Half the Google Play Store apps just disappeared – here's why

Google has been purging apps from its Android app store, with around half culled in the past year.

A new report from TechCrunch (using figures from Appfigures) notes that, from the start of 2024 to today, the Google Play Store dropped from 3.4 million apps worldwide to around 1.8 million apps. That’s a loss of 47% of the apps available to Android users.

This isn’t a general trend either, as Apple’s iOS App Store library grew ever so slightly during the same time, from 1.6 million to 1.64 million apps.

Why are Android apps disappearing?

Google’s shorter, more lax app review process has led to a proliferation of poor quality and even downright scamming apps on the Google Play Store.

The sheer number of apps has made it tougher for the genuine article from hard working developers to get noticed.

This led Google to raise its minimum requirements for app apps in July 2024 – smack bang in the middle of the period in question. From this point on, Google announced that it would cull apps that had “limited functionality and content,” rather than for simply being broken.

What does Google say about the drop in apps?

In response to this investigation, Google also revealed that it had invested in AI threat detection to cut down on hostiles apps on the Play Store, as well as instituting stronger privacy laws.

The result of these combined measures is that the company rejected the applications of a staggering 2.36 million apps, and banned more than 158,000 developer accounts – all preventing potentially harmful or policy-violating apps from being made available to Android users.

It is worth noting one final point, however: app releases are up 7.1% year on year as of April. Hopefully this indicates a resurgence of genuine top quality apps and games rather than a return to the Wild West days of the Google Play Store.