Popular Weather Timeline app for Android pulled from Google Play due to rising API costs

Ben Schoon | Sep 17 2018 - 1:55 pm PT

It’s pretty amazing what clever developers can do with apps on Android, but sometimes their aspirations don’t always work out. This week, the popular app Weather Timeline has been pulled from Google Play…

In a statement released today, the developer behind Weather Timeline and other popular apps such as the Twitter client Flamingo (which is also dead) explains why the app has been pulled from Google Play. Apparently, rising API costs and decreasing revenue contributed to the app being shut down a few years after its debut.

The award-winning app was a great example of Google’s Material Design standards and proved popular among enthusiasts. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to save it.

As downloads dwindle, if the app was not unpublished now then it would get to a point where I’d have to introduce an in-app subscription or the app would break for new users who had just downloaded the app. That didn’t seem fair so I unpublished it now so that everyone could enjoy the app. I did the same with Flamingo where I unpublished it slightly before it hit the token limit so existing users could add their extra accounts.

Speaking to Android Police, the developer of Weather Timeline explained that he considered switching the app to a subscription model to keep it afloat, but feared it would upset customers. That’s certainly disappointing, but considering that other apps such as Dark Sky rely on similar methods of revenue, it shouldn’t be a surprise.

Weather Timeline isn’t going away for users who already purchased it, though. The app will continue to work “for the foreseeable future” and will still be available for download on new phones. However, if you never purchased the app, it’s no longer available for purchase on Google Play.

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