Google Play Store has seen a massive decline in the number of apps it offers. That may not be a bad thing, though. At the start of 2024, Google Play hosted around 3.4 million apps worldwide. Today, that number is around 1.8 million, according to Appfigures.
Google has removed almost half of apps from the Google Play Store
As you can see, that is a sharp 47% decline in around a year, as around 1.6 million apps are now gone. And before you jump to that conclusion, no, that is not a trend these days. Apple’s App Store went from 1.6 million to 1.64 million in the same time frame.
So, what’s happening here? Why did Google Play lose 1.6 million apps? Well, Google is probably the reason for that, and it may not be a bad thing. Back in July last year, Google tightened its policies when it comes to app quality.
Back then, Google said that it would start banning not just apps that are broken, but apps that offer “limited functionality and content”. Google wanted to get rid of low-quality and spammy apps, basically.
The company explained why this happened
The company even confirmed, while speaking to TechCrunch, that this played a role in the sharp decline over at the Google Play Store. Google said that tougher rules, along with stricter developer verification, mandatory testing for new accounts, and expanded human reviews all played a role here
Google went on to say that it managed to block 2.36 million apps that violated Play Store policies before they even launched. The company also banned over 158,000 developer accounts due to harmful behavior.
Appfigures did note that it began seeing a decline in the number of apps on the Google Play Store even before the start of Google’s app purge, though.
2025-04-30 15:07:07