Google pulls 60k apps from the Play Store in February, surely more to Follow

The Play Store is an insane mix ofÂ wondrousÂ and useful apps right along side terrible and intrusive annoyances. Poorly written apps, apps that cause device issues, apps that hinder the experience and just down right hijack your device are all things that can give Android a bad name. Unlike the competitions app stores, Google keeps a fairly hands off approach to what gets published and what is accessible. That can be a good thing and a bad thing all at the same time. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t keeping an eye on things.

Back in February Google started doing some spring cleaning. Quantity isn’t as good as quality. During the course of the month they removed over 60,000 apps from the Play Store that they felt violated one of their rules,Â guidelinesÂ or were deemed as spam. According to a summary of apps that were deleted, quite a few fell into the ringtone and MP3 category. Many of which offered up copyrighted music for free or were ad riddled applications that kept you in a loop of clicks. I fell victim to one such app, it wasn’t music related though. When opened it asked for a 5 star rating and completion of a special offer to use the app. Of course I closed it, cleared it and removed it. Sadly though, there are enough people out there that go through the steps and find themselves in quite the pickle.

Developers are important partners in maintaining a great user experience on Google Play.

Do not post repetitive content.
Product descriptions should not be misleading or loaded with keywords in an attempt to manipulate ranking or relevancy in the Store’s search results.
Developers also should not attempt to change the placement of any Product in the Store by rating an application multiple times, or by offering incentives to users to rate an application with higher or lower ratings.
Apps that are created by an automated tool or wizard service must not be submitted to Google Play by the operator of that service on behalf of other persons.
Do not post an app where the primary functionality is to: Drive affiliate traffic to a website or provide a webview of a website not owned or administered by you (unless you have permission from the website owner/administrator to do so)
Do not send SMS, email, or other messages on behalf of the user without providing the user with the ability to confirm content and intended recipient.

Google does pull apps down quite frequently, but never on this sort of scale. I am personally happy that Google is cleaning house a little. Violating copyright guidelines is definitely a major concern that Google can’t allow, especially when they are working out new deals with various industries to bring us all more legal content. So a note to developers. If you are planning something that falls into anything above, you probably won’t be in the Play Store for long. That makes me happy.

Source: Androidheadlines