Google has recently removed Remove China Apps and Mitron from the Google Play Store. Even though these two apps created hype among the people, Google removed the apps citing technical and policy violations. Google has come under heavy fire on social media platforms over their relationship with China despite the huge popularity of the Remove China Apps app. The search-engine giant has now come up with a clarification as to why they removed Mitron and Remove China Apps.
Commenting on the development, Sameer Samat, Vice President, Android, and Google Play disclosed that the company removed a video app for several technical policy violations. Google works with developers to resolve issues. The company has been asked to resubmit the apps after rectification of the security vulnerabilities.
Google has provided the required guidance to the developer. The company will once again verify the app upon resubmission and could be included on the Google Play Store. There is a possibility of the Mitron app to be back on the Play Store if the developer rectifies the identified problems. It is to be noted that the Mitron is reportedly a copy of the existing short video app named TicTic.
Talking about the Remove China Apps, the app automatically detects third-party Chinese apps on smartphones and bulk delete them. The app becomes highly popular because of the current trend of the people to boycott Chinese products.
Responding to queries, Samat added that there is a longstanding rule designed to ensure a healthy and competitive environment. The developers can easily succeed based upon design and innovation. The apps should not be allowed to target other apps. The end result won’t be ideal for our community of developers and consumers.
The same policy has been enforced against other apps in several countries consistently in the past. He added that the Remove China Apps have been suspended as it encourages or incentivizes users into the removal of the third-party app.
The app is also intended to modify device settings, which is against the policies of Google. From our point of view, the Remove China Apps won’t hit Google Play Store again since the app is critical against one country. Google is not interested to anger China since the country is the manufacturing base. The Remove China Apps had fetched over one million downloads and was also the top free app. The video-sharing Mitron has been downloaded by over 5 million users with an average rating of 4.7 on Play Store.
