I saw in the news a few days back that Google was going to do this, and based on a post in Venturebeat I guess they pulled the trigger.  Google is now blocking Android tethering apps from the Store. Well not blocking per se. From VB – “You can still see it in the Android store, its just greyed out when you try to download it. T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon subscribers that attempt to download a tethering apps are met with a gray, disabled link and a prompt that reads ‘This item is not available on your carrier’ “.  FAIL.

The work around is to ROOT your phone or put it in airplane mode and download it that way. You can also root your phone and install it.  If you are not in the U.S., then don’t worry about it, you should be fine.  Some posted the direct link to download the .apk if you are so inclined. http://code.google.com/p/android-wifi-tether/downloads/detail?name=wireless_tether_2_0_2.apk

 

I already have PDANet on my Droid so I’m already grandfathered in, but still.  What a pain!  As I’ve written before, one of the main reasons I jailbroke my iphone is to be able to tether, and I’m NOT going to pay extra for it.  That is a clear case of carriers trying to bleed extra money our of us because they can.  And dont give me (its too much load on the system) excuse. You are already addressing this by putting caps on (which does make some sense) but a data bit is a data bit.  Regardless of what that bit is used for. Course, this not the first time we have heard of this.  Remember AT&T’s threatening letters it sent out to people with tethering apps installed?