UC Browser Gets Temporarily Delisted On the Play Store
UC Browser
UC Browser :- Internet plays a major role in the life of a person in today’s tech-savvy world. From early morning to late at night, people constantly use the internet for doing their daily work.
The UC Browser has been removed from the Play Store, due to their history of having less-than-stellar reviews and poor rankings. There are a couple of reasons why this happened, but it is mostly a result of a few in-house decisions made by Google. In fact, there are rumors that the Play Store is lowering the page rank (PR) for apps that are not getting enough traffic.
If you want to read more about why Google could do this, then all you have to do is to Google “Google Play Store rankings”Google algorithm” and see what pops up. From what I’ve seen, it is clear that the Play Store uses its internal ranking system to decide what is an appropriate app to be added to the store, instead of relying on user reviews. However, this doesn’t mean that the Play Store is “cheating” on users. On the contrary, what it is doing is making sure that they are getting the right amount of traffic to apps which it deems to be worthy.
In the end, the Google algorithm will always go with the masses. It seems that even with the users knowing about the various flaws of the UC Browser, Google decided to keep it anyway. To sum up, I’d like to ask the question: what are the reasons why a tool for reading emails could get removed from the Play Store? It’s simply because it was built as a basic web browser (which is not meant to be a full-featured program), and people who use it just need an email client. What good would it do for people if it was an internet radio player?
To use the internet, a person has to take the help of a web browser. A web browser is a software application used for retrieving, presenting and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web.
The most popular web browsers for PC are Chrome, Edge (which was preceded by Internet Explorer), Safari, Opera and Firefox. While for mobile, the UC Browser has gained much popularity.
UC Browser is a web browser designed for mobile by the Chinese mobile Internet Company UCWeb and is owned by Alibaba Group of China.
Originally it was launched as J2ME-only (Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition) application in April 2004. But later it was made available on a number of platforms including Android, Blackberry OS, iOS, Java ME, Symbian, Windows Phone and Microsoft Windows.
UC Browser is the most used web browser for mobile. It is most popular in India where it has overtaken Chrome as the most-used mobile browser in the country. It was a popular alternative to Google Chrome and has accounted for a market share of around 50 percent.
There is an approximately 420 million user base in this browser globally. It has racked up almost 500 million downloads on the Play Store, with over 100 million coming only from India.
But recently Google has temporarily delisted the UC Browser app from the Google Play Store. Only the UC Browser mini is still listed. The disappearance was first noticed in the Reddit Forum (via Android Authority) and users have some interesting theory regarding the disappearance.
A report suggested that UC Browser was stealing and accumulating sensitive data of users and later sending them back to remote servers in China without the permission of the user.
Another report suggested that due to the malicious redirect ads which the browser uses to increase the installs of the affiliates of the UC Web’s might have triggered Google to take necessary action by delisting the browser from the Play Store.
There is no official statement issued in part of neither Google nor UC Web, but the possibility of the latter report seems to be true. This is because of an email which was received by Android Police founder Artem Russakovskii from UC Union (UC Web’s affiliate network) and it definitely reinforces the latter theory.
The email said−
Dear Partner, We hereby emphasis again that UC Union prohibits any and all misleading/malicious advertising method(s) to procure new users when promoting UC Browser campaigns, such as by using slogan inconsistent with the Product functions, or by using inductive slogan.
DO NOT use the Malicious Promotion method(s) or STOP such behavior immediately if you are acting so.
Upon discovery a Malicious Promotion, UC Union is entitled to
(i) STOP your payment settlement, or DEDUCT your corresponding payment made to you;
(ii) compensation in recovery of the loss suffered by UC Union, including but not limited to loss of UC Union’s good will, loss of users of UC Union Product(s), removal of UC Union Product(s) from Google Play or Apple Store, and any other loss as a result of your Malicious Promotion;
(iii) Require you to CLARIFY the facts for elimination of the negative impact shed upon UC Union
(iv) Resort to any other legal measures if necessary.
UC Union is looking forward to cooperating and developing with you in a healthy UC Union ecosphere.
A twitter user named Mike Ross, who works with the UC Browser also posted a tweet which explains the similar reason. The tweet said−
I work for UC Browser, I got mail today morning it said that UC Browser was temporarily removed from play store for 30 days because it used “Misleading” and “Unhealthy” methods of promotion to increase installs.
— Mike Ross (@SKz_14) November 14, 2017
It seems that the takedown of the app is a temporary issue and the app would be fixed and would be back in the store in 30 days.
Nowadays Google is taking strict action against apps who are using malicious and dubious tricks to increase its install base and those who are spreading ad malware and stealing user information.
The ‘Verified by Play Protect’ feature introduced by Google ensures that a user’s phone is protected from all the harmful apps.
For More information Check our other category below :-