Google Play sees 47% decline in apps since start of last year

https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/29/google-play-sees-47-decline-in-apps-since-start-of-last-year/

by GeekyBear • 1 year ago

355 258 1 year ago

fidotron2• 1 year ago

One factor Google didn’t cite was the new trader status rule enforced by the EU as of this February, which began requiring developers to share their names and addresses in the app’s listing.

Yep, it was probably that.

Aerroon2• 1 year ago

This effectively kills apps that are made by individuals or very small businesses that can't afford an office.

It's kind of incredible how the EU makes changes like this and then politicians scratch their heads about the weakness of European tech. You would think that the politicians would give some thought to that and make it easier/cheaper to fulfill these requirements, but nope. Either pay up for a company (hundreds of euros) and an office (hundreds of euros) or just have your information publicly available.

And when that information becomes publicly available you will be inundated with spam.

On top of that some services will then take Google street view pictures of your home and link all of that information together in an easily searchable database.

leonidasv• 1 year ago

Apparently you can use a P.O. Box as address for this purpose[0] when registering for AppStore, which is substantially cheaper. However, Reddit says Google does not accept P.O. Boxes [1], so the only option is a "virtual" office address or something like that. A shame.

[0] https://developer.apple.com/help/app-store-connect/manage-co...

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/FlutterDev/comments/1f4nmny/comment...

makeitdouble4• 1 year ago

the EU makes changes like this

The actual change is not by the EU, but by Google who interprets a EU directive and decides how to apply it to its platform.

This is a big difference, in that the EU requires a verified _contact_ address for _traders_ operating on a marketplace.

From there Google deciding to blanket require onerous verification on anyone publishing any app is Google's call and they should get the blame for it.

For comparison you get a different application of the same rules on the AppStore, and none of that for F-Droid.

hulitu4• 1 year ago

It's kind of incredible how the EU makes changes like this

Haha, how perverse from Google to blame the EU. Google just want more data from you.

sschueller• 1 year ago

My personal phone number is listed on Google play because I could not get my business number verified. I tried for weeks.

cyral3• 1 year ago

Almost the same here until they let us verify by document. Can't receive texts to our support number, and also can't get the verification code by phone since there is a "Press 1 for ___" thing at the beginning of the call.

dusted3• 1 year ago

Yep, this is why I dropped out.

trunch• 1 year ago

I'm usually very supportive of EU tech regulation, but to be honest I don't really want to put my name and address up on apps I throw up on the store

Would like to keep my identity separate to whatever projects I have usually, especially if they're ones that don't 100% align with the your own developer brand that employers might screen for

ragnese• 1 year ago

I have the same mentality as you. But, rather than form an opinion on whatever EU regulation is being interpreted as "requiring" these steps from Google et al, I think I'm going to assert that it's a red herring.

The real issue, IMO, is that it's still too hard to distribute and install applications on my general-purpose computing devices! You can't be on Google's app store if you aren't a "real business" with a physical address and everything? Fine. Let's just distribute our apps on F-Droid, or by just releasing APKs in our GitHub pages, etc.

At least that's still possible with Android. But who knows how much longer they'll even allow that?

makeitdouble4• 1 year ago

That's probably where F-Droid is a better choice in the first place ?

Google Play (and the App store) assume by default commercial intent, and I'm sympathetic to stricter verification rules when there's money changing hands.

colechristensen• 1 year ago

I don't really want to put my name and address up on apps I throw up on the store

As a customer I really want the ability to sue someone who does me wrong, call them out publicly, or at least avoid their products. In no way is it reasonable that someone should want to stay anonymous while selling me something (or profiting off of it in one way or another). I really don't see a reason to make an exception for people who have free+offline+etc apps.

You're publishing software, you need to be identifiable.

o11c2• 1 year ago

From what I can tell, this all should apply only to monetized apps (and I agree with that). If that's not actually the case, Google is using malicious compliance to misguide developers into hating the EU for daring to regulate them.

Ferret74462• 1 year ago

It is always true that people love regulation until it ends up affecting them negatively, through the magic of unintended consequences and emergent phenomenon in complex systems like human societies and economies.

tslocum• 1 year ago

Several FOSS apps of mine were removed from Google Play because of this. I wrote about one solution for other affected developers here:

https://rocket9labs.com/post/on-the-importance-of-f-droid/

stringtoint• 1 year ago

Agreed. My 3 free apps, one with +100k downloads were also removed because of the EU ruling. Don't want my personal address and phone number to be more accessible to bad actors more than it already is. While I can somewhat follow the idea, the execution in practice has serious flaws.

hulitu4• 1 year ago

were also removed because of the EU ruling.

It has nothing to do with EU. see jwz.

LVB• 1 year ago

Doesn't Apple require this too? (https://developer.apple.com/help/app-store-connect/manage-co...)

mullingitover3• 1 year ago

Instead of only banning broken apps that crashed, wouldn’t install, or run properly, the company said it would begin banning apps that demonstrated “limited functionality and content.” That included static apps without app-specific features, such as text-only apps or PDF-file apps. It also included apps that provided little content, like those that only offered a single wallpaper. Additionally, Google banned apps that were designed to do nothing or have no function, which may have been tests or other abandoned developer efforts.

Sounds like it was a purge of zero value apps. Why was Google allowing these legions of unusable and/or garbage apps in their store in the first place? Someone padding their numbers?

ozim4• 1 year ago

Because we want people to be able to create trash apps and publish them.

Just like we want people to create trash blogs and trash websites so they can learn or just express themselves.

Having 3rd world devs making more todo apps is not optimal but they should be able to do that and publish them.

