Each app has a badge depending on the reputation of the developer: Trusted, Unknown, Warning, Critical,” he says. We call it ‘security by design’: We don’t consider all apps secure in the same way. Trezentos stands by the “100% secure” claim when we query it.
A healthy competitive market and a variety of options are what we all need to keep providing the best products. Moreover, Google’s ongoing abusive behaviour due to it’s dominant position results in the lack of freedom of choice for users and developers.We would like to keep allowing users and developers to discover and distribute apps in the store of their choice.
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Restricting options for users goes against the nature of the Android open source project. We would like to be treated in a fair way: Play Protect should not flag Aptoide as a harmful app and should not ask users to uninstall it since it’s proven that it’s 100% secure. On the website Aptoide has launched to raise awareness and inform users and other startups about how Google treats its app, it makes the claim that its store is “proven… 100% secure” - writing: Doesn’t want anyone else as distribution channel in Android.” “Aptoide is considered safe both by security researchers and by Virus Total (a company owned by Google),” says Trezentos, adding: “Google is removing Aptoide from users phone only due to anticompetitive practices. He argues there is no justification for Aptoide’s alternative app store being treated in this way. “The user has to go to Play Protect settings (discover it it’s not easy) and turn off Play protect for all apps.” Here’s the notification Aptoide users are shown when trying to override Google’s suspension of Aptoide at the package manager level:Įven if an Aptoide user overrides the warning - by clicking ‘keep app (unsafe)’ - Trezentos says the app still won’t work because Google blocks Aptoide from installing apps. “If it looks violent, it’s because it’s a really aggressive move and impactful.” Even if they go to ‘settings’ and say they trust Aptoide, Aptoide installations are blocked,” he says. User cannot see Aptoide icon and cannot launch. “The site hopes to bring visibility to this situation and help other start ups that may be under the same circumstances.”Īmong the anti-competitive behaviors Aptoide accuses Google of engaging in are flagging and suspending its app from users’ phones - without their permission and “without a valid reason”. “Fortunately we have been able to compensate that with new users and new partnerships but it is a barrier to a faster growth,” he adds. (The estimate of how many users Aptoide has lost was performed using Google SafetyNet API which he says allows it to query the classification of an app.) “We estimate that the Google Play removal and flagging had cause the loss of 15% to 20% of our user base since June’18.” Last month (May’19), we had 56 million unique MAU,” co-founder and CEO Paulo Trezentos tells TechCrunch. “In 2018, we had 222 million yearly active users. Google Play Protect is Google’s built-in malware protection for Android, but we believe the way it works damages users’ rights,” it writes on the site, where it highlights what it claims are Google’s anti-competitive behaviors, and asks users to report experiences of the app being flagged.Īptoide says Google has engaged in multiple behaviors that make it harder for it to gain or keep users - thereby undermining its ability to compete with Google’s own Play Store. This results in a potential decrease of unique Aptoide users of 20%. “Since Summer 2018, Google Play Protect flags Aptoide as a harmful app, hiding it in users’ Android devices and requesting them to uninstall it. In the case of Aptoide, the alternative Android app store says Google has damaged its ability to compete by unjustifiably flagging its app as insecure. Portugal-based Aptoide is launching a campaign website to press its case and call for Google to “Play Fair” - accusing Mountain View of squeezing consumer choice by “preventing users from freely choosing their preferred app store”.Īptoide filed its first EU antitrust complaint against Google all the way back in 2014, joining a bunch of other complainants crying foul over how Google was operating Android.Īnd while the European Commission did eventually step in, slapping Google with a $5BN penalty for antitrust abuses last summer after a multi-year investigation, rivals continue to complain the Android maker still isn’t playing fair. As US regulators gear up to launch another antitrust probe of Google’s business, an alternative Android app store is dialling up its long time complaint of anti-competitive behavior against the search and smartphone OS giant.
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