Google has been having to deal with viruses being distributed from their Android Market and the damage to their reputation as a result. Since this is open source for the OS, it does present some challenges which must be dealt with. It is reported that on March 5th, they were able to remove from Android 2.1 and earlier mobile devices the 58 identified malware apps which have been downloaded. This is great news for those phone owners.
This does raise some questions though. Do you remember back last year when Amazon did this and the huge uproar that resulted when they remotely removed books which people had downloaded and were attaching notes to, some for academic reasons. This action did not result in many causing concern for Google taking back something that owners had downloaded.
It gets down to the intent and in the case of Google, it was design to remove something which could have cost the mobile owners money. Do you agree with Google remotely removing these from the Android mobiles phones?