Google declares war on junk apps in its Play Store

Google announced this week a dramatic policy change that is expected to change the face of the Play Store app store.

The purpose of the move: eliminating low-quality apps, improving the user experience and increasing safety. The company recently updated its "spam and minimal functionality" policy, with the aim of ensuring that the apps available in the store provide a high-quality and stable user experience. In this framework, apps that crash frequently, do not offer satisfactory content or are not useful will be removed from the store. While Google's Play Store has improved significantly in recent years, it still hasn't reached the quality level of Apple's App Store, which is known for its strict requirements from developers. Now, Google intends to close the gap with a significant policy update.

In particular, apps that contain only text, single wallpaper apps, apps that cannot be installed or loaded properly, and apps that are unresponsive are at high risk of violating the company's new policy. This is not Google's first attempt to improve the quality of apps in its store. In 2023, the company blocked approximately 2.28 million apps that violated its policies and compromised user security.

In addition, Google blocked 333,000 "bad" developer accounts due to repeated serious policy violations, as well as fraud and malware concerns. The update is expected to go into effect on August 31, 2024, and is part of Google's ongoing efforts to improve the quality of apps available in the Play Store, and create a more reliable and secure user experience for owners of Android devices.