Android full of scams! More than a million apps have been banned from Google Play

Google Play, like Apple's App Store, is one of the world's largest mobile app stores, which are understandably not just for phones. If we stick to Android, this operating system also runs tablets, smart watches or even smart TVs.

Google Play is changing

This was the reason why Google decided to make a major change last September. In a nutshell, it was that the Google Play store started displaying user ratings and reviews depending on what device they were currently using.

And it’s actually logical – if, for example, an app is poorly optimized for a tablet and runs fine on a phone, it doesn’t make sense to show negative reactions to phone users. This makes the desired benefit clear and obvious. Developers get more accurate feedback.

Low-quality apps have a stop sign

Another thing Google has to deal with (again) is all sorts of, usually pretty crappy, apps that actually do more harm than good. They’re not infected, don’t worry. They just don’t conform to Google’s latest policies, aren’t regularly updated by developers, have mostly utterly trivial optimization, etc.

The American brand has been trying to promote quality apps while showing the low-quality ones as little as possible in Google Play for several years now. The principle is simple. The reliable and proven ones appear highest in searches while those with lower ratings appear at the tail.

Google has done a giant purge

With the number of dud apps growing exponentially every year, Google has decided to put a stop to this.

Android Police reports that more than one million apps got banned from Google Play last year alone. In terms of numbers, that’s 1.43 million. That’s exactly how many were stopped because they didn’t meet the company’s latest criteria and policies or misled users.

In this context, Google also blocked 173,000 fake accounts and prevented up to $2 billion in fraudulent transactions. The US company also added that it has also increased its focus on apps that abuse permissions that they do not absolutely need to operate. These include those that want access to your phone, gallery and other data without it having anything to do with their focus.