has now been removed from the Market. The developer even used the Apple’s icon for the app. The popular name of the app plus the developers name was enough to get over 1000 installations of the app over Android devices. Although Google swiftly acted and removed the app (infact all the apps by the developer) but it shows how easy it is to get an app approved in the Android. We hope Google introduces a proper checking and approving mechanism for apps – perhaps take a cue from Apple, also sad to see all the apps by developer removed, where as they should have rejected the Fake Siri app in the first place.