Why Google Banned Hundreds Of Android Apps?

• Google banned Android apps due to ad fraud and disruptive mobile ads. 
• Google Play Store won’t be rushing app approval for unproven developers. 
• Android OS makers are directed to follow a three-step plan.
• Google is in continuous sync planning to crack down out-of-app ads.

Advertisement is the most important part of a marketing technique to promote one’s brand, products, and services. The concept of Guerilla marketing can also be used as an advanced level advertising technique to gain a maximum of users’ attention. 

Once attention is sought from the prospective buyer or user, the next step begins with converting them into long-term users. Because advertising is quite a trend in the market, it is far easier to promote brands through mobile applications too. 

The chances of covering more users can be done precisely through the Google Play Store, as there are 2.57 million apps Android app. The number is quite big as compared to Apple’s app store carrying 1.87 million apps.

This is the reason, many businesses and startups are majorly pushing their advertising to Google Play Store while taking care of Apple’s app store. 

Due to more chances of getting products being marketed in the Google Play Store, the increase in obnoxious content has also been detected. The chances of slightest of obnoxious content detection resulted in play store banned apps. 

Reasons behind Google banned Android apps?

Tech giant Google has removed over 600 Banned Android apps list and along with its mobile app developers due to ad fraud and disruptive mobile ads. Meanwhile, the foremost reasons that can be seen behind app banning are-Google banned android apps breached two of the company’s policies regarding advertising, disruptive ads policy and disallowed interstitial policy. 

Furthermore, there are things that have been drawn major attentions like- 

• The Malware Joker has been downloaded half a million times on Google Play Store. 
• Now, Google Play Store won’t be rushing app approval for unproven developers. 
• Fleeceware apps have been installed by more than 600m Play Store users. 

The removal was strict enough that the app’s developers from the Play Store are also banned. Among 600 Google banned android apps, one of the biggest banned developers is from the Play Store and Google’s Ad networks were Cheetah mobile. 

Cheetah Mobile is basically a publicly-traded Chinese company. As per the news from BuzzFeed, it stated that the former app was indulged in ad fraud. One of the other app banned, Cheetah was continuing to offer other apps in the Play Store. But entering this year in February, Cheetah’s entire suite of more than 45 apps in the app store was removed. And now the apps are no longer rendering advertising inventory for sale. 

To validate the ban, Per Bjorke in his blog post, Google’s Senior Product Manager, Ad Traffic Quality explained: “As part of our ongoing efforts — along with help from newly developed technologies — today we’re announcing nearly 600 apps have been removed from the Google Play Store and banned from our ad monetization platforms, Google AdMob and Google Ad Manager, for violating our disruptive ads policy and disallowed interstitial policy.”

One of the other Google banned android apps CooTek had forced users with disruptive advertisements. The app broke the guideline even after informing Google that it has stopped bombarding disruptive ads. 

Bjorke strengthened the claim with another statement- “This is an invasive maneuver resulting in poor user experiences that disrupt key device functions like phone calls and GPS, causes inadvertent ad clicks, and wasted [money] for advertisers,” 

Validating the step of Google banned application, the tech giant further added that many of the apps have been banned due to unwanted adverts. These adverts might interrupt the device’s usability functions too. And this is not the end, some developers were also able to serve ads when a user is not actively using the app. 

Check out- how to submit your app to the google play store

Bjorke further added- “Mobile ad fraud is an industry-wide challenge that can appear in many different forms with a variety of methods, and it has the potential to harm users, advertisers and publishers,” 

Also, it has been circulated too that if your smartphone is installed with any of the google play store banned apps list made by these Chinese developers, it is worth deleting the app in no time. 

To defend such malicious activities in the future, Google’s Per Bjore stated that – “

“As we move forward, we will continue to invest in new technologies to detect and prevent emerging threats that can generate invalid traffic, including disruptive ads, and to find more ways to adapt and evolve our platform and ecosystem policies to ensure that users and advertisers are protected from bad behavior.”

Check now – https://www.blog.google/products/admob/protecting-mobile-app-ecosystem/

Amidst all these, some other dangerous apps have been discovered detecting shocking “Joker” malware. The same concern was raised earlier when Check Point Research confirmed that they have discovered four additional samples of Joker on Play Store. The download count that time was somewhere between 130,000 times. 

Meanwhile, there are 4 important steps taken place under Google’s Play Store policy recently-

• Android OS makers are directed to follow a three-step plan in order to ensure both the Play Store and Android ad ecosystem are in healthy sync. 
• For starters, the tech giant Google is in continuous sync planning to crack down out-of-app ads, including user abuse, invalid advertiser spends, disruptive behavior. 
• Following it, Google is also planning to publish tools for Android app developers for making them more compliant with ad industry standards. 
• Next in the list is that Google is planning to change Android OS in order to cope up with out-of-app ads. 

Just like Google conversational AI Meena, the giant now is claiming to discover issues through its “innovative machine-learning-based approach”. Also, the apps in question have been removed from the Play Store and have been also banned from the AdMob and Ad Manager monetization platforms. 

Meanwhile, here is a list of top 10 google banned android apps.

1. Showbox
2. Popcorn time
3. Moviebox
4. Cinema Box
5. Ymusic
6. Youtube Vanced
7. Ogyoutube
8. Aptoide
9. Adaway
10. Lucky patcher

These are a few banned Android apps list by Google and there are many that have broken the terms & conditions of the giant.

It has also been highlighted that Google has started refunding brands whose ads were displayed in an inappropriate manner. And this is just the beginning of the tech giant in chucking out google play store banned apps list, malicious, inappropriate and unacceptable content from Play Store. 

Sitaram Sharma

CTO

CTO at Appventurez, Sitaram manages several tech teams involved in web and Android app development. In doing so, he not only assures that the technical architecture is suitable and within the context of the client’s technology stack but parallelly helps the techies in his team build intellect.