Remove China Apps is no longer on the Google Play Store

Google Play Store has been quite busy pulling off apps from the platform. After India’s TikTok rival Mitron was pulled off the Android app store, Google Play Store has now pulled off Remove China Apps. Of course, there is no knowing exactly why it has done that.

Created by Jaipur-based OneTouchAppLabs, the Remove China Apps garnered quick popularity riding high on the current anti-China sentiment that’s prevalent in the country. OneTouchAppLabs tweeted about being pulled off from the Play Store early in the day today.

Now, as far as we know, Google usually pulls off those apps that have violated Play Store policies in some way or the other. That’s what happened with Mitron. A report notes that Google had “red-flagged” the app and decided to suspend it for violating “spam and minimum functionality”.

Another clause for Google flagging and/or removing an app involves ‘repetitive content’ which basically means that an app is copying content from other apps without adding any original content of its own. That’s what got Mitron pulled off from the Play Store but that does not explain, entirely, what worked against Remove China Apps.

However, if you have already downloaded the app, it’s still going to work for you. It’s just that others will not be able to download it now.

In case this the first time you are hearing about the app, you can read more details about it here. But in short, what the app does has been explained by its developers on the Play Store as - “Remove China Apps is a tool to uninstall Chinese apps for android phones. It is very easy to find Chinese apps, This tool lists all Chinese apps. You can easily remove selected apps. Chinese apps are not secure you can scan and select Chinese apps that you want to uninstall, and click 'Delete' button to uninstall them”.

The Remove China Apps had almost one million downloads on the Play Store and till Monday night, it was the top-free app on it. There seems to be no real technical issue as far as the Remove China Apps is concerned, except that it’s racist, but clearly Google Play Store has its own reasons.

Some people who noticed the app gone were not too pleased about the move. 

From an ethical point of view, it’s not impossible to guess why an app like Remove China Apps would be unceremoniously booted off, but well, our guess is as good as yours.