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The Play Store has often been compared to the wild west. which can be good or bad, depending on your perspective. Unlike the Apple App Store and the Amazon AppStore, developers have long been free to publish their applications without going through a long processing step, and only those that contained malware or malware. restricted APIs used were blocked. However, it seems that Google may have quietly initiated a more complex review process that affects all applications and updates.
Last April, an article in the Android Developers blog mentioned that Google would take longer to review apps from developers who have not yet established follow up with the Play Store. This was aimed at blocking malware, copy applications, new bidding from banned developers and other banned or questionable software. A few days ago, an article by Dan Fabulich on Choice of Games detailed a conversation with Google Play developer support, which revealed that the review process was no longer limited to new suspicious developers.
After the article caught the eye on Reddit and Hacker News, a member of the Google Developer Relations team stepped in to clarify some of the details. Between his comments and the stories of many commentators, these seem to be the facts:
- Google is currently reviewing all applications and updates before they are released. (There was some confusion as to whether updates are being reviewed, but many developers have confirmed that they have seen their own updates delayed by several days.)
- All developers review, but established developers with high traffic will often get faster approvals. Application updates are generally approved faster than new applications.
- There is no way to speed up (speed up) the review process.
- Updates can be scheduled, but planning to launch new applications requires a complicated workaround.
- Developers are not aware that a multi-day approval process is being considered as long as they are not trying to publish.
The current article in the Google Knowledge Base still asserts that this only applies to "certain developer accounts" and then recommends that at least three days be allowed for the approval of applications. The comments from the developers seem to indicate that they have experienced a recovery in a few hours or several days. Notably, there is no visible warning in the developer's console regarding delays, it only appears after the release.
Note: For some developer accounts, we will take more time to thoroughly examine your applications to better protect users. You will receive a notification on your application Dashboard about how long it should take. We recommend that you adjust your schedule to include a buffer period of at least three days between submitting your application and putting it online.
– Help article on the Google Play console
One of the main criticisms made in the article on Choice of Games concerned the inability to plan the release of new applications. This is often important for planning marketing campaigns and promotions. A feature called Timed Publishing has historically made this possible, but since this review process came into effect, it only works with application updates. New applications ignore the scheduled time and are simply published as soon as they are approved. The Developer Relations Manager has detailed a workaround, but it's not an inherently obvious solution.
We still do not know if the review process is done by real people or if most applications are only examined through an automated process. Google claims only that humans are involved in all "sensitive decisions", which may mean that users only look at applications tagged or from new developers.
All of this comes just three months after Google I / O 2019, which was committed on the scene to be more transparent about changes to the rules of the Play Store and to give developers more information and enough time to adapt to changes. These statements may have been subject to a separate review process.
We contacted Google for details and additional information about the objectives of the evaluation process, but no response was provided at the time of this posting.
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