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The world is changing, Google needs to change, and all companies that partner with Google also need to change.

A month ago, Google conducted a “cleansing” of the Play Store app store.

On February 20th, Google removed nearly 600 apps from the Play Store app store at one time, and banned these developers ’Google advertising platform accounts, citing“ the use of a form of ad insertion that Google does not allow ” , And “destructive advertising policies.”

According to BuzzFeed, most of the applications that were removed from Google this time came from China, Hong Kong, India, and Singapore, mainly tool and game applications. According to Per Bjorke, Google ’s senior product manager, all offline apps have been downloaded more than 4.5 billion times on the Play Store. In this “remediation”, all the most affected Cheetah Mobile products were removed from the shelves, and none of them were spared.

For the entire Android ecosystem, this “cleansing” is like an ecological disaster. What happened behind this disaster?

Iron Fist Operation

This Google operation is called the “Iron Fist.”

Not only is the App removed, Google has also blocked the account of the App advertising platform AdMob, and even the account of the ad trading platform Ad Manager. This means that companies, including Cheetah, can no longer cooperate with Google in advertising.

Late PostSaid that before this delisting incident, Cheetah had communicated with Google China for several months. At that time, the advertising revenue of the four Cheetah’s apps was frozen by Google, and Cheetah also made some adjustments to its products in an attempt to adapt to Google’s advertising policies. On February 20th, Google sent an email saying that most of the frozen advertising revenue could be returned to Cheetah, but two hours later, all of Cheetah’s 45 products were directly removed from the shelves. Some of these game apps were taken down without even warning from Google.

There is no advance warning, no rectification guidance, and all apps with developers are removed from the shelves. This kind of means with almost no room is rare in Google history. Google said in a statement that it has developed a machine learning-based algorithm to identify offending apps. However, such operations as delisting and banning need to be manually reviewed under normal circumstances. On the other hand, it is not likely that all Cheetah products violate the rules at the same time through the “algorithm”. Google’s banning operations on cheetahs is obviously not the algorithm.

The overseas distribution of Cheetah ’s App is highly dependent on Google Play ｜ Cheetah

It is not only Cheetah affected. On March 9th, Antutu, which has an investment relationship with Cheetah but independently operated, was also removed from Google Play. The difference is that AnTuTu Marketing Manager stated that AnTuTu received an email notification from Google, clearly stating that it was because of the relationship between AnTuTu and Cheetah Mobile that the AnTuTu App was removed.

Cheetah ’s tools and games business are highly dependent on Google ’s platform. It needs to be distributed overseas through the Play Store, and it also needs to earn revenue through the advertising platform. In the first three quarters of 2019, 23% of Cheetah ’s revenue came from Google. Affected by the delisting storm and the shock of the US stock market, Cheetah’s stock price has fallen by 40% in the past month.

Policy squeeze

Changes don’t happen within a day. In recent years, Google’s tightening policies have already foreshadowed.

From 2008 to 2015, Google spent 8 years, not only making Android the mobile operating system with the most users in the world, but also on top of this open source system.The fruits of profit.

As early as 2009, Google acquired the mobile advertising traffic platform AdMob, allowing developers to easily integrate ad plugins into their apps. Since then, AdMob has become the main channel for various Android free apps to make money. In 2012, Veewo, a domestic independent game company founded less than a year ago, succeeded with the mini-game Super Phantom Cat. The game’s downloads on the Play Store exceeded one million in a few months and it was successfully monetized through advertising.

But starting in 2015, Google ’s advertising business hit some boundaries, limiting its expansion.

In 2018, Google discovered an ad plugin called Alphonso, which will call the mobile phone’s microphone to “eavesdrop” users in the background of the game, use machine learning to identify sounds, analyze user behavior, and determine whether ads are effective. Google ’s own service also stores the user ’s location information by default in the background to improve the accuracy of “location-based advertising”. These actions, which touched the privacy of users, caused a series of controversy, and also prompted Google to change and tighten related product design and policies.

Not just privacy. Over the past few years, Google has encountered a host of other advertising-related negatives. Including the advertisement of some suspected extremist content on YouTube was met with protest and resistance from advertisers. Google is also facing multiple monopoly allegations in Europe, accusing it of taking advantage of Google’s dominance in the Android system. Everything makes it difficult for Google to expand.

Google’s headquarters in Mountain View ｜ Visual China

So Google is starting to focus more on the user experience. Because since the number of advertisements cannot be infinitely expanded, we need to find ways to improve the quality. In 2019, Google’s advertising team launched a new advertising solution for mobile games, encouraging game developers to bundle ads with “reward mechanisms” in games instead of rudely inserting ads during the game to improve users Experience while stimulating users to spend more on in-app purchases in the game.

Google has no other choice but to choose betweenTo be cautious on the issue, we must also take a more detailed approach to cultivate this market. Since 2017, Google has been strengthening the screening and crackdown on the Play Store, using AI to crack down on cottage applications, harmful content involving violence, extremism, and malware. Cheetah became the biggest company affected by this movement.

“Values” and “Worldview”

Users ’impression of Google has always been based on the value of” do no evil “, which is free and open, and encourages good ideas to change the world. For this reason, many people think that Google ’s direct harm to developers this time is a departure from its values.

This view is actually a misjudgment of this adjustment by Google. As mentioned earlier, Google has already made adjustments to its advertising policy, and its view of the advertising business has been changing. Now is not the time when the advertising business can be infinitely expanded. What Google has changed is that it looks at the “worldview” of its own business.

With the development of business and the evolution of products, the open and free mechanism has made Android once synonymous with “unsafe” and “poor experience”. Google needs to change, and all companies that work with Google need to change. What Google sees today is no longer free, open source, and unlimited expansion. After touching the boundary, Google needs to better protect the existing advertising business. It values ​​experience and safety.

Next, you can see that Google ’s “worldview” has changed and can change according to the situation. Finally, apps that provide value can only survive in the Android ecosystem. In the business world, “if the world view is not right, even the best values ​​will not be maintained,” said Zhang Peng, founder of Geek Park. “Whether it is a business or a reviewer, if you only talk about values ​​every day, often Will move towards nihilism, which is mostly either silly or bad.