Preventing all of that also prevents good small time community apps because suddenly you have to pay money and can’t just do nice app for local communities.

mullingitover3• 1 year ago

Because we want people to be able to create trash apps and publish them.

That's a moot point, though, since you don't need Google's app store to publish apps. You can just send whatever random APK you throw together to your friend, post them on your web site, etc. There's no reason to turn the Play Store into a dumpster.

If anything the fact that you can sideload on Android and install alternative stores means the Play Store should be at least as selective as Apple's store, if not more so, since failure to meet that store's standards doesn't mean the app can't be distributed elsewhere.

bongodongobob• 1 year ago

Well PlayStation, Nintendo, etc don't just let anyone publish anything. I see no reason to force them to lower their standards for trash shovelware. As long as you can still sideload apps, it's their store and they can set their own standards.

tgsovlerkhgsel3• 1 year ago

"Trash apps" and "more todo apps" isn't what this rule is preventing. It's preventing "apps" that are essentially just a viewer for a built in static text, PDF or image file. Which can and should be replaced by a text, PDF or image file, or a web site.

brulard• 1 year ago

Where do you set the bar for "good enough" app? It makes sense to allow shitty apps and let the reputation grow somehow.

barryrandall• 1 year ago

One could assume that the previous priority was "grow the app catalog through the use of a permissive listing model," and it's changed to "improve the quality of the app catalog by being more selective about who and what is allowed to be listed."

Lammy4• 1 year ago

This is because they removed any app from any individual-human developer who didn't care to jump through the hoops of getting and submitting a DUNS number: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2023/07/boosting-t...

“On August 31, we’ll start rolling out these requirements for anyone creating new Play Console developer accounts. In October, we’ll share more information with existing developers about how to update and verify existing accounts.”

Source: happened to me and all of my apps despite them being Free Software and offline-only. Here's one of the emails they sent me about it: https://i.imgur.com/dVzQj2p.jpeg

Notice how they open with “Hi Developers at [my first and last name]” – developers, plural, and “at” like they only expect me to be a company and not a single person.

cyral3• 1 year ago

The DUNS number thing is such a disaster even for companies with it. We had a the account under a DUNS of a subsidiary but somehow they wanted us to upload verification docs for the main company, of course not matching exactly how they expect, and there is no way to change it without jumping through a bunch of hoops. Similar issues at Apple. Eventually they let us verify the account with "company letterhead" as if that proves anything (despite them insisting the letterhead needs to say dev@company.com instead of support@company.com, again proving nothing really)

For both Apple and Google it's one of those processes where the support doesn't even really seem to understand how it works (they probably don't know what automated emails are being sent, and what the dev side looks like). They would randomly close cases for "no response" immediately after they replied, ask us to upload something despite their being no way to upload it, tell us to ignore the "your account will be closed email" because it actually won't be (wrong again), etc.

DUNS own lookup page doesn't even let you look up by DUNS number (so we could figure out what company some ancient number was associated with). I bet it's because you have to pay for one of their "solutions" to do this.

arghwhat8• 1 year ago

Validation issues happen all the time for subsidiaries when the parent company likes to own/manage things. Always fun when e.g. EV certificate validation (sigh windows update stuff) calls the parent company reception and asks for the manager listed as owner, and they just go "who?".

jll29• 1 year ago

It seems like to Google, "customers" will only ever be anonymous data points in an A/B test.

They would have gone down quickly if they hadn't "borrowed" Overture's business model of paid ads.

They have no culture of valuing the customers, or (like Amazon) obsessing about what they need.

Apple is at least slightly different: hardware customers and high-value employees are treated okay from what I hear, but devs are left alone.

Indie developers bring both Apple and Google a lot of revenue indirectly, but they don't really have much of a lobby (maybe they should unionize/hire a lobby firm together).

827a• 1 year ago

Yeah, DUNS numbers are super easy IME for companies to get, but its hell after that. We had some crazy problems with the App Store where our legal address with DUNS didn't match what we provided Apple, even though we had updated it with D&B, but Apple's systems weren't pulling in that update, Apple told us to talk to D&B, D&B told us to talk to Apple... we ended up literally just making a new corporation and starting from scratch.

echelon• 1 year ago

Both Apple and Google need to be regulated. Their vice grip on app distribution, app defaults, search defaults, payments defaults, user credential saving defaults, messaging defaults, browser defaults, and then their brutal taxation of almost all web e-commerce and businesses is beyond the scale of whatever Standard Oil had.

You cannot do business on the Internet without paying the Apple and Google toll. They control all the points of ingress and egress, and they tax everything that moves.

It'd be bad enough if they were just charging money, but they also make you jump through hoops to design software their way, do unplanned upgrades to their cadence, prevent you from deploying emergency hot patches, prevent you from updating software dynamically, prevent you from knowing your own customer, etc. etc. etc.

And they're happy to sell your competitors ads to outrank you for your own trademark.

These companies need to lose their control over this. Web distributed apps must become the norm.

You can't tell me that with sandboxing, signature scanning, and some clever heuristics, that we can't make mobile completely safe for free and open distribution.

yieldcrv• 1 year ago

yeah for real, if you have a holding company for the one asset, the app, these stores make it a nightmare to manage some normal best practices

eitally• 1 year ago

This happens to Google Cloud partners all the time, too, when there are acquisitions, mergers, or DBAs where the legal business entity changes even though the practical relationship stays the same (with the same people, same contact details, same billing/payment accounts, same contract terms, etc). It's extremely irritating.

arghwhat8• 1 year ago

I haven't tried the specific flow for private individuals (seems to just be a radio button), but I do recall getting DUNS numbers as just filling in an online form with name and location and getting the number by mail, without any hoops for fees.

