In all honesty, as a developer, it's things like this that make me pretty frickin' miffed. I mean, sure, Niantic's pulling moves that are kindof deserving of people to use other methods to find pokemon, if that makes sense. If a company is blatantly ripping people off, then do whatever you want, I don't care.
And yes, while I'm pissed about the lack of tracking and communication, we also have to keep in mind that the game's still in development and is going to be buggy. Even with the 3step bug, I was fine. Annoyed by it, but fine. When they removed the tracking altogether, that's when everything just kinda got tossed out the window. But that's still no reason to cheat. Now if they're going out of their way to be asshats, then sure.
I don't know. I had such high hopes for this game. I'm trying to hold onto that, trying to hope Niantic will get their act together and fix this stuff.
But I've also gotta keep in mind that they're not that big of a team, and that their app's popularity is utterly massive. So, with any hope here, their office is probably on fire right now, as they try to get everything situated.