As part of his continuing effort to get AppGratis returned to the App Store, AppGratis CEO Simon Dawlat has posted an online petition at save.appgratis.com. He is requesting AppGratis users to send an email to express support for the banned app.
Dawlat has made several efforts to reach out to Apple, beginning with a blog post asking for the Cupertino-based company to contact him. Last week, AllThingsD revealed that the removal was both permanent and the first phase of a more expansive crackdown on app discover services.
AppGratis has received criticism from some, with accusations of the app not being completely on the up and up. 148Apps has accused AppGratis of selling top 10 placement, and Conor O’Connor, CEO of hotel app Hot.co.uk has accused AppGratis of artificially inflating app download numbers via the use of bots.
In a statement to TechCrunch, Dawlat responded to the attacks, “We’re in in the business of helping the end users discover new apps, and to serve this mission, we’re playing the long run. We’re building a community. We’ve never been in the business of gaming the top charts or anything. This is a very strong statement from us.”
At the time of this article, AppGratis has thus far received more than 838,000 emails of support and more than 20,000 tweets.
UPDATE (04/17/2013) – We have been informed that Mr. O’Connor of Hot.co.uk has retracted his statement that AppGratis artificially inflated app download numbers via bots. VentureBeat has more information in a guest post from AppGratis’ Dawalt, and includes a link to the PDF scan of the official retraction/apology letter.
