Google Explains Why ‘Mitron’ & ‘Remove China Apps’ Were Taken Off Play Store

The past week has been really crazy for Indian app developers. First we saw TikTok being bombarded with negative reviews and getting its rating back to normal with Google's help.?

Then we saw the rise and fall of a made-in-India TikTok clone Mitron?(even though it was originally Pakistani) and yesterday, Remove China Apps -- an app to remove apps from China was pulled down from the Google Play Store.

Mumbai Mirror/ Play Store

The eliminations from the Play Store has definitely, made us think why those apps were pulled down. Google has answered those questions for us in a press release, offering clarifications on the decisions taken on the Play Store.?

While Google has not named any of the two apps in the release, their description is pretty self-explanatory and leaves little to the imagination.?

For Mitron, Google explains that the ‘video app’ had several technical policy violations, stating, “Earlier this week, we removed a video app 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.”

This policy is linked to its terms and conditions falling under the category of ‘Repetitive Content’, where it clearly states that ‘copying content from other apps without adding original content or value’, will lead to a violation -- something the developer of Mitron did, after purchasing an app from a group of Pakistani developers and just rebranding it.

Mitron, however, can go back on Play Store, as Google states that they’ve “given this developer some guidance and once they’ve addressed the issue the app can go back up on Play.”

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In the second half, Google has issued clarification for ‘Remove China Apps’ that allowed users to remove apps being made by Chinese developers. Apparently, the app violated the policy of ‘Deceptive Device Setting Changes’ where the app was encouraging users to remove/disable other third-party apps.?

Google explained, "When apps are allowed to specifically target other apps, it can lead to behaviour that we believe is not in the best interest of our community of developers and consumers. We’ve enforced this policy against other apps in many countries consistently in the past - just as we did here.”