A bit silly to require for private individuals, and a bit annoying to have to go back and do, but not itself a big deal.

Lammy4• 1 year ago

I do recall getting DUNS numbers as just filling in an online form with name and location and getting the number by mail, without any hoops for fees

Having to do it at all is the hoop, and more than zero hoops is too many. I got nothing out of having my apps on Google Play except the joy of sharing in what was at the time a new and exciting medium.

See Windows Phone for a great example of how it would have played out if Google hadn't successfully courted small-time devs like me and countless others. Corporate publishers would have never colonized Google Play in the first place if an audience wasn't already there. The way they addressed me makes it very clear that solo devs are no longer needed, so I will never submit to it on principle no matter how easy it's claimed to be.

sneak2• 1 year ago

I’m currently working with a startup that was just incorporated. We needed to join the Apple Developer Program to get APNS push certs to set up our MDM.

It took over five weeks to get our ADP membership approved, and that was with internal backchannels. We had to launch without MDM, all the laptops on mostly default settings.

These companies are making so much money from ads and rentseeking and IAP cancer that they have zero incentive to do anything else well. They know they have a monopoly position, so just like the public utilities charging you an extra $2 convenience fee to pay your bill, you’ll shut up and take it, because they are the only game in town.

You know it, and they know it, and they know you know it.

At least on Android you can install f-droid. On iOS they are the only game in town. There’s fuck-all that’s “insanely great” about not being able to install the programs you want to use (such as Fortnite).

It’s pure rentseeking.

pokstad• 1 year ago

Apple App Store has been like this since the early days before IAP existed. It’s just how they operate.

streptomycin2• 1 year ago

It's not just getting a DUNS number. You also need to consent to having your home address (no PO box or virtual mailbox, needs to be a physical address for your "business") listed publicly on the DUNS website and on all your Google Play Store app pages.

Other app stores are similar, so probably it's some dumb government regulation.

cyberax• 1 year ago

Home address? They asked me for an address in a commercially zoned district.

bcye4• 1 year ago

It seems that is only the case should you choose to monitise your app, which is fair?

https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...

jonas21• 1 year ago

so probably it's some dumb government regulation.

Yeah, they need to show your address and phone number to comply with the EU's Digital Services Act.

There's more info here (from Apple's docs, but the same applies to Google):

https://developer.apple.com/help/app-store-connect/manage-co...

odo1242• 1 year ago

There’s even more than that, actually: if you’re an individual developer you also need 10 people to beta-test your app for 2 weeks, along with having your home address listed online. Google really doesn’t wan’t anyone who isn’t a company developing apps for Android lol

bugfix• 1 year ago

12 people, actually. And it's down from 20 individual testers requirement from when they introduced this policy last year.

asdfman123• 1 year ago

Yeah. I wanted to make an Android productivity tool that helped me but I didn't want to bother (then) 20 of my friends to test it.

Huge hurdle if you just want to build an app.

georgemcbay• 1 year ago

Ran into this myself late last year. Registered as an individual developer for a free, non-monetized app and had to find 20 people (they reduced the number since) to sign up (and remain signed up) as beta testers for a 2 week period to get the app listed.

Luckily I was able to hit that number (the app is a stat tracking app for the game Destiny 2, so I was able to get beta testers via posting on a subreddit filled with Destiny 2 PvP players). But it took way longer and was way more of a burden compared to getting the same app listed on both the Apple App Store and the Microsoft Windows Store (the app is written in Kotlin/Compose Multiplatform and was relatively easy to make multiplatform).

If I didn't happen to be an Android "main" myself (creating a vested interest in wanting to make the Android version easily available) I might not have bothered with the Play Store hoops give how much of a pain in the ass it was compared to the other listings.

tgsovlerkhgsel3• 1 year ago

Watching it happen, it also felt like hurdle after hurdle kept being added (in addition to the never-stopping API level treadmill).

Even if I were OK with jumping through the current set of hurdles, the promise of a never-stopping hurdle-jumping exercise with new requirements being thrown at me every quarter is not exactly encouraging for anyone who actually has a life outside of developing their apps.

Barrin92• 1 year ago

Google really doesn’t wan’t anyone who isn’t a company developing apps for Android lol

I mean, it's Android. You can publish an app yourself or through an alternative app store. Given that you have options on the platform I don't have a big problem with Google enforcing pretty stringent requirements on their own store. In fact I prefer a pretty clear dividing line between trusted apps in the Play Store and 3rd party apps at your own risk. There was so much crap in the Play Store it was often hard to tell what's a scam and what wasn't.

moffkalast3• 1 year ago

Assigned by Dun & Bradstreet

Uh huh, Google just blatantly requiring every app developer on the planet to register with some specific random company. Absolutely no corruption to see here, none at all.

This is the kind of shit why smartphone vendors can't be trusted with their own walled garden stores, the EU has not yet stomped them into mulch hard enough yet I see.

jodrellblank• 1 year ago

In what sense is that corrupt?

(“dishonest or illegal behaviour”, “the abuse of power or authority for personal gain or benefit”)

pkaye• 1 year ago

I thought this was an EU requirement?

cowsandmilk• 1 year ago

The irony of your comment thinking the EU is going to fight this.

The DUNS number is the European Commission standard for business identification; the choice of D&B isn’t random, it literally came from EU requirements.

ikmckenz• 1 year ago

the EU has not yet stomped them into mulch hard enough yet I see

This is literally the result of EU "stomping"

bcye4• 1 year ago

The linked source only mentions DUNS only being required for organization accounts, not individuals? And I've recently successfully created an account (albeit haven't published an app yet) without one?

greatgib• 1 year ago

Exactly, I happened to have long running apps, in the store, I didn't update them for some time but they were simple and working as designed, good for their job.

