[syntheticnature]

I had a Google Play app whose dev died. It was just a simple local app -- no network server usage. When I last upgraded my phone (due to imminent failure of the previous one) it refused to copy the app over -- and the app was no longer in the Play store.

[fencepost]

I still have the APK for one called "Backitude" and have kept migrating it for years since the disappearance of the developer.

It's nothing special, just a location tracker that logs to a file every so often based on time and/or distance moved (could also ping a URL with encoded location info instead). Basically the underlying data for location history without relying on Google. Its notable feature years ago was that it would do location 'steals' - instead of just triggering a then-expensive location check, it would grab the most current available location info as triggered by some other application and only force an update if that information was too old.

[kyleee]

More evidence of the sad state of general purpose computing

[genewitch]

a more distant example is VLC on apple devices. I don't remember what happened anymore and any guesses would be speculation, but at one point on iphones you could not get VLC unless you had already gotten VLC.