[HN Gopher] Google set to purge the Play Store of low-quality apps
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Google set to purge the Play Store of low-quality apps
Author : meiraleal
Score : 53 points
Date : 2024-07-20 17:54 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.androidauthority.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.androidauthority.com)
| politelemon wrote:
| I'd say a welcome change, if done properly. I also noticed
| they're enforcing business registration and account verification
| requirements, and shutting down accounts that don't do it.
| dathinab wrote:
| I fear that will also be used as an excuse to move against
| "unliked" apps.
|
| Like (likely open source, hobby produced) no-nonsense (cost)
| free apps which provide some basic functionality and nothing
| more but also nothing unwanted (no tracking ads etc.).
|
| Or in general apps without ads (google is known to already
| discriminated against such ads in various ways).
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| It's hard to complain tho, you can just install a different
| app store or sideload the app you want yourself, it's really
| easy even for a non-techie
| Neywiny wrote:
| I honestly couldn't care less if an app is low quality, I'll just
| uninstall it. I don't think it's feasible to have a system where
| no apps ever get immediate uninstalled after trying for a few
| seconds and realizing it isn't what the user wants.
|
| What would be really nice is if they cared when developers push
| breaking or otherwise trashy updates. I've completely dialed
| automatic updates because of it. The number of times an app
| updates and everyone including me tries 1 star reviewing to no
| avail is too high. Especially with the inability to backdate apks
| without losing all the on-device data
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| There's certainly a ton of stuff that ideally should be removed,
| but they'll automate the selection of apps to remove and
| obviously there will be false positives and obviously there will
| be no mechanism to appeal other than hoping your sad story about
| it goes viral.
| Zambyte wrote:
| As long as Google isn't the gatekeeper on what I'm able to use my
| phone for, I'm okay with this. Most of the apps I care about are
| not installed from Google Play anyways.
| stavros wrote:
| Yep, at least we Android users have this option. This makes it
| much easier to say "eh, it's their store", when I can install
| anything I want on my phone.
|
| As someone who just wrote an app so my users can use my service
| (https://www.deadmansswitch.net) more easily, though, I'm a bit
| miffed at the fact that it might be removed.
| sebastiennight wrote:
| As an aside, I absolutely love your app concept.
|
| I wish there was a cryptographic solution that ensured that
| messages would be stored in an encrypted vault, re-encrypted
| every time I check in, and in a way that would take 60 days
| to decode to cleartext if I don't check in.
| stavros wrote:
| Thank you! The easier way to do that is to PGP encrypt to
| the recipients' keys, or just give them a symmetric
| encryption key and use some online AES service to decrypt
| it.
| netsharc wrote:
| > Most of the apps I care about are not installed from Google
| Play anyways.
|
| Ha, yeah, I'd rather look in F-Droid first, because I know I'd
| have to sift through a fuckton of garbage of maybe-malware or
| for-sure-adware (full 10 second video ads whenever you click on
| anything) if I look in the Play Store.
|
| Sure maybe I'm exaggerating, and the truth is the Play Store
| experience is not that bad, but it's my perception.
| josephcsible wrote:
| This is indeed not as big of a deal as if it were Apple doing
| it, but it's important to remember that people like us who
| install apps from places other than the Play Store are a
| minority. As far as a lot of people are concerned, these apps
| just won't exist at all anymore.
| p3rls wrote:
| The idea that Google is a capable arbiter of quality is
| laughable to anyone who knows what SEO stands for
| hedora wrote:
| Try running without Google play services sometime.
|
| Google might not be gatekeepers, but there's no practical way
| to opt out of having them poking around in your phone.
| dathinab wrote:
| I fear google will use this to purge low cost or even free "no-
| nonsense" (no ads, in app purchases, unnecessary features, etc.).
|
| there already had been a pattern of google discriminating against
| such apps
|
| and from a pure monetary sense it makes sense, while for most
| users such no-nonsense apps are preferable they make little money
| for Google and compete with apps which do
|
| in a certain way google has motivation to feature _especially_
| consumer hostile apps using all kinds of dark patterns to trick,
| blackmail or outright scam people into paying more
|
| such a bias is probably illegal under the recent (EU) digital
| markets act as but that is even more motivation for google do
| kill a lot of such useful apps now before it's more strictly
| enforced
| atum47 wrote:
| Yep. First thing that came to mind. I have three small games
| published on the play store. I wonder if they are going to make
| the cut
| rlpb wrote:
| It strikes me that what you describe already appears to be true
| in relation to Google Search's ranking of no-nonsense websites.
| StressedDev wrote:
| What is the pattern of discrimination? Can you give some
| examples?
| rock_artist wrote:
| I don't mind. Yet. As a developer with some old apps with app
| serving as unlock keys for example, I do mind in ability to
| properly dispute or communicate with humans when they claim
| something on my apps that has been in the store for over 10 years
| and I don't have a human to explain it...
| GoatOfAplomb wrote:
| See also "Hey Google, what happened to all the fun?",
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40947641, for the
| perspective of someone impacted by this.