Suddenly there was this weird obligation to declare a company or disclose publicly info about me, so i did nothing and it expired, and they removed the app.

mattmaroon• 1 year ago

I did not know that and that’s preposterous, but I don’t think that is the only reason or even the biggest one.

The android store had a whole lot of garbage in it, and a lot of it was the kind that is easy to find and remove.

calderwoodra• 1 year ago

You need a DUNS number for iOS too, fwiw

watusername• 1 year ago

Only for businesses, not individuals.

Source: I pay my yearly Apple tax and I have no DUNS.

maxoakland4• 1 year ago

Oof. Here I was hoping they were removing the scams

redbell• 1 year ago

I saw many solo devs recommend switching to an LLC company to avoid the hassle Google introduced since late 2023, but it doesn't seem to be an easy task either. I've already witnessed two experiences:

https://x.com/stacy_siz/status/1875849200291975339

https://blog.jakelee.co.uk/publishing-on-google-play-without...

Ferret74462• 1 year ago

Honestly you should probably do that anyway. Liability is no joke.

This is also Yet Another Example of how regulation is anti-competitive and hurts small businesses/sole proprietors.

wyager• 1 year ago

The process for getting a DUNS number and getting it approved by Apple was such a nightmare. Even when I did everything correctly, I got flagged for some unspecified reason that required a bunch of extra back-and-forth. I didn't even want to list on the app store - just to allow other people to run some music-related code I wrote without getting stomped by Gatekeeper.

matejdro• 1 year ago

Lately I've noticed many projects on Github either using F-droid or Obtainium. Play Store has really become toxic to anyone not a corporation.

dusted3• 1 year ago

Yeah, I dropped my apps from Play, couldn't find a way to avoid putting my personal address on there.. fuck that, I'm making something for free, and they force me to dox myself for it? Nah, I'm good.

brap• 1 year ago

By “they”, you mean the EU?

healsdata• 1 year ago

The EU regulations don't exclude P.O. Boxes. Google choose to add that requirement.

campl3r2• 1 year ago

EU doesn't force this for free Apps, nor does it prohibit PO boxes. This is Google's choice

kassner2• 1 year ago

Google decided to make it worse than it needed. Those EU regulations are only applicable if your app makes money via IAP or subscriptions. If you are providing a free app, nothing changed, but Google decided that everyone must follow it. That is true even if you choose to not display ads (so at no point Google will send you money).

dusted3• 1 year ago

maybe, or google.. I didn't want to make it into a political thing, EU has done a lot of silly stuff, part due to malice, part to incompetence, but I'd take that any day over the "usa model" of "freedom" :)

uwemaurer• 1 year ago

Here is a chart with the number of Android Apps in Google Play (over time): https://www.appbrain.com/stats/number-of-android-apps

delduca• 1 year ago

I had an app on the Play Store, but I took it down. Bureaucracy isn’t for me.

GeekyBear2• 1 year ago

Another factor:

Google also just increased the target API level requirement for apps on the Google Play Store

https://tech.yahoo.com/phones/articles/google-plays-rules-ki...

We also saw established apps like iA Writer decide to get off the treadmill.

In order to allow our users to access their Google Drive on their phones we had to rewrite privacy statements, update documents, and pass a series of security checks, all while facing a barrage of new, ever-shifting requirements.

https://ia.net/topics/our-android-app-is-frozen-in-carbonite...

mrj• 1 year ago

Yup, this caused me months of work. Many people chose not to bother.

revskill• 1 year ago

Too late. This google store is full of scams apps.

Ah no, it's intentionally made for scammers to boost the Google Play users.

So it's worth to kill itself. Your dirty marketing tacticts is cheap, human become more smarter these days.

jsnell• 1 year ago

For me the really unreasonable change was the app testing requirements on non-corporate developers. Having to get 20 users to beta test an unlisted Android app for two weeks before getting it on the store is not a reasonable thing to require for hobby projects. I'm not sure I even know 20 Android users well enough that I'd feel comfortable asking for that level of engagement from them.

It's a particularly bad policy to launch with existing developers grandfathered out, because the policy probably looks really successful to start with due to the difference in new developer vs. old developer populations -- the entities who are right now making most of the quality apps aren't affected. What's being affected is the pipeline of new developers, but the effect of killing that pipeline won't become obvious for years.

DecentShoes• 1 year ago

This is absolutely insane and will kill the app I'm making. Google has too much power.

Is there some commercial service I can just pay to do this?

aetimmes• 1 year ago

It's called "20 BlueStacks instances in a trenchcoat"

xdfgh11124• 1 year ago

Same here, android already seems less profitable than iOS but this killed any interest I had in supporting android.

sib4• 1 year ago

In the US, there are probably a significant number of hobbyist developers who don't even know 20 Android users.

hampowder2• 1 year ago

When making LearnTheWords[1] I had to wait 6 weeks for approval from Google. They weren't happy with how I documented what this testing process was like. I had to wait 3 rounds of 2 weeks between submissions, writing ever more kafkaesque descriptions of the insights i gleaned from the definitely-not-paid-for test users that i'd required.

I wasn't expecting it to be easier to launch on iOS than Android, but here we are.

[1] https://learnthewords.app

hulitu4• 1 year ago

They weren't happy with how I documented what this testing process was like

Their testing is done by the user. Testing your own software is so strange for them that they don't underestand your docs. /s

pjmlp• 1 year ago

It doesn't surprise me.

There are more apps than people care about.

Nowadays I only install games, or apps for services where I can't do otherwise.

The time for "there is an app for that" is long gone, and the push for developers to artificially update their apps for whatever was presented as great Google IO innovation, or be out of the store, can only lead to outcomes like this.

