Google Play Store is the official and most reliable marketplace for Android apps, but it still struggles with quality control. In this regard, Google has now announced new rules that are aimed to boost the quality of apps on its marketplace and weed out the misleading, low-quality apps.
The tech giant on Thursday announced new metadata policies and laid down new rules to regulate how app developers present their apps in the Google Play Store. As per the company, the new rules are meant to drive more “meaning downloads” for consumers and will take effect sometime later this year, the exact date has not been revealed yet.
The new rules and metadata policies for Playstore have been designed to regulate how the apps are listed on the Google-owned Android app store. Apps that mislead, click-bait, have lesser features than mentioned, as well as malicious and trojanized apps that routinely crop up, will soon be removed when the new policy takes into effect.
Google Still Struggles With Transparency Over App Removals
While all this is a good attempt to earn users’ trust and confidence in its marketplace, Google still struggles with transparency over app removals. It acts as a cause of great frustration and disappointment for developers when their app is removed without citing any valid reason. In a recent case of an app called DroidScript, Google removed the Android application from Play Store by just sending an automated email to the developer. As reported by XDA, Google didn’t offer any clear response to which Play Store policy or term was violated by the app. The lack of transparency that Google maintains regarding these matters makes things murkier.
The new rules coming to effect later this year may, no doubt, improve the quality of the apps on the Play Store. But it still remains to be seen whether Google is transparent to developers while removing any app or not.
