So when QuickPic fans discovered that the app had been sold and re-published by Cheetah Mobile, they were, to put it mildly, pissed. They began flooding the app's Play Store page under the new developer "Cheetah Mobile Cloud (NYSE:CMCM)" with disparaging reviews almost immediately.
...
If you're unfamiliar with Cheetah Mobile, they're one of those developers that create the apps that you end up having to remove from your family members' phones at Thanksgiving when they ask why it sucks so much now. They've created dozens and dozens of apps across a handful of near-identical Play Store publisher names, all of which are free and dripping with adware. Many of the apps that they provide are duplicates of features already installed on your phone, like flashlights, keyboards, and browsers - they're basically making unnecessary versions of standard apps that inject advertising into your life at every opportunity.
They also publish apps that are more or less entirely useless, including multiple "virus scanners," "battery boosters," "game boosters," and the like.
In short, Cheetah Mobile is glossy corporate spam in mobile app form, the smartphone equivalent of a used car dealer who unironically calls himself Honest Joe. And now the company seems to want to buy its way into legitimacy with the purchase of a respected app. It's hard to blame the former developer Nanling Zheng AKA Q-Supreme, who created a quality app and then gave it away for free, for wanting (or needing) a payday. (The only monetization from the app, which still lists Q-Supreme as the developer in the About page, was a donate button.) But it's extremely disheartening to see a respected app fall into the hands of such a sleazy company, no matter what the circumstances.