I imagine that the numbers on Appstore aren't much different.

neuroelectron• 1 year ago

Same. I have a bunch of Apple devices now and the only apps I install are vlc, kindle and brave.

tgsovlerkhgsel3• 1 year ago

It's also impossible to find good apps.

The store has flags indicating whether an app uses in-app purchases or ads, and knows the file size of apps (which is a good proxy of how much data-collecting bloatware is inside).

It doesn't let you easily see the size before installing and doesn't let you search by any of these criteria. So if you wanted to publish a high quality, free, ad-free app, you would immediately be crowded out by the apps that can spend money on ads and SEO because they're full of crap, and your potential users have no chance of finding your app.

Given how easy this would be to implement, it seems obvious that this is an intentional, user-hostile choice because Google doesn't profit off these apps.

vivzkestrel2• 1 year ago

Each app should be rated by a new criteria 1) Size 2) Speed 3) Design 4) Customer Support Speed 5) Average downtime 6) Functionally Satisfactory Score

kshri242• 1 year ago

Technology was supposed to get rid of most of bureaucracy and move the World towards automation. These FAANG companies have instead successfully integrated bureaucracy with technology and have made bureaucracy permanent. Instead of automating away bureaucracy these companies have automated away customer service.

dmix• 1 year ago

The lazy response to any new risk or problem is to just layer on new rules and processes. Large organizations always end up with those things defining their workplace culture (risk aversion, checkbox culture) and that worldview filters down to the decisions which impact customers.

staplers• 1 year ago

"Never be deceived that the rich will permit you to vote away their wealth." - Lucy Parsons

whimsicalism3• 1 year ago

they do these things in response to governmental pressure.

SupremumLimit• 1 year ago

It is a serious mistake to think that technology can remove bureaucracy. Indeed, technology by its nature makes bureaucracy a lot more rigid. Bureaucracy is about homogenising processes and erasing individual differences, and software reinforces these properties because it allows even less human input or deviation from the process. (That isn't true of all software, just software that is intended to somehow deal with large numbers of people uniformly.)

kshri242• 1 year ago

When I said remove bureaucracy I meant remove bureaucracy from people's lives. Obviously it will exist behind the curtains. I agree with you that software reinforces bureaucratic properties and it should. That is what it was supposed to do. But technology failed when it comes to rectification of any deviations in bureaucratic processes.

For example, assume you are submitting a form and the address is incorrect/not matching exactly what is stored in the database; software should (rightly) flag it and have a human review it and do the necessary correction. Instead we have the worst of both worlds, where the software flags the problem but there is no human in the loop anymore. Even the human is automated out. So the problem is never fixed. Instead, the customer/client who is interacting with the software is indirectly made aware of the internal bureaucratic process but has no recourse.

serial_dev2• 1 year ago

Gee, I wonder why.

Publishing on the Play Store for indie devs or hobby projects just doesn’t make any sense.

You need to jump though so many hoops and doxx yourself in the process, only to make basically no money with the apps, and even if you miraculously do, risk getting kicked out of their platform without any way to contact a competent human.

Even before all this, the general consensus amongst solo app devs was that “don’t waste your time with Android”, now add about a hundred hour of bureaucracy to even get started with your first app, the choice is obvious for many.

I was a long time Android user and switched to iOS because the apps there are just better, I honestly think that Google of running the Android ecosystem into the ground and only the big players will want to go though this mess.

As a Flutter developer, it makes me want to switch to other technologies, because if Android loses its appeal, Flutter, another Google product, offers basically nothing. On web, it scks, on iOS SwiftUI will always have an advantage, Android as discussed is in steady and fast decline, and who the hell needs Flutter desktop apps that have poor integration with the operating system…

throwaway743• 1 year ago

Ugh I'm so fucking fed up with the Play Store and Admob, and how they have no meaningful recourse for solving issues or providing support. It makes me feel hopeless and helpless knowing I have little options outside of relying on them (don't have any apple devices to test on or build my app) and knowing they could give two shits. Especially seeing that their contact options for Admob have been broken for years now and they refuse to fix it or provide actual help. And there seems like there's no way to get them to budge, like even through our reps.

Fuck them. I hope they collapse.

shakabrah2• 1 year ago

Amen. I write Flutter at my day job and am working toward an exit ramp every day.

xdfgh11124• 1 year ago

And here I am writing flutter as a hobby and dreaming I could do it as a day job! That sucks

fidotron2• 1 year ago

I expect Google will attempt something highly amusing, like launching the Play Store on iOS in the EU, with the apps running via a port of the VM (and libraries) to iOS.

flykespice2• 1 year ago

You aren't too farfetched off with Google rolling out Google play PC so users can run playstore games on PC.

They really think they can capitalize on desktop gaming with their ad-riddled p2w casual games.

kyle-rb2• 1 year ago

What exactly is the advantage of Swift UI over Flutter? Maybe it's slightly more efficient since Flutter does its own rendering, but in my experience I've never run into issues with performance.

And I think everything should be web apps anyway (ideally PWAs), but I like that Flutter lets you produce a desktop app from your mobile app with very little effort. Even without any special "integration" with the OS, it's better than packaging a web app in Electron, right?

lawgimenez• 1 year ago

Our app is written in SwiftUI because of the ease between iOS, iPadOS, macOS and Apple Vision. There is just minimal configs to make it work between them. I don't this can be done with any cross-platforms.

