Google updates Play Store developer policies, forbids notification bar ads, forced home screen shortcuts and other annoyances

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I'm sure all of you have downloaded an app at some point that did something annoying with advertisements. Whether that was forcing you to place a shortcut to some weird website on your home screen or annoying you with ads in your notification bar every day, there's a handful of sneaky tricks developers have tried to get you to look at ads. Technically, you can't really fault those developers because Google never said it wasn't okay to make apps that did that, but it's pretty clear that Google didn't like the practice, as they've updated their developer policies for the Play Store to explicitly block that type of behavior, among other things.

The developer policies have a bunch of updated information in them, including explicitly blocking apps that place ads or links to ads in the notification bar, as well as apps that modify your device in any way without your knowledge or place home screen shortcuts or bookmarks for advertising purposes. There are a few other updated policies, including blocking apps with misleading information in them, such as apps that have fake reviews, excessive and useless keyword tags, and apps that have deceptive developer or website names. No more small developers pretending to be big developers to cash in on someone else's popularity!

If you want to check out the complete updated policies page, check the link below. Remember, though, developers have almost a full month to make changes to their apps to comply with these guidelines, so you may not see any difference right away, but this is definitely a step in the direction to cleaning up the Play Store a bit.

source: Google

via: Android Police

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  1. Reading this on apply geek noticed that 2 persons disliked this news :D
    Probably some cheap app development.

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