Google is back to cleaning up the Play Store. The Mountain View giant has removed 600 apps because they violated ad policy. Here’s what they are
Maxi blitz by Google police in the Play Store: nearly 600 apps removed from the store for violating advertising rules. The discovery of these apps, Google itself explains in its blog, was also possible to “newly developed technologies”.
Google has dedicated teams, focused precisely on detecting developers and apps that try to defraud the mobile advertising ecosystem. These teams, however, haven’t been very efficient lately, given the amount of reports of apps that cheat the advertising circuits and that have been discovered, instead of by the teams in question, almost always by independent researchers or by cybersecurity companies external to Google. But it doesn’t matter: there are now 600 fewer scammy apps in the Play Store, and that’s good news. And the second piece of good news is that Google has officially committed to taking down apps and developers that don’t play by the rules.
Apps removed from the Play Store: what are they
Google says that all of the removed apps violated the Play Store’s advertising policy. In other words, they gave the user excessive advertising in a way that was not allowed. By excessive advertising, Google means advertising that prevents the user from using the device normally, such as banners that appear continuously or take up too large a portion of the screen. Then there are the advertising rules that expressly prohibit the ability to administer advertising outside the context of normal use of the app. An ad that appears in the background, or several minutes after the app has been closed, is violating Play Store rules.
Google declares war on invasive ads
That the Play Store is chock full of apps that violate advertising rules is now well known. Even these 600 apps represent a drop in the ocean of more or less incorrect apps. But Google promises open warfare on these apps and their developers: “As we move forward, we will continue to invest in new technologies to detect and prevent emerging threats that can generate invalid traffic, including invasive ads, and to find other ways to adapt and evolve our policies to ensure users and advertisers are protected from misconduct.” Scammers everywhere beware: Google says it means business this time.