Andrex• 1 year ago

I've been hemming and hawing over whether to explore new PWA tech or catch back up on Flutter/Android with a current small-scale personal project... Sounds like I'm going PWA. This seems too onerous for any non-corporate developer.

ttd• 1 year ago

No real comment on mobile, but I disagree with your take on Flutter web. I've deployed a moderately complex Flutter web app (SPA) and have been pleasantly surprised at every turn with how capable it is, from performance to complexity management to testing. And the flexibility to produce an AOT-compiled desktop app from the same codebase, should I choose, is nice to have.

shakabrah2• 1 year ago

Not intended as a gotcha question but how is your a11y?

mvieira38• 1 year ago

Good, I hope it dies off and we get to a state of decentralized app distribution just like PCs have. App stores suck, I don't need Google of all companies knowing every single one of the apps I have on my phone

noisy_boy2• 1 year ago

What would actually happen in that case is exodus towards App Store which I'll not be happy about. For all its issues, I vastly prefer the flexibility of Android over the walled-garden and would hate to leave it.

ddingus5• 1 year ago

It is also nice to keep packages we like for whatever reason.

leesalminen• 1 year ago

My app’s organization is outside the “west”. So in order to complete verification with Google I had to pay some subcontractor of Dunn&Bradstreet almost $500 to get the DUNS. Then I had to get an original certified copy of the organization’s registration from the national registry. Then have an official notarized translation to English and get all that apostilled (another $500 through a service).

Also, Google support refused to tell me what set of documents they would accept. I had to figure it out myself.

kylehotchkiss• 1 year ago

Sounds like you just found a business - offer this to others, you could be the fourth party in the transaction!

noisy_boy2• 1 year ago

Do it via an app listed on... Play Store.

zmmmmm• 1 year ago

Sounds like there are a range of reasons, but the bigger picture explanation is : Google no longer cares about incentivizing apps to be on the store.

The mobile OS wars are over: every company and dev that wants to do anything is locked into having to provide an Android and iOS app no matter how difficult it is, so all the incentives are for Apple / Google to insulate themselves from risk now by raising the bar on devs.

We need to start exercising the minimal rights / capabilities to ship alternative app stores on these platforms. Easier said than done.

aucisson_masque• 1 year ago

Android already has many alternative app store. I believe there is nothing currently for paid app (beside OEM store like galaxy store or Huawei) but if there is a need it's absolutely possible to do.

Apple side on the other hand, good luck with that. Even in Europe they made the rules so strict the third party app store are basically dead.

SchemaLoad• 1 year ago

Web APIs are also more capable than ever before and can be added as icons on the home page. For an individual developer, you are probably better off just doing a web app.

xdfgh11124• 1 year ago

I dunno, many developers already choose to ignore android entirely because it's less profitable. Raising the bar will only encourage that. At least for me the dox your own address + onerous testing requirements make android extremely unappealing

I guess I could publish on fdroid but why bother? The android platform clearly doesn't care about me.

Keyframe5• 1 year ago

many developers already choose to ignore android entirely because it's less profitable

source? all I can find by googling around is about the same number of apps with a bias towards playstore.

campl3r2• 1 year ago

Only in the US. In the rest of the world, Android is king and developers ignore Apple.

olalonde2• 1 year ago

I don't get the new D-U-N-S number requirement. Actual scammers can easily jump through the hoops. It's the small independent devs that won't bother with the bureaucracy, especially those that do it for free.

braiamp2• 1 year ago

The real issue here isn't what the app store sets as requirements. It's that the users can't avoid it to get the applications (or doing so it too confusing).

phendrenad2• 1 year ago

I miss the freewheeling days of Android apps. You'd find all kinds of apps made by solo devs as a labor of love. Later, Google largely killed those apps by severely downranking them in the play store algorithm, and made searching in the play store "we'll show you what we want to show you, the filters do nothing", but you could still install a secondary app store in CyanogenMod and find those weird and fun apps. Is there any of this left? I've heard that the secondary app stores have fallen into disrepair.

umbra073• 1 year ago

F-Droid is what you want. You can find all manners of apps - libre replacements for all your stock system apps, alternate launchers, games, clients for your favorite desktop apps (ex: mpv), and even a proper terminal emulator - complete with a package manager.

theflyestpilot• 1 year ago

wonder if PWAs will normalize under all this grip tightening.

anothereng• 1 year ago

Google didnt let me keep my developer account because I couldnt verify address. The only ways they accept address is with bills that are not in my name so I couldnt verify my address. It's ridiculous given that I have an android phone a gmail account and they know where I live based on location data.

KoolKat23• 1 year ago

That's absurd, every other industry requires proof of address to be IN your name. What are Google doing :/ malicious compliance perhaps?

jonplackett• 1 year ago

I’m an iOS dev coming to Android because I was lucky enough to recently make an iOS app that’s making enough money to be worth porting.

The developer experience of PlayStore is SO BAD compared to the AppStore - which isn’t even that good to start with.

It’s like all the software and websites are just made by people who don’t care at all if you use it or not.

tomrod• 1 year ago

F-Droid needs more apps!

mcv2• 1 year ago

Are there specific apps it's missing?

I don't think more is necessarily better.

flykespice2• 1 year ago

unfortunately crappy UX experience + shaming closed-source apps with "anti-feature" labels is keeping it away from growing

ggm3• 1 year ago

How very American that the requirement to register is to obtain a private fee for service business identification, not some kind of institutionalised public interest registry.

sib4• 1 year ago

Wait - you mean the EU-driven requirement?

ggm3• 1 year ago

Yes. It's totally bizarre that a formalised business identity is held in a commercial enterprise, not some kind of not for profit mutuality or a state enterprise.

Who requires them to do it isn't the point, what Google decided is the formalism to meet EU requirements is the point.

