Google Play Removed 700,000 Bad Apps In 2017, 70 Percent More Than In 2016 (venturebeat.com)

Today, Google announced that it removed more than 700,000 apps that violated Google Play's policies, or 70 percent more apps than the year before. "Google does not share total Google Play app numbers anymore, so we have to rely on third-party estimates to put this 70 percent figure into perspective," reports VentureBeat. "Statista pegs the total number of apps on Google Play at 2.6 million in December 2016 and 3.5 million in December 2017, a 35 percent growth. How many of those were bad apps, however, is anyone's guess." From the report: All we know is that the number of bad apps removed grew faster than the total number of apps in the store, which makes sense if you take into account the next statistic Google revealed today: 99 percent of apps with abusive content were identified and rejected before anyone could install them in 2017. This was possible, Google says, thanks to its implementation of machine learning models and techniques to detect abusive app content and behaviors such as impersonation, inappropriate content, or malware. The company claims that the odds of getting malware is 10x lower via Google Play than if you install apps from outside sources.

Comments

Company claims

[war4peace]

"The company claims that the odds of getting malware is 10x lower via Google Play than if you install apps from outside sources."
This means nothing.
Considering the worst possibility, if outside sources have 100% chance to get malware, then Google Play has 10% chance, which is VERY BAD.
Even a chance of 1% of getting malware is horrible, considering we are talking about Google's official app channel.

IMO the chance should be 1 in 100K, meaning there would still be 35 apps in the official store loaded with malware.

Re:Company claims

[sexconker]

And that's ignoring the fact that most of the malware on the Play Store (spyware, adware, etc.) isn't considered malware in the Android world. It's par for the course to exploit your users and shit on their devices!

Permission System

[jma05]

I am most annoyed by Google's choices in the Permission System. It is defective by design. What did they expect? It is now the choice malware target. Sure, it is an improvement since the earlier versions since we can revoke permissions now. The system is far less leaky on iOS (at least it was, I have not owned an iOS device in a while). I really wish I could set up virtual/shadow address books and file systems. The current system is just playing whack-a-mole. There should be a setting where apps will not have access to any of my private information by default, but still not fail when denied. Or a means to have two profiles, a trusted and a sandbox profile.. and it should be trivial for the user to switch between them, while providing good feedback on which one is active.

A link to malware in the Play Store...

[NextApp]

Here you go:

https://play.google.com/store/...

Dozens and dozens of cloned apps that "clean" your device. Fake ratings and reviews.

They prey on the layman users' false "common sense" of how computers/devices should work. Each contains the same false information about optimizing Android performance, creating a completely inaccurate "common knowledge" amongst many Android users.

For example, there's no positive benefit in "cleaning apps" to save memory (RAM). The OS will just cache more, which uses even more resources (and thus more of those precious mAhs).

The apps practice heavy user engagement, recommending more crapware and spraying the user with advertising.

Google frequently recommends these apps, even though they are incongruent with the Android OS design.

Violating terms != Bad App

[Excelcia]

Violating Google's policies does not mean it's a bad app. A favourite recipe app of mine was capable of downloading recipes from multiple sources if you had logins to those sites. That's hardly malware. Neither are computer and game system emulation apps, nor spoof apps to morph your photo to look like other racial stereotypes. Sure some of them are controversial in their own ways, but they are hardly malware. Google doesn't release stats on which terms of their service that apps were removed for, so we can hardly say they are the stalwart paladins of Android by removing 700,000 "bad" apps. I would be unsurprised to see most of that number are simply falling afoul of Google's army of lawyers for rather benign infractions.

Interesting looking back

[Striikerr]

It's always interesting to have a look back at the environment when Apple started with their tight controls over everything on the iPhone. Many people derided this heavy-handedness and wanted something which they could do anything to. Enter the Android-based smartphones which would allow people to install anything from anywhere. The dangers of such a platform for a smartphone became evident over the years and the push for users towards using Google's official source for apps (the Google Play Store) increased. Things which people have often criticized Apple for doing often got implemented soon afterwards. I'm not saying Apple is perfect or makes the best decisions and this isn't about singing their praises. Apple knew the importance around keeping tight control over what is allowed to be installed onto the iOS devices, particularly as it relates to security and stability. (yes, I know they also stand to benefit from these decisions as well). So, here we are with Google screening apps and rejecting apps before they get to the Google Play Store, much like Apple did and does with iOS. I tend to thing that any security-conscious Android user urges those they know to only use apps from the Google Play Store for security reasons and to save users from installing malware riddled apps on their phones.

This also differs greatly from PC's (before someone says "but what about PC's where you can install anything you want!!") PC's don't delay or lock out critical OS updates the way the heavily fragmented Android smartphone industry does.