Google’s mission to clean up Play Store has gone further than expected. Coming just days after a new report highlighted an alarming escalation in threats targeting mobile phones, we have confirmation of the sheer scale of changes from Google.
Last year, the Android-maker announced it was raising the bar for apps to get into its store — and even for apps to stay on its store. The change was presented as a quality threshold, with apps failing to deliver the right levels of performance, usability, reliability and even usefulness risking the cull.
This quality mark is unarguably important, and Play Store’s yellow warning labels target the same problem. But many low-quality apps are also high-risk apps, empty vessels used to hide malicious intent. They may not contain malware themselves, but such apps can direct users into dangerous territory once installed.
Now we have a sense of the scale of this. “From the start of 2024 to the present,” TechCrunch reports, citing data from Appfigures, “the Android app marketplace went from hosting about 3.4 million apps worldwide to just around 1.8 million… That’s a decline of about 47%.” At the same time, the number of apps on Apple’s App Store increased, meaning this “is not part of some larger global trend.”
Google warned last year that the type of apps it would find and delete include those “that are static without app-specific functionalities, for example, text only or PDF file apps, apps with very little content that do not provide an engaging user experience, for example, single wallpaper apps, and apps that are designed to do nothing or have no function.” Clearly, there were thousands upon thousands of such apps.
This latest news comes with a new warning for users. If an app is one of those deleted, Google says “the app will no longer be available to download on Google Play [but]
if you have the app installed on your device, you can continue to use the app.”
And critically, “the app will not be removed from your device. You can continue to use the app. However, you will not be able to update your app. If you remove the app from your device, you will not be able to redownload the app unless the developer is able to republish it to Google Play.” That means low-quality and potentially high risk apps remain on your phone and it’s for you to deal with. It also means that even if an app is not dangerous by intent, any security issues cannot be fixed by the developer.
The advice is simple. If you notice apps that can no longer update and find they’re no longer on the store, then delete them on your device as well. Users now run an average of 80-100 apps on their phones, and if those apps have been cut loose by the OS you’re running an unnecessary risk. The good news is any subscriptions associated with those apps will stop, as will their ability to link to Google’s billing systems.