| robofanatic wrote:
| As a solo developer of a small app its hard to find 20 unique
| testers who are willing to test it for 14 days. its going to cost
| me several times more than the cost of developing the app. just
| doesn't make sense.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| The tech world has this absurd imagination that Rome is built
| in a day, that if we build it right they will come. Success has
| to be instant & exponential or it's not worthwhile.
|
| I could not be more disgusted by this change. This attitude
| rules so much of what happens now. Web specs are like, oh, only
| 0.1% of websites use this feature after 2 years: we can ignore
| it. That's a huge number, and the _timeframe_ , the expectation
| that either tech is adopted & loved within months or its not
| worthwhile is horrendous, so greatly demeans human effort & the
| nature of how meaning builds.
|
| We have to get back to expecting sometimes the larger changes
| being slow & tectonic.
| onion2k wrote:
| If you can't find 20 people who want to use your app for free
| in exchange for some testing you haven't got much hope of
| selling enough copies of it to make it worthwhile building in
| the first place.
| redserk wrote:
| If it's a niche enough app, the payment is likely more of a
| tip jar instead of a full-blown business venture.
|
| I pay for a few very niche calculator apps that I wouldn't
| even be able to find 20 people interested without putting in
| some effort and asking for friends to ask their friends.
| onion2k wrote:
| It's hard to justify why Google should support Play store
| apps that appeal to less than 20 people. That sounds like
| something where side-loading is a very useful alternative
| to an app store.
| robofanatic wrote:
| They could bump up their membership fee from $25 to $100
| like Apple App Store.
| Arnt wrote:
| Appeal to fewer than 20 people is one thing, making 20
| people install a beta version is quite another.
|
| There's a saying, only one of 10k people affected by a
| bug will report it. Getting early testers is a bit like
| that, although not as bad as 1/10k.
| cuu508 wrote:
| It would be lovely if Google Play had a filter to hide apps
| marked as "Contains ads".
| wffurr wrote:
| Or if you could filter for "paid apps with no in-app
| purchases".
| tux3 wrote:
| Well, that says nothing about ads and tracking, right?
|
| The value of a no-nonsense free app is that it isn't trying
| to exploit something off of you.
|
| I'm not really enthusiastic about subscribing to a company's
| newsletter or being advertised a weight loss secret thar
| doctors don't want you to know
| n_plus_1_acc wrote:
| Aurora Store can
| atum47 wrote:
| That reminds me that I need to publish my games on f-droid as
| well.
| sebastiennight wrote:
| Please do! The more developers who turn this "I need to do it
| sometime" into "I've done it", the more users will come to
| F-Droid as well.
| daft_pink wrote:
| Does anyone else think that both app stores should be divinding
| the apps into 3 categories instead of 2. Like free apps, apps
| that don't cost anything to download but have virtually no
| functionality without having subscription or paying and paid apps
| or maybe both of the latter two categories swhould be consider
| paid apps.
| szundi wrote:
| Sooner or later they give in and follow Apple in a lot of things
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| Hopefully not. I'd hate to be infantalized and told what I can
| and can't run on my own device.
| MBCook wrote:
| Apple has had these policies forever.
|
| They _barely_ seem to enforce them. The App Store could
| probably get a 50% culling with little impact.
|
| There's TONS of broken garbage, scam apps, least effort apps,
| blatant ripoffs of blatant ripoffs.
|
| I really liked the idea of a curated App Store when Apple first
| announced it. In my mind I've never lived up to it. Not fully
| open, not well maintained. The worst of both worlds.
| szundi wrote:
| Clever way to rooting out some competition as "copycats" for
| example
| zerr wrote:
| Apple app store is full of crap as well.
| MBCook wrote:
| They've always had these policies. I agree it needs way more
| enforcement.
| 3np wrote:
| I hope they start with the ones which are obviously fraudulent
| (most likely illegal) and have already been reported to them as
| such. For example "secure end-to-end-encrypted private chat apps"
| which actually send messages unencrypted to a web server.
|
| Source: Gave up on trying to be a vigilant netizen and reporting
| to the black hole.
| livrem wrote:
| > text-only apps
|
| What? Is that a common problem? And where are those text-only
| apps anyway? I have installed Termux and some vim app and a few
| interactive fiction games that are all text. Are those somehow
| causing trouble by not having enough graphics to look high
| quality enough for Google?
| duskwuff wrote:
| The longer description of this from Google's policy page [1]
| is:
|
| > Apps that are static without app-specific functionalities,
| for example, text only or PDF file apps
|
| Apps where the user can interact with text in some way (like IF
| games or terminals) don't seem like they'd be affected.
|
| [1]: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-
| developer/answ...
| greatgib wrote:
| I guess that it's not bad to clean the store, but I'm just sad
| because it might be the last nail of the coffin of the good old
| time "anyone can create an Android app for pleasure in one
| weekend".
|
| Now you need to be a professional developer with all the relevant
| infrastructure (a company, a public phone number, dozens of
| people for testing, fifty policy/regulation to comply with, ...)
| SECProto wrote:
| > Now you need to be a professional developer with all the
| relevant infrastructure
|
| That does not appear to be what this article is about - this is
| about apps that don't do anything/crash/only have text or a
| single wallpaper
| KalebTheFox wrote:
| If it works then Awesome if not Eh
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(page generated 2024-07-20 23:10 UTC)