Here is a european collated list of worldwide business registries. The Australian one is a gov.au. the US one is the SEC not D&B

https://ebra.be/worldwide-registers/?location=au

mcv2• 1 year ago

I don't know if it's related, but I recently started using apps from f-droid. Maybe I should have done that much earlier, but necessity forced ky hand. I just can't find good apps on the Play Store anymore. Everything is enshittified. Even simple SMS apps have ads and in-app purchases. For what!?

F-droid apps are simply better these days.

nmstoker• 1 year ago

What do you think maintains this difference on the F-droid side, given there are presumably lower barriers to entry with F-droid?

jlokier• 1 year ago

Actually, F-Droid has quite strict requirements on the apps it will accept, and it enforces them.

Low-effort spammy apps with ads and in-app purchases are unlikely to be accepted.

Standard Android in-app purchases, efficient notifications, or ads which use Google services, won't be accepted at all, though FLOSS versions of those things are ok in principle.

From https://f-droid.org/docs/Inclusion_Policy/ :

All applications in the repository must be Free, Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) – for example, released under a GPL or Apache license.
Every effort is made to verify that this is actually the case, both by visual inspection of the source, and by building the application from the published source.
We cannot build apps using Google’s proprietary “Play Services”.
We cannot build apps using proprietary tracking/analytic dependencies like Crashlytics and Firebase.
We cannot build apps using proprietary ad libraries.
The source code for the application must be maintained in a publicly accessible Version Control System which we have support for
The original app author has been notified (and does not oppose the inclusion).

daedrdev2• 1 year ago

Weren't the number of apps already down by like 60% since 2016?

wnevets• 1 year ago

Do people still actively care about phone apps? I avoid installing them whenever possible.

AtNightWeCode• 1 year ago

Google has always been hostile towards indiedevs but they have become complete garbage. They do things like removing apps because they have "banned" keywords in the naming. Apps that been around for +5 years. Or you have to comply to some new bs. Or they tried to force you to use Google pay and so on.

Google play has always been totally corrupt. But it is even worse today. The amount of trash spreading through their own programs is massive and then they are banning apps that does not even claim any permissions.

As always with Google, money talks. If you are a small corp you are pretty much screwed. If you are a big client Google will call you and tell you how they fixed your issues before you even knew about them. I really hate working with Google and hope they get split up and destroyed in the anti-trust case. (Yeah, I know the corp is named Alphabet)

maxoakland4• 1 year ago

This is phrased like a bad thing, but it’s actually a good thing. I’m an iOS user and I can tell you Apple is not doing a good job keeping the App Store free of scams. I’m guessing Google is doing a much better job and this is the result

Retr0id• 1 year ago

Genuine question, how do you encounter the scams?

I haven't "browsed" the app store for a long time, I only go to find an app if I already know it exists.

alwillis• 1 year ago

I’m an iOS user and I can tell you Apple is not doing a good job keeping the App Store free of scams.

No App Store is going to be 100% free of scams.

In my experience of having downloaded several hundred iOS apps over the years, it’s pretty difficult for most people to download a scam app unless a user is specifically trying to download free, fringe apps from developers you’ve never heard of.

But if you’re interested in mainstream apps that address real issues by developers who are attempting to make excellent apps that take advantage of Apple’s technology and ecosystem, the quality of iOS apps has never been better.

I just checked—the revenue of the App Store was over $100 billion dollars in FY 2024. That says to me customers are finding useful apps they’ll willing to subscribe to.

vivzkestrel2• 1 year ago

but it can be made 99% free from 90% right ?

bigyabai• 1 year ago

That says to me customers are finding useful apps they’ll willing to subscribe to.

My kingdom to hear Microsoft argue that in the IE case.

"Yes, we're obviating serious competition and deliberately hamstringing our competitors. But just look at how large the Internet Explorer install-base is! Clearly users are deriving value from our browser. Also it stops viruses or something."

1970-01-01• 1 year ago

Good riddance! Apps (in general, there are many exceptions) are a slimy way to put your idea into the world. The vast majority of apps can simply be a website with zero loss of function. If you're not doing something special with my phone hardware, I'm absolutely not downloading your app.

fracus• 1 year ago

I've starting using less and less apps as the years go by. No more facebook, insta, twitter, tic toc. A lot of very useful apps like a calculator, flashlight, magnifyer, all that stuff is stock.

muzani4• 1 year ago

Unfortunately, buying basic things requires an app now. Paying off my credit card and house requires an app. Getting a "taxi" needs to be done by app. School updates for tomorrow's homework go through Telegram, telling the teachers to send my daughter down from class requires WhatsApp. Whitelisting visitors to come in requires a security management app.

I have an autogate that can't be opened manually. It came with a remote, but only one, so we use an app to open the gate. My door has a fingerprint sensor that malfunctions when it's humid. So I need to open my front door with an app and because it's a free app, I have to watch an ad to open my front door.

rocketvole• 1 year ago

...Are you serious about opening the door? What app/company makes your door?

ddingus5• 1 year ago

These seem like poor tech choices more than "an app is required to buy basic things."

When the whole "there is an app for that" mess started, I could be found saying, there is a browser for that too!

You are right about one thing, and that is everyone is asking whether people have their app. This is constant.

My answer has and will continue to be, "nope."

And yes, I have a browser for that.

The apps I find worth using are all enabling in some way, sensor data, advanced calculator, viewers and the like have real value.

Wrapping transactions into apps where the sole purpose is data harvesting and blasting me ads and offers, adds ZERO net value.

Products that require an app should be considered broken.

Seriously.

All of that pushes people, who for whatever reason choose app dependency, into scenarios like you shared with us here.

That stuff us broken man. You really would benefit from a general reconsideration of your product and service selection means and methods.

What is the product value when "needs your phone is off the table.

Does it have value without a phone? Should it? (In almost every case, yes!)

