Google suspends Indian ‘Remove China Apps’ from the Play Store

The app was found to violate the Play Store's Deceptive Behavior Policy.

What you need to know

• Remove China Apps, which was the top trending app in India recently, has been removed from the Play Store.
• Since late May, the app was downloaded over 5 million times in the country.
• The app allowed users to delete all apps developed by Chinese companies from their phones.

An app called Remove China Apps went viral in India last month, amid growing anti-China sentiments in the country. It crossed the 1 million downloads milestone within just ten days of its debut on the Play Store. It was also the top trending app on the Play Store in India for two days. The app has now been removed by Google for violating the Play Store's Deceptive Behavior Policy (via TechCrunch).

The policy states that an app listed on the Play Store is not allowed to make any changes to the user's device settings or features outside of the app without the user's consent, and nor can it encourage users to remove or disable a third-party app.

Before it was removed from the Play Store, the app had been installed over 5 million times. The anti-China sentiments, which made the app so popular among Android users in India, started after Chinese soldiers moved into Indian territory along the disputed Himalayan border between the two nations.

Remove China Apps allowed users to "scan" their phones to determine apps of Chinese origin. After a scan was completed, the app would either congratulate one on having no Chinese apps or show a list of Chinese apps installed on their device.

While the majority of the app's installs were in India, data from App Annie revealed that it was quite popular in Australia as well, grabbing the No.5 position in the country among Android tools apps for a few days.

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