In the last year (and four months, but who’s counting?), the Google Play Store went from housing roughly 3.4 million apps available to download on Android devices to just 1.8 million as of today. That’s no rounding error. This was a concerted effort from Google to purge nearly half (around 47%) of the store’s entire library, according to data from Appfigures, via TechCrunch.
Apple, for reference, has seen a surge in the number of apps allowed on the App Store, taking its total offerings up to 1.64 million, up from 1.6 million in the same period. So what gives? Where Apple likes to properly vet new developers looking to get their apps published, Google… doesn’t. Much. In recent years, Google has left that job in the hands of a machine, running automatic malware checks to fill up the store that much quicker.
Gone. Reduced to ashes
This led to a slew of low-effort apps flooding the Play Store, forcing users to wade through a pool of slop, and ultimately made it more difficult for ‘real’ developers to get their names out there (without first giving Google a big bag of cash). Really, this is a win for Android users, who can find the right app for their needs more easily.
Google hasn’t just purged a bunch of apps since then. It’s put new measures in place to stem the flow of low-effort apps breaching the fort. In July 2024, it introduced more stringent requirement policies for apps, disallowing not only those apps that didn’t function or attempted to install malware, but also banning the apps that didn’t offer much in the way of content or functionality.
Read More: Google rolls out extra security for your Android smartphone
Google confirmed to TechCrunch that these policies, amongst others, were at play in keeping the total number of apps on the store down. These involve more humans working behind the scenes to ensure apps aren’t defrauding users, a requirement for app testing for new developer accounts, and continued investment into AI-powered threat detection.
As of January this year, Google reckons that these changes have helped it prevent around 2.36 million “policy-violating apps” from hitting the store, and led to the banning of 158,000 “bad developer accounts” and who knows how many apps under them.
