1,900 rotten apps bounced out of Google Play every day in 2017
Developers, developers, developers – sigh – 100,000 of them were booted too!
Google has revealed that it booted “more than 700,000 apps” and 100,000 developers out of its Play digital tat bazaar during 2017.
That’s about 1,900 a day and 70 per cent more than Google banished last year.
The news isn’t all bad: Google said 99 per cent of the bad apps were binned by tools that employ machine learning, so nobody ever had the chance to download them. It’s also nice to know that most of the rejected apps were copycats that hoped to score some coin by mimicking other apps.
But there were also plenty of apps offering “pornography, extreme violence, hate, and illegal activities” that tried to sneak into the Play store, plus many attempts at sneaking malware into the store.
Google said it plans to refine its AI-infused tools to detect even more apps in future. Dodgy developers are also in its sights: the company hopes to automate tools that prevent curmudgeonly coders from re-registering Play accounts with new credentials.
Don’t let Google’s lovely big numbers give you a false sense of security about either Play or Google’s AI, as it still let through a fake version of WhatsApp that garnered a million users and 60 apps that showed smut to kids.
Google has also had trouble with YouTube video nasties disguised as fun for kids. ®