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HomeIndiaAfter taking down Mitron, Google pulls ‘Remove China Apps’ from Play Store

After taking down Mitron, Google pulls ‘Remove China Apps’ from Play Store

Neither the tech giant nor the app developers indicated the reasons for suspending the app, which had become the ‘top free’ app in India.

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New Delhi: Remove China Apps — an app that claimed to identify Chinese applications in phones so that users could remove them — has been removed from Google Play Store. Since earlier this week, the app had been topping the charts of Google Play Store in the category of ‘top free’ from earlier this week.

The app’s creator company, OneTouchAppLabs, tweeted Tuesday night to inform people that Google has suspended the app. However, no reason for the sudden suspension was mentioned. People who have the app on their phones will still be able to use it, but no new user can download it from Google Play Store anymore.

Google has suspended our #RemoveChinaApps from google play store.
Thank you all for your support in past 2 weeks.
"You Are Awesome"

TIP
Its easy to find the origin of any app by searching on google
by typing
<AppName> origin country

Stay Tuned !! Stay Safe!!

— onetouchapplabs (@onetouchapplabs) June 2, 2020

Recently, Google had also removed an app called Mitron, which was being termed as India’s response to TikTok and was downloaded 5 million times before being removed. The app was reportedly removed for violating Google’s ‘spam and minimum functionality’ policy. According to Google’s policy, “At a minimum, apps should provide users with a basic degree of functionality and a respectful user experience”. It also states that the tech giant does not allows apps that “merely provide the same experience as other apps already on Google Play”.


Also read: Sonam Wangchuk, education reformer who inspired 3 Idiots & calls for boycott of Chinese goods


Top free app in India

The app had become popular in India, especially following the on-going India-China border standoff along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh. Last week, entrepreneur and education reformer Sonam Wangchuk, whose work inspired actor Aamir Khan’s role in 3 Idiots, had also appealed to people to boycott everything “made in China”. He said his call for boycott was in response to the Chinese aggression along the LAC.

Soon after, Remove China Apps started going viral and within 10 days, it crossed one million downloads and was rated 4.8 on Play Store. The app could scan all the user- or third party-installed Chinese apps for users to remove them. However, the app couldn’t detect in-built Chinese apps already installed in Chinese phones.

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8 COMMENTS

  1. Remove all china app….. Founder sir I want your app for uninstall all china app ….. Please do something we want your app to identify all china app…….??????????

  2. It is display of naked power by chinese
    The answer is to build self reliance as much as possible
    No point in berating chinese attitude etc
    Let india resolve to be self reliant
    Swadeshi is the answer
    Patriotism should be developed
    No.more liberal tukde tukde gang
    Just throw these traitors in jail under pota

  3. Good. The app deserved to be deleted on many fronts. Firstly it didn’t really identify anything correctly. It identified Zoom as a Chinese app. Zoom is in fact banned in China. Its a US company. The CEO is Chinese, but then by that logic Google is an Indian company. Ridiculous.
    Mitron codebase was actually bought from a Pakistani developer and was basically a crap app that didn’t have basic functionality including deleting it. Even the Pakistani developer made fun of the way the codebase was directly used without the needed changes and development that all codebases need.

    Besides if Google allowed stupid apps that banned other apps based on their country of origin (which that app didn’t do correctly in the first place) then they will need to release appstores for every country because for any stupid reason any country can decide to not use apps of other countries.

  4. No Chinese are even using Google..the have designed their own search engine.. If we Indians start thinking about another search engine google will get a lesson..We have the capacity why don’t we use everything that’s Made in india ..Our beloved PM Modi has started Make in India campaign long before but now india will fight back.. Sundar pitchai is useless in making decisions just a cog in big chain

    • Indians : Chinese are bad people, they dont have freedom, look they ban google. Let’s make app to ban china
      Google: cant allow apps that ban a country.
      Indians: let’s ban google.

      Just morons 😀

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