PlayStore: Thousands of apps could be removed

Google has recently paid more attention to the Play Store. Now the company wants to offer Android users a better experience and is tightening its guidelines to do so. A number of apps are likely to fall victim to this.

Google increases requirements

In principle, the Google Play Store is a fairly open marketplace for apps. Of course, the programs have to meet certain guidelines, but the regulations are rather weak, especially compared to Apple’s App Store. In order to offer its customers a better experience in the future, the so-called “Spam and Minimum Functionality Policy“. As the name suggests, it regulates which apps are considered spam and what minimum range of functions they must offer. Google writes:

Apps should provide a stable, responsive, and engaging user experience. Apps that crash, do not meet the basic level of appropriate usefulness as a mobile app, do not have engaging content, or exhibit other behavior inconsistent with a functional and engaging user experience will not be allowed on Google Play.

Fulfillment of certain (low) minimum standards

Google goes into more detail about what is meant by no “adequate usefulness”, no “appealing content” and no “appealing user experience”. This includes apps that only consist of static text, PDFs or just a single wallpaper. This also includes programs that cannot be installed, cannot be opened after installation or crash immediately after opening.

The new guidelines will come into force on August 31, 2024. According to the company’s own Security Blog Last year, Google blocked the release of 2.28 million apps because they did not meet the requirements at the time. The new, more stringent rules are likely to increase this number again. Recently, Google also added some new useful features to the Play Store, such as parallel downloads and the marking of secure VPN apps by adding a small icon.