Google removed more than 2000 loan apps from play store
NEW DELHI: Search agency Google has removed more than 2,000 loan apps from its India Play Store since January in the current 2021 calendar year. These loan apps were banned on their last day of availability on December 31st 2020. The search engine giant removed these loan apps for various reasons, including violating terms to lend money, promoting harmful content, or providing an unauthentic lending experience.
The latest ban comes after it found that some financial products like insurance cover loans, interest free loans, payday loans, home loan, auto loan, personal loan and student loans can be purchased with a credit card and bank account of anyone without any collateral. In the first case alone it found that several mobile applications which allowed customers to purchase goods using up to Rs 20,000 without proof of repayment were also blocked from being published on play store in December 2021.
These apps included a number of B2B loan apps like SBI Life Insurance Cashback Cover loan app as well as Kolkata House Makers application. While there are a maximum of 100 loan apps listed on Google Play Store in October 2021 only, the search engine giant added about 1,200 apps in May and June this year.
The search engine company stated that they had received complaints from users, and reviewed data from RBI, UPI Foundation's platform to identify those apps whose key features were not aligned with their actual intended use and who provided misleading information about money lending. To remove such apps, they checked whether the same was available elsewhere and whether user reviews were positive. Further they asked them to stop promoting or recommending such loans to others by deleting all references from their profiles.
Once we identified multiple apps that violate our policy, we reviewed their existing list to find more similar apps violating our policies. We removed many more apps violating our policies in subsequent months. After reviewing the lists, we made sure they weren’t available anywhere else, and removed access to any offers on those app,Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Google.
These apps include both primary and secondary lending apps like Takaful Finance, Lending Club Laxmana, Wealth Edge, Appy Pie Loan Cash Backer, and Apkoz Bank. There are several other personal loan apps like Payday loan, Debit-My-Debit service, HSBC Mobile Money, HDFC First Bank, Ruohana, Airtel Plus One VIP, Bharti AXA Financials and MyBank.
This is the second time that Google has put a ban on online loan apps. It had permanently taken back nearly 600 loan applications in 2018. Then the company also brought down several scammer applications in May 2017.
In November 2016, the search company launched 'Banner', which was meant to offer better accessibility to its services across country as users search via smartphones. Users would see only curated results that match their query. However soon the technology got out of control and every website now shows different kinds of ads and banners on Google. Google has announced the launch of Adsense program on Android and iOS devices where advertisers can track the traffic and purchases of your ad units through an ID. Since then there is no doubt that Google wants control in the hands of few big players who will have complete data about its users and how often they click the links.
Google wants to monetize the internet space and provide superior mobile solutions to users. The company doesn't believe in slowing down the internet, but rather improving its ecosystem. By blocking certain types of websites and removing the option to add additional extensions, Google plays a significant role in shaping the way people engage with their smartphones on daily basis and thus allows developers to take advantage of the opportunity for free, high quality apps.
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