Good morning and goodbye! Some 60,000 apps have gone missing from the Google Play app store today… and it’s intentional.
Google is working overtime to purge low-quality or spam plagued apps from its Android storefront. And, so far, there have been 60,000 casualties.
The deletions come as Google begins rolling out a redesigned Google Play store on Android phones and tablets that is “simple, clean and — most importantly — helps you find great entertainment, fast.”
The new design focuses on bigger images that jump off the page. Similarly themed content is grouped together so you can hone in on a magazine to read or an app to try. As you move down the page, new recommendations continue to appear so there is always more to see and explore. We’ve also simplified purchasing so you can breeze through checkout and get to enjoying your movie rental or other content.
According to Sarah Perez of Tech Crunch, not all of these apps were deleted by Google.
“Some, such as a handful of Sprint bundles and apps, as well as the product from startup cautionary tale Color and several others, were likely pulled by the publishers themselves,” Perez writes. “But with a number as high as 60,000, it’s clear that many of these were pulled by Google directly.”
