The Google Play Store™ is starting to remove Android™ apps

Written by Xavier Gouchet - 17 april 2013 - no comments

The Google Play Store contains more than 700'000 apps for Android, a number which slowly grew since 2008 when the first Android phone was released.

In february, the Play Store saw the removal of around 60'000 apps, most of them automatically removed by Google itself. Most of those apps were spam apps, so no one will mourn for them.

Today, I learnt that the Android UI Patterns which I presented on this blog was removed due to a Violation of the intellectual property.

Following the author's post on G+ and on the Android developpers community, I learnt that the reason for this removal is the name of the app.

"Android" by itself cannot be used in the name of an application name or accessory product. Instead use "for Android."

  • Incorrect: "Android MediaPlayer"
  • Correct: "MediaPlayer for Android"

If used with your logo, "for Android" needs to be smaller in size than your logo. First instance of this use should be followed by a TM symbol, "for Android™".

Needless to say that I immediatly reviewed all my apps descriptions to make sure that I followed the Branding Guidelines and Policies from the Android documentation.

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