At the same time, it drives me nuts to see these kinds of flaws in the system. People get invested in a platform, and then one day that platform kicks you in the nuts, and slams the door as you fall out on the pavement.
But the ad and in-app revenue streams mentioned in the article suggest that they have also been active in other fields. In-app purchases that still go on after account termination might be a hint in the right direction though: would IAPs via Play still be going on? External ("untaxed") IAPs are the biggest sin from the app-store's point of view. External purchases are allowed to be handled externally (e.g. paying for physical goods in the Amazon app), but definitions are not always clear and then it's all arbitrary judge-and-executioner.
Remember that one which told you which platform your train at eg Penn Station was likely to come in on, so you could wait on your track instead of in the designated waiting area? To put it in clickbait terms, "station operators HATE this", because there are a variety of safety and efficiency problens with people waiting on the platform, even when it helped the user be the first on the train.
(I have no idea what is going on in this case.)
The waiting area is on top of the escalators at Penn as well, but since you don't know which track you need to wait for, it is always a mad dash down the corridor for your train once the track number has been posted. This is made even worse by the fact that by the time the track number appears, there is only 3-5 minutes before departure of the train, so there is a sense of urgency required to get to the right place before the train leaves.
It is pretty terrible, but so is everything else about Penn.
Your point, to me, is just another indication of how transparency is a win.
https://web.archive.org/web/20170428152946/https://play.goog...
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:lx9Xke...
At first glance doesn't seem to be scummy, but you never know.
I would guess they supplement their own app income with contracting.