What recently became one of the most downloaded Android apps within the borders of India, has now been a target by Google as it was completely obliterated from the Play Store due to claimed violations. The app promised users the ability to sniff out apps that originated in China and delete them from their Android device. Something that gained interest as India has being continuing to display a dislike toward China.
The app achieved nearly 5 million downloads in less than a week, making it quite the win for its developers. However, Google decided that it violated its policy on Deceptive Behaviour. An act that some have claimed to be motivated by China or Google’s concern for their relationship with China.
So let’s take a look at this policy and see what it is all about, and break it down.
As stated by Google’s policy: “We don’t allow apps that attempt to deceive users or enable dishonest behavior including but not limited to apps which are determined to be functionally impossible. Apps must provide an accurate disclosure, description and images/video of their functionality in all parts of the metadata and should perform as reasonably expected by the user. Apps must not attempt to mimic functionality or warnings from the operating system or other apps. Any changes to device settings must be made with the user’s knowledge and consent and be easily reversible by the user.”
The policy seems pretty clear. It’s hard to tell if it actually performed the functions it promised. We cannot say for sure since we didn’t get a chance to download it to any of our test devices to give it a try. As for “any changes to device settings must be made with the user’s knowledge and consent”, it seems the app has this covered since the act of downloading the app with the intent to use it shows that the user shows knowledge and consent for what the app was designed to do. Finally, it most likely fails the “be easily reversible by the user” portion at the end.
Likely, the app did violate the policy and was removed fairly, making it hard to claim there is any conspiracy against the users. What the app claims to achieve seems to be pretty shady and hard for the developers to prove that their information is 100% accurate or that they were able to perform the associated functions properly. Chances are unless the app was designed by Google themselves or by the smartphone manufacturer, it probably wouldn’t have enough access rights to properly remove these apps fully. There is also a good chance (if it worked at all) that certain apps might be accidentally deleted even though they originated somewhere other than China. Unless you are Google and have access to their database of information for all of the apps, you are likely to make mistakes.
It is interesting though to see an app take off so quickly in numbers. Even braver to see an app developer make such claims when it comes to function. If it was capable of performing what it promised, Google will likely make changes to the Android OS in the future to prevent such access as it does raise a concern when it comes to device security. You wouldn’t want third-party apps secretly deleting things in the background without your knowledge.
It’s unfortunate that anyone would be motivated to remove everything associated with any specific country. Even if there was a rise in bad apples coming from any given country, it doesn’t mean that everything coming from that country is dangerous.
What do you think? Feel free to share your thoughts below in the comments.
