One thing that has always been great about Google Play is that developers can immediate publish their applications and games right to the market without any wait time at all. The same goes for updates that need to be pushed to their existing apps and games. However that appears to be changing now with Google announcing that they will begin reviewing apps and games to uncover any violations (TOS violations, inappropriate content, rating violations etc etc) and malware.
Even though Google is announcing this today, apparently the system has been in place for the last couple of months. According to Google, there haven’t been any complaints about the waiting either, since the reviewing is done with a combination of manual reviewing and tools to help automate part of the process. Apple, on the other hand, does it entirely manually, which is why there is a long wait time between submitting an app or game to iTunes and having it actually show up once it is approved.
Google is implementing tools which scans apps and games automatically to find viruses and malware as well as more blatant types of violations. If something is flagged, that is when a human jumps in to manually check the app or game that has been flagged. This cuts down the wait time drastically since apps and games that don’t get flagged can be pushed to Google Play right away.
Whatever the machines can catch today, the machines do. And whatever we need humans to weigh in on, humans do. – Purnima Kochikar, Google Play’s Director of Business Development
Apparently the tools used to automate part of the review process can also find copyright violations and apps/games that contain explicit sexual content. According to Google, apps and games are still showing up on Google Play after a developer uploads them in a matter of hours, which is pretty damn fast in comparison to Apple’s days, and sometimes weeks, of waiting with no guarantee of being approved.
Website Referenced: TheVerge | Google Developers Blog
