It"s been a wild few days in the world of privacy. Two days ago, it was found that Facebook was paying people as young as 13 years old to run an app on their phone that essentially recorded everything that they did. Apple ended up suspending Facebook"s enterprise developer certificate, shutting down apps that were distributed internally.
And now, the same thing is happening to Google. Just yesterday, it was found that Google had a similar program in place to Facebook"s, and Apple is now taking away Google"s developer certificate.
Of course, this doesn"t affect the end user; you can still download Google"s apps in the App Store. What"s changed is that Google can"t distribute unreleased versions of its iOS apps internally for testing, and the ones that have already been distributed will stop working. The inability to test apps can bring development to a halt.
But as The Verge notes, companies aren"t allowed to distribute apps to consumers by means of an enterprise certificate. This would sidestep the approval process of the App Store. Presumably, both Facebook and Google will get their developer certificates back at some point, although it"s not clear when.