A tradingplatforms.com analysis shows there are fewer applications in Google’s Play Store today than four years ago. The site presented data showing that the store’s app numbers had fallen by a million.
Google Play Store hosted 2,591,578 applications by March this year. This figure is a 28% drop from the 3.6 million apps that the platform held in March 2018. The decline is due to Google’s periodic purges of apps violating its terms of service.
Commenting on the development, StockApps’ Edith Reads said, “Google owes its customers the duty to protect. Its Play Store is teeming with apps that could interfere with the proper functioning of users’ devices. Some could even jeopardize the security of users who download them. This reality makes such cleanups inevitable.”
Protecting users
Google sets standards that app developers must adhere to. These include their commitment to adhering to its user data policies. Those policies stress transparency in how those apps interact with users’ data.
The firm uses a two-pronged approach to ensure compliance with its listing terms. Beginning in 2015, it uses a combination of human reviewers and AI tools to flag malicious or non-compliant apps. It then bans any apps that are in serious violation of its terms.
The apps store comes with the Google Play Protect software that scans all apps for threats. It also follows a peer grouping policy. Here it groups and compares attributes of similar apps for easy monitoring.
Google Play isn’t the only app store around
Google Play’s almost 2.6M Android apps listing makes it the largest app store in listing terms. Following in the second spot is the Apple App Store. This one has over 2.3 M applications.
Other app stores are also jostling for market share. For instance, the Amazon App store supplies its customers with about 500K apps. Similarly, Tencent’s app store hosts nearly 44K apps.
The full story and statistics can be found here: Number of apps in the Google Play Store down by 1M in the last 4 years.
