Google Android: 1 million fewer applications in the Play Store than in 2018

In recent years, Google has not only increased security requirements for apps on the Google Play Store and increased data visibility and feature usage, but also repeatedly removed numerous questionable apps from the App Store. an analysis of trading platforms shows the extent of the deletions.

From 3.6 to 2.6 million applications

Compared to 2018, there are currently about a million fewer apps available on the Google Play Store. In March this year, 2,591,578 apps were listed on the Play Store, four years ago, in March 2018, there were still about 3.6 million apps that could be downloaded from the official Android store. Thus, about 28 percent of all apps were removed, either by the vendor itself or due to violations by Google. Most of this can be attributed to Google’s regular cleanup campaigns, with rogue apps that previously had very high download counts being targeted again and again. Most of the apps were first removed in 2018, when the number had already fallen from 3.6 to 2.6 million, only to rise again to just over 3 million apps in the fall of 2020. Since then, the number of apps offered has slowly dwindled to 2.6 million.

Play Protect Scan for Post

Google had previously been criticized for applying looser standards compared to Apple’s App Store when approving apps on the Play Store, which is why Google in the past only had to remove many apps after an initial approval, for example when Google Play Protect scanned them. drew attention. The standards set by Google have been constantly raised in recent years and, above all, developers must openly communicate why and how applications interact with user data, also as a consequence of legal requirements such as the GDPR.

Play Store is still bigger than Apple’s App Store

However, with around 2.6 million apps on the Play Store, it is still the largest app store, followed by Apple’s App Store with around 2.3 million apps. In contrast, only about 500,000 apps are available on the Amazon app store.