AnTuTu reportedly taken down from Play Store over Cheetah Mobile association

AnTuTu, a popular app used by smartphone reviewers to conduct benchmark tests, has mysteriously vanished from the Google Play Store.

Not just the main AntTutu app, but Antutu 3DBench, and AItutu Benchmark have also disappeared from the Google Play Store. Right now, it's not clear whether Google has taken down these apps.

Android Community points out that AnTuTu apps have connections with Chetaah Mobile, an app developer that is infamous for its dubious privacy practices. The company has also been accused of injecting malware and adware. Cheetah Mobile has offered many apps on Google Play Store with most of them not categorically revealing their link with the company.

AnTuTu in a statement to AndroidPolice has denied its links with Cheetah Mobile but acknowledged the developer was an investor.

"We received a notification email from Google on March 7th informing us that AnTuTu was one of the related publisher accounts of Cheetah Mobile, all AnTuTu apps were removed from the Play Store. But in fact, We think there is some misunderstanding about it. Antutu is NOT the related account of Cheetah Mobile!" said Antutu's CEO, Zhao Chen.

"We believe that the reason for Google's misjudgment is that we purchased and used the legal services from Cheetah Mobile, so our privacy policy link used the address of cmcm.com. This is what we are working on, including changing legal supplier," he added.

While AnTuTu apps are still not available on Google Play store, interested users can download them via direct APKs from the official website.