Google’s new rules seem to succeed in purging the Play Store

Google removed nearly 115,000 apps from the Play Store in the first half of 2021, the first substantial drop in the total number of Android apps in three years.

More than 58,000 apps were retired between January and April, and some 65,000 disappeared in May alone, according to SafeBettingSites, citing data from Google and analytics companies including App Annie, AppBrain and Statista. There are now north of 2.8 million apps in the Play Store, up from 3 million in September 2020. The last major drop occurred in 2018, when totals fell from a peak of 3.6 million to 2.8 million.

The reason for the surge of deletions in May 2021 is believed to be a broad set of new rules announced by Google in late April, aimed at blocking apps with deceptive names and images. For example, developers were prevented from embellishing titles with promotional claims, even exceeding 30 characters.

Quality control of Play Store titles is a long-standing and seemingly intractable problem. The updated rules still don’t go directly to developers who produce shoddy clones or, in some cases, bogus apps that don’t work. The latter can be reported, but the lure of the easy money can lead to the introduction of new apps to replace what Google is removing.

The Play Store reportedly racked up 56.2 billion downloads in the first half of 2021, up 6% year-on-year, while data from Sensor Tower shows revenue increased 30% to $ 23.4 billion. However, Google is still far behind Apple in the financial arena, as it is estimated to have generated $ 41.5 billion in App Store revenue in the first half of 21 with significantly fewer apps in the market.