Google Play store purges a million apps

The firm uses a two-pronged approach to ensure compliance with its listing terms. Beginning in 2015, it uses a combination of human reviewers and AI tools to flag malicious or non-compliant apps, and bans those in serious violation of its terms.

Own Correspondent

The tradingplatforms.com site has presented data showing that Google’s Play Store app numbers have fallen by a million from four years ago.

Google Play Store hosted 2 591 578 applications by March this year, a 28% drop from the 3,6 million apps the platform held in March 2018. The decline is due to Google’s periodic purges of apps that violate its terms of service.

StockApps analyst Edith Reads says: “Google owes its customers the duty to protect. Its play store is teeming with apps that could interfere with the proper functioning of users’ devices; some of which could even jeopardize the security of users who download them. This reality makes such clean-ups inevitable.”

Google sets standards that app developers must adhere to, including their commitment to adhere to its user data policies. Those policies stress transparency in how those apps interact with users’ data.

The firm uses a two-pronged approach to ensure compliance with its listing terms.

Beginning in 2015, it uses a combination of human reviewers and AI tools to flag malicious or non-compliant apps, and bans any apps that are in serious violation of its terms and conditions.

The apps store comes with the Google Play Protect software that scans all apps for threats. It also follows a peer grouping policy, where it groups and compares attributes of similar apps for easy monitoring.

Google Play’s almost 2,6-million Android apps listing makes it the largest app store in listing terms. Following in the second spot is the Apple app store, with over 2,3 million applications. The Amazon app store supplies its customers with about 500 000 apps and Tencent store hosts nearly 44 000 apps.

Mahlangu said this was in part due to the recent KwaZulu-Natal flooding disaster.

“At the moment we are unable to meet the demand for blood in the country, especially in KwaZulu-Natal. We are sitting at 2.7 days blood stocks, which puts significant pressure on us. The devastation in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal has also impacted on our blood collections. We call on all South Africans to please spare 20 minutes of their day to help us continue saving people’s lives,” Mahlangu said.