Google exiles 600 apps from Play Store for 'disruptive advertising' amid push to clean up Android souk's image

Google exiles 600 apps from Play Store for 'disruptive advertising' amid push to clean up Android souk's image

Purge is the latest in a series of similar store scourings


On Thursday Google confirmed it has removed nearly 600 Android apps from the Google Play Store and banned them from its ad services for violating its policies on disruptive advertising and interstitials.


"We define disruptive ads as ads that are displayed to users in unexpected ways, including impairing or interfering with the usability of device functions," said Per Bjorke, senior product manager for ad traffic quality in a blog post.


"While they can occur in-app, one form of disruptive ads we’ve seen on the rise is something we call out-of-context ads, which is when malicious developers serve ads on a mobile device when the user is not actually active in their app."


An google exiles store disruptive advertising clean android image