Google pulled over 1 million apps from Play Store last year over policy violations

Google continues to focus on user privacy and security by improving its review processes and machine learning systems. As a result, the company blocked over 1 million apps on the Play Store last year.

Google shared the news in a blog post on April 27, saying that it scans billions of installed apps each day across billions of devices to “keep people safe from malware and unwanted software.”

Overall, the company pulled 1.2 million policy violating apps from the Play Store in 2021. On top of that, Google also banned 190k “bad accounts” and closed around 500k developer accounts that are inactive or abandoned.

With platform protections and policies having been improved, 98% of apps have migrated to Android 11 or higher. Google also prohibited developers from collecting Advertising ID (AAID) in all apps targeting children and gave all users an option to delete their AAID completely.