Google TV’s new free streaming app has been removed, and it won’t be back right away

What’s got a Google TV and can’t access the Freeplay app any more? The answer, it seems, is everybody.

Freeplay – not to be confused with the UK’s Freeview Play – is Google’s free TV app for US users, delivering FAST (Free Ad-Supported TV) channels. The latest version of the Freeplay app began rolling out in September, but as 9to5Google spotted last week it had disappeared from some users’ TVs.

It turns out that the issue isn’t an isolated one; Google is temporarily pulling the app for almost all users.

Where has the Freeplay app gone?

In a statement to 9to5Google, Google explained that it was recalling the app from all “affected devices” because of a crashing issue; the Google TV Streamer doesn’t appear to be one of the affected devices but Google TVs are.

Google says:

While rolling out the new Google TV Freeplay guide, we discovered an issue that can increase crashes for some users. We have disabled access to the new guide on affected devices until the fix is in place. The fix will begin rolling out soon, and the updated guide will be available for all Google TV devices in the coming months.

By “all Google TV devices” Google means US ones; there are no plans as yet to make Freeplay available outside the US.

Pulling the app is disappointing, because it’s really rather good. But if the crashing is serious and frequent enough to make Google pull the app altogether it’s clearly more serious than the odd system hang. And you still have access to your free channels, so at least you’re not losing those too.