Recently Apple took a controversial decision of removing HKmap.live from the app store after receiving tons of complaints from local authorities. Currently, the political situation in Hong Kong is not good since many people are protesting against the current regime. Protests are becoming violent, and that’s why they have found to be attacking Chinese police officers by using hong kong-based map apps also. Now, after seeing this fact, local government authorities quickly requested Apple to remove such from the app store.

After such a controversial decision, Apple became a topic of discussion among netizens. Still, Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple defends tech giant company’s decision and says they followed the required rules to maintain peace in the region needed. Cook wrote a memo in which he said that the company received credible information that this app was getting used to target individual officers in the city. Tim also mentioned that fact that many people have criticised their move, but they had to take it.

The protest in Hong Kong against China is getting quite media attention in the west, and many big tech companies are now getting afraid of taking any actions. Protesters used Hkmap.live; Apple decided to stick with their moral values even though such things takes the company into controversy. Recently Apple removed Taiwan flag emoji from iPhones which were creating some problematic situations for China. Google, on the other hand, said that HKmap.live is still on the playstore and it will be a matter of a few days that it will get removed from play store also. Tech companies have a significant market abuse in China, and they don’t want to ruin it by not complying with their internal rules. Tim smartly defended the actions of Apple and avoided answering more controversial questions.