Cheetah Mobile has a reputation for being a dishonest, damaging Android development firm that acquires successful apps and transforms them into data-gathering, IAP-infested cash mills on occasion. The firm has also been offside of Play Store restrictions on several occasions, but it has always managed to resurface on the platform. It appears that Google has had enough of this game and has chosen to prohibit the developer’s products. Cheetah Mobile was most likely one of the developers impacted by the action, since Google said in a blog post that it had deleted 600 applications for ad fraud and presenting disruptive programmes. Except for a few keyboard themes, all of the company’s applications have vanished from any of the company’s developer sites on the Play Store.
In most instances, just a brief description of the business is left. Cheetah Mobile is doing everything it can to make the most of a bad situation. Its website, which formerly linked to Play Store listings for its apps, now provides all of them as APKs, with a banner that reads: “Official Notice: By clicking ‘Download APK,’ you may download the most recent version of the programme. If there are security warnings, please allow permissions.” Installing these applications outside of the Play Store is potentially much riskier than getting them via the platform, because you won’t be protected against fraud or virus.
While Google’s Play Protect scanner works on sideloaded APKs, it doesn’t provide the same level of multi-layered protection as the Play Store or APKs downloaded directly from it. Let’s hope Google is successful in keeping the firm out of its distribution channel, it has already attempted to enter the Play Store under a different name.