Please don't take my comment as an attack. Nothing personal here, no judgment either. You are by no means alone. M

jaimex2• 1 year ago

Google's loss

I had useful free apps deleted. They worked, now the alternatives are all ad infested slop.

I CBF jumping through their hoops, might just move them to alternative stores

everyone• 1 year ago

Apple have been forced by EU to allow the web and PWA's to work on iOS, so there is no longer a need to make natives apps for both Android and iOS anymore, u can just make a PWA.

mgkimsal3• 1 year ago

Can you not just install an android app from a website? I always thought that was part of the attraction of Android - you could install without an app store requirement like ios. Actually.... I seem to remember building a couple android apps and just linking from a website but... that was... 8(!) years ago. Is that still a thing? Was it ever, or did I just misremember that?

umbra073• 1 year ago

Yes, but:

1. It's disabled by default. You have to dig around in your phone's settings to enable APK installations, and APK installations through the specific app you prompted the installer from. And if the developer hasn't updated the app for recent versions of Android, Google will throw up a antivirus-esque "warning this app is unsafe blah blah" prompt.

2. You can't automatically update an app if you manually installed it through an APK. There are apps that can kind of do this (automatically download APK from source website on new release, notify user). But that's clunky and not suitable unless your audience is FOSS-land. Oh, and the user still has to manually click the install button for each app they update this way. No silent updates unless you're rooted.

This makes the distribution of apks through your own processes wholly unviable unless your app is mandatory for your users (I. E for work/school), or your user base is Android FOSS enthusiasts - who probably prefer that you use F-Droid (3rd party FOSS appstore) anyways

mgkimsal3• 1 year ago

Thanks. I've asked people to do testing like this, and with limited people it was manageable. And the last android app I did was internal to a company with maybe 15 users. Getting people to do install/update was ... manageable, just.

iggldiggl• 1 year ago

It's disabled by default. You have to dig around in your phone's settings to enable APK installations

At least since the time that the "install apps from unknown sources" permission was migrated from a global toggle to an app-specific permission (maybe even before that?), the dialogue that pops up to tell you that installation has been blocked has a button for directly taking you to the correct settings screen for toggling the permission, so it's just two extra taps.

Sure, at scale even that will confuse/scare off some users, but it's not insurmountable and nowhere near as obscure as having "to dig around in your phone's settings" – just two extra taps and you're good to go (unless your phone manufacturer has made things more complicated there, which does remain a possibility).

mastazi• 1 year ago

As others have noted this is basically security theater because many legitimate apps are being removed and many spammy apps are staying up.

I work at a company that created some whitelabel apps for some popular brands and recently the apps have been taken down for "impersonation" despite the fact that we presented all the necessary paperwork mutliple times before (documents signed by the legal owners of the trademarks).

This supposed "cleanup" operation of the Play Store is just a very sloppy attempt by Google, a company that should be able to do better given the its size and resources.

Mr_Minderbinder• 1 year ago

I cannot remember the last time I downloaded and installed an app from the Play Store (it must have been several years ago). Instead I have been getting apps from GitHub, F-Droid or the developer’s website.

caseyy• 1 year ago

I don't remember who wrote the report, but a recent games industry report made its way to my desk, and it stated that considerably more games were removed from mobile stores than added over the last few quarters.

I think that could be due to some uncertainty in the market about the future of mobile gaming. Mobile AAA never caught on, and the industry tried it with CoD, Civilization, Mario, Fortnite, Resident Evil, GTA, Assassin's Creed, and others. Only Pokémon Go and Genshin were exceptions on the AAA side due to strong mechanics (Pokémon: ARG appeal, Genshin: gacha profits).

Meanwhile, the small-budget side has become extremely overcrowded by trash-level asset flips, gachas, and ads with vague game elements. Many genuinely talented game developers are asking, "Does my game fit in the mobile markets?" and concluding that the answer is probably closer to no than a yes.

Maybe this is just the natural life cycle of the stores. Moderation doesn't keep up with use, leading to disappointed users and abandonment. Do you remember when we used to check the App Store occasionally for new fun apps during the iPhone 4/4S era? We'd get like an accelerometer app that turns a phone into a silly beer pint, and it'd be quite clever and novel. Or we'd download pedometers, and that was quite a novel and smart tool to track exercise. All because they were promoted on the stores. That's a distant memory for me; I only go to the stores to download the things I already know I need, they have turned into package managers for me.

FMecha2• 1 year ago

Mid-budget mobile game devs in Asia not only relies on gacha, but also sexual/parasocial appeal (with the characters), to boot.

kassner2• 1 year ago

I’ve read through the comments here, and something most people here don’t get is the importance of App Stores for discoverability. The first thing non-developers think when you tell them “download xyz app” is to open the App/Play Store and search there. If your stuff isn’t there it just doesn’t exist.

That’s specially true for 3rd-world countries (I can only speak about Brazil, but my guess India would be pretty similar), where for a long while obtaining apps was a dice roll if you’d get a malware or not. Eventually the Play Store made it safer, but also created a group memory of “stuff outside Play Store is cut-and-dry unsafe”. In the circles I have access, people would hesitate to even open your website if you tell them to, but saying “my app is on the Play Store” makes it instantly “safe” in their minds.

I’m still in the process of bringing my App to the Play Store (after being on Apple’s for 3 months now), and honestly catering to Android with the new rules has been the biggest regret in my 20-year career so far. Yet, there is no alternative, because every time I tell people about my project, they always come back saying “I couldn’t find it” when the project name is literally a domain name.

-__---____-ZXyw• 1 year ago

Great development.

F-Droid continues to be great.

Google Play sees 47% decline in apps since start of last year

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