Google removed almost half of all apps from Google Play

The Google Play platform has significantly reduced the number of available applications since the beginning of 2024. According to TechCrunch, citing statistics from analytics company Appfigures, the number of apps in the Google store decreased from 3.4 million to 1.8 million. This means that the Google Play catalog has shrunk by almost half – by 47%.

Such a sharp decline does not reflect a global trend in the mobile app market. For comparison, the Apple App Store showed a small growth over the same period, increasing its catalog from 1.6 million to 1.64 million items. However, for Google's ecosystem, these changes are viewed as positive. Users now encounter fewer fraudulent schemes, spam, and simply low-quality content that previously often occupied high positions in search results. Honest developers, in turn, receive more fair competition conditions and better visibility for their products.

For many years, Google Play differed from the App Store with a less strict approach to reviewing applications before publication, favoring automated procedures and scanning for malicious code for the sake of speed. This led to the store being flooded with low-quality products. Apple, on the contrary, has always maintained more thorough manual moderation.

The situation changed in July 2024, when Google announced a substantial increase in the minimum quality requirements for applications. Now, not only are malfunctioning apps that work incorrectly, fail to install, or frequently "crash" not allowed for publication, but also projects with limited functionality or minimal content.