They removed it simply to break parity with downloaded versions of the game. It was on the day that Agora was supposed to be played that the two diverged forever and locked you into playing on NYT if you wanted to play the same puzzle with all your family and friends.
And it made the NYT version a two-days-ahead spoiler for any clones of the original, which was quite effective at getting whole groups of people to move instead of using clones.