There was once a time when mobile apps and services like Allthecooks were independent and would stand on their own two feet. Of course, that was quite some time ago, and now these services and apps are very much lucrative businesses, attracting ad revenue and such as more and more users join the fold and share things with others online. Recipes have always been something that just “clicked” with the Internet and communities of foodies have been getting their fill online for years. On Android, one of the best representations of that was the Allthecooks app, but that doesn’t seem to be the case any longer.
Back in 2013, Allthecooks was bought by Japan’s Cookpad, but for a long time it was business as usual for the Android app. Until today. According to a blog post by Allthecooks, the merger of the two companies is now complete, and that means a fresh new app for Android. By “fresh” and “new” we must mean “cut-back” and “restrictive” because the new Android app is certainly not a like-for-like replacement of the old one. The Play Store listing is basically littered with nothing but angry, lengthy one-star reviews. Users aren’t happy, and it seems as though the developers are only interested in letting authors know that for them it’s business as usual, as that seems to be the only people they’ve replied to in the Play Store.
The Cookpad app is pretty lean compared to what was there before in the Allthecooks app. Finding a recipe is now harder as a number of neat search options have been removed from the app altogether. New apps like these will obviously go through some teething problems, but there’s no telling when the team will be introducing something new or blindly going forward with their new approach with Cookpad. Nevertheless, the new app is here to stay as of now, and for those that haven’t got it, they can get it from the Play Store. Having said that, it’s probably a good idea to start looking elsewhere.