At least 20 ad-blocking and virtual private network (VPN) apps owned by analytics firm Sensor Tower may have been secretly spying on users’ phones, according to a BuzzFeed News investigation on Monday. Read More >>
Google would like you to know that it DOES NOT APPRECIATE apps with "disruptive" ads that either try to sell you stuff while you're not actually using the app, or fool you into tapping on ads you didn't intend to. Read More >>
It feels like a lifetime has passed since WWDC 2019 in early June, when Apple announced Apple Arcade, a monthly subscription service that gives users access to a curated list of games on the App Store. Now, while people continue to wait for Apple Arcade to go live later this autumn, it seems Google is testing out something similar with its Google Play Pass. Read More >>
Google has yanked several apps from its Play Store after cybersecurity firm Avast identified them as “all likely designed by a Russian developer to allow people to stalk employees, romantic partners, or kids,” CNET reported on Wednesday. Read More >>
The US Federal Trade Commission on Monday said that Apple and Google had removed three dating apps from their respective app stores after – yikes – the agency found they allowed children under the age of 13 to sign up, collected data on them in likely violation of federal law, and could allow sexual predators to contact children, CNBC reported. Read More >>
Google has begun purging the Play Store of apps made by DO Global, a Chinese firm that makes Android apps and is partially backed by Baidu, after a BuzzFeed News report indicated it was committing massive ad fraud. Read More >>
Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store both continue to host a Saudi government app, Absher, that allows men in the country to track their female relatives’ movements and restrict their travel. Read More >>
Google yanked some 29 photo apps from the Play Store this week after they were discovered to have malicious code that pushes full-screen ads, steals information from users by tricking them into believing they have won a contest, and in some cases even lifted photos from devices to send to the malware designers behind the apps, Engadget reported this weekend. Read More >>
When Fortnite developer Epic Games decided to skip the Google Play Store and asked players to install the newly released Android app from its website instead, the decision made a lot of sense financially. By cutting out Google, Epic could now retain 100 percent of the game’s profits on Android, rather than let Google take its traditional 30 per cent cut for apps hosted on Google Play. Read More >>
Project Tango, as we know, is a swathe prototype smart devices that can see in 3D. Although they're mostly aimed at developers, that's not stopping Google from putting the development kit tablet on the US Play Store, along with a $1,024 (just over £650) price tag – although it's not actually for sale quite yet. Read More >>
Everybody's favourite modular phone project, Google's Ara, is about to get little bit more interesting. Recently, the company quietly announced that it would be launching a hardware store for developers to sell their own Ara components. It'll be a little bit like the Play Store, except with hot-swappable hardware instead of apps. Read More >>
When Google introduced its Material Design manifesto to the world at I/O, it was made clear that it was only a matter of time before flat design took over the entire Googleverse — starting, it would seem, with the Play Store. Read More >>
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