Monday, July 26, 2010

Is Google starting to filter the Android Market?


One big difference between Android and iPhone is the openness of their respective markets for applications. Censorship of apps for iPhone is a major complaint of users whereas Android apps are supposed to be “uncensored”. Google has had a market content policy (which for instance prohibits “pornography, obscenity, nudity or sexual activity”) since the beginning, but this was barely enforced. The result is that lots of “sexy babes” apps are usually cluttering any look at the "Just In” category in the Android market app.

Last week, we mentioned that one Android developer, “For-side.com Co. Ltd”, had completely disappeared from the Android market along with his 4,000 apps. At the end of last week, another notorious publisher, “StoneJordan”, with another 500 apps, was removed. (If you want to get an idea of the apps involved, a google search will still bring up some outdated information on those apps).

Google occasionally removes apps deemed to be malicious, copyright infringing apps, or for instance YouTube downloaders, but we haven’t seen reports of Google removing hundreds or thousands of apps at a time by pulling a full developer account. Are these two events in the same week just coincidence or a change in direction of Google’s handling of the Android Market? We welcome this new development, as we value quality of apps much more than quantity, but at the same time wonder how far will Google go in enforcing its content policies?

UPDATE 27/7: It seems very unlikely to us that these developers suddenly decide to remove all their apps from the market, as some people suggest. Why would they? And today, another one, "sowallpaper.com", with ~1,500 apps is gone. This means over 6,000 apps removed in less than a weeks time.

See our previous articles on the AppBrain blog for more information.
at 3:16 PM

29 comments:

  1. It's a tough balance. I would rather have hundreds of crappy, useless apps than have draconian censorship but some form of filtering is useful. The trouble is where you draw the line.

    I think Google should allow all apps but have a button to report offensive content directly from the market. If a set trigger-level is hit then Google are informed and investigate the app, blocking those which contain, for example, child abuse, personal data harvesting or copyright breaches.

    Android is all about Openness so going down the Apple route of blocking apps just because they are a bit shit or might stop them/the carriers from making some extra money is a bad idea

    ReplyDelete
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  2. The solution is to make it easier for people to find quality apps they want and filter out the noise. I should have the ability to request to never see certain types of apps, rather than some committee deciding what I can see.

    ReplyDelete

  3. Filtering would be good. I don't mind them removing apps wholesale either as long as it follows a clearly stated policy - after all, you can always bypass the market completely if you want an app not available in it.

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  4. Bring over the "report spam" feature from Gmail! It's flawless! It's probably a brilliant algorithm or uses user reporting, or more likely a combination of both. What ever system it is bring it to the Android Market! simples!

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  5. How about we wait for some confirmation of who removed these apps and why first?

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  6. @Jeff there is a report offensive content button on each app entry already in the market. just choose an app and scroll down a bit.

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  7. Sowallpaper.com was a market spammer. 1500 apps of the same bikini girls with 1500 different names.

    ReplyDelete

  8. I like the open concept, but nothing should EVER allow spam. There're always gonna be scumbags out there jacking up stuff. This should not be allowed in the name of 'open'.

    ReplyDelete

  9. A crappy wallpaper app isn't quite spam though since it's not quite like unsolicited mail that shoves itself in your face, just that it's mostly low on the function side and/or tends to be crappy. What I think *would* work though would be some sort of active meta-moderation that we've seen work successfully on sites like Digg/Reddit/Slashdot; Android users have always rated apps, they'd just need to let these ratings kick in as a filter when users search or browse for stuff on the Market, and let the query-relevant AND actually good apps float to the top. (AppBrain still doesn't do a very good job at this yet, I have to say.)

    Perhaps a better way to changing the current situation would be to lead by example? ;)

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  10. I like to think that Google pulled some of those apps after discovering anomalies with the way the Android apps handle on-phone data or how the apps ignore user-defined network connectivity.

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  12. I'm glad to see sowallpaper.com go. They were a waste. Probably billions of copyright violations from some crappy company in China. That's my guess. THANK GOD, we needed that. I bet google has some kind of algorithm for finding spammers of low quality content like that, and then they probably investigate. Nearly all of their apps had <50 downloads.

    ReplyDelete

  13. I'm not sure I asking in the right place the the blog but if I'm wrong section/thread, please forgive me.

    My question is: when I found the interest apps in the site (eg. The sexy girl 106) and I try to install from via my phone, it's appear the message "The request item could not be found"

    I hope someone can help me out from this error
    Regards,

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