Google has taken down ‘Remove China Apps’ and ‘Mitron’ from Play store. The next day, on Thursday, said it has as of late suspended various applications for violating its policy that forbids the applications from urging users to delete different applications.
Why has Google removed ‘Remove China Apps’ from Play Store?
Google said the recent application removals have gotten specific attention in India, and that it needed to explain its activities. It hasn’t pointed out ‘Remove China Apps’ and ‘Mitron’ explicitly but the removal of these apps from Play Store has caught the eye in the nation in the scenario of the Indo-China border pressure. ‘Remove China Apps’ permitted clients to delete Chinese games and other software from their Android phones, while Mitron application was being touted as an Indian option for China’s TikTok.
Explaining the method of reasoning behind Google’s activities, Android and Google Play Vice-President Sameer Samat said that when applications are permitted to explicitly target different applications, it can lead to a situation which Google accepts isn’t to the greatest advantage of its developers and users.
“This is a longstanding rule designed to ensure a healthy, competitive environment where developers can succeed based upon design and innovation…We have enforced this policy against other apps in many countries consistently in the past — just as we did here,” he said in a blogpost.
He emphasised on the point that Google Play was designed to provide a safe and secure experience for users while also giving developers the platform and tools they need to build sustainable businesses. “We recently suspended a number of apps for violating the policy that we don’t allow an app that encourages or incentivises users into removing or disabling third-party apps or modifying device settings or features unless it is part of a verifiable security service,” he said.
He also stated that earlier this week, a video app was removed for a number of technical policy violations. “We have an established process of working with developers to help them fix issues and resubmit their apps. We’ve given this developer some guidance and once they’ve addressed the issue, the app can go back up on Play,” he added. The two apps- Mitron and Remove China Apps- have millions of downloads in India before they were removed from Google’s Play Store.
Mitron application had more than 5 million downloads. It might have been brought down because of security issues. Its proprietor Shibank Agarwal, a student of IIT Roorkee, is accepted to have purchased the source code of the application from a Pakistani coding organization, Qboxus, and rebranded the application as Mitron and released it in India. The Pakistani version is called TicTic.
Remove China Apps had become a top trending free application on Google’s Play store in India with in excess of 5,000,000 downloads since late May. It helped users recognize the nation of origin of applications introduced on the phone, featuring Chinese ones and recommending ventures for expulsion. Once erased, a message sprung up saying, “You are amazing, no China app found.”
The application came in the spotlight after innovator and educationist Sonam Wangchuk engaged Indians to blacklist Chinese items as a result of aggression by the Chinese armed force on the Indian border in the Ladakh district.
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