Briefly: Google has progressively tightened its necessities for Play Retailer apps over the previous few years. Whereas these laws are ostensibly to guard Android customers from malware, as the corporate has eliminated hundreds of thousands of fraudulent apps over time, benign software program that is not usually up to date is prone to be caught within the dragnet.
Beginning August 31, Google will start eradicating apps it believes serve no objective or exhibit minimal performance as a part of its up to date guidelines relating to spam. Adjustments to different laws may even take impact on that date.
The corporate’s help website gives examples of apps that do not supply what it considers an interesting person expertise or utility as cellular software program. These embrace apps that do nothing however show textual content, PDFs, or wallpapers. Google may even purge apps that do not correctly set up or load.
These new guidelines add to the corporate’s current insurance policies relating to spam and minimal performance. Google already tries to dam apps that ship extreme textual content messages, copy important quantities of content material verbatim from different apps, or exist primarily to drive visitors elsewhere.
Apps that make deceptive or not possible claims about their performance may even draw elevated scrutiny beginning August 31. Examples embrace video games with gameplay considerably completely different from their retailer descriptions, joke apps that declare to do issues like repel bugs, improperly categorized apps, and extra.
Tackling political misinformation seems to be one of many principal objectives of Google’s up to date insurance policies. The corporate will goal apps that mimic information broadcasts, use the likenesses of public figures for dishonest causes, or falsely declare to symbolize governments and different organizations.
Persevering with the struggle in opposition to fraudulent apps, Google may even purge faux copies of different apps or web sites designed to steal login data. Moreover, builders should clearly state when apps have dramatically completely different performance based mostly on a person’s area or system settings. Updates that drastically alter performance with out alerting customers by means of patch notes may even draw elevated scrutiny from Google.
The August 31 coverage replace will moreover tighten permissions for apps accessing customers’ pictures, movies, messages, and different recordsdata. What’s extra, all new apps should goal the Android 14 API from that date, and current apps should at the very least help the Android 13 API or threat being hidden from customers who have not already put in them. Put on OS and TV OS are exempt from this requirement.
Google started hiding apps that weren’t receiving updates two years in the past. Though the follow minimizes the probabilities of customers downloading weak software program, many apps do not want fixed updates to proceed working correctly.
