Despite considerable efforts to direct users to quality content, the Google Play Store is still full of low-quality apps. Their number even continues to increase, having reached the symbolic threshold of one million last week.
The Google Play Store strives to protect its users from poor quality apps. Icons allow in particular to know which applications go up or down in the ranking. But Google went even further by activating a series of policies regulating developers as well as a new surveillance system.
Deployed last November, it highlights high-quality apps by making them more visible. Low-quality apps are removed from recommendations altogether, including apps with a crash rate above 1.09% and a user-perceived ANR error rate of 0.47%. Even before this new system, thousands of problematic apps were periodically removed from the Play Store.
Google Play Store: how many apps are available in 2023?
Despite all these measures, the weed continued to grow back vigorously. According to data from AppBrain, the number of low-quality apps listed in the Google Play Store jumped 8% year-over-year, from around 930,000 in January 2022 to over 1 million last week.
Interestingly, the number of bad apps continued to rise even after November. And this even as the Google Play Store had just rolled out its new surveillance system. Over the years, Google has significantly reduced the number of applications available due to its stricter regulations:
- 2020: 2.9 million apps
- 2021: 2.7 million apps
- 2022: 2.64 million apps
In 2023, the Google Play Store counts 2.69 million applications, 38% of which are poor quality applications.
Fortunately, everything is not to be thrown away, far from it. Do not hesitate to consult our guides to make nice finds. We reveal to you on this side the 5 best apps to get into the sport. Also discover the best apps to pay less for gas and the best To-Do List apps.
