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Tell HN: You can't add “no ads” in your Play Store app's title
361 points by TrianguloY on Dec 9, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 158 comments
Due to the recent Play Store changes you can no longer "add text or images that indicate store performance or ranking, or suggest relations to existing Google Play programs in the app title" [1]. You can't, for example, add "#1", "best" or "free". However, you can't also add "no ads".

To be precise: appending "[small, no ads]", "[no ads]" or "[without ads]" to the play store app title causes a rejection. I didn't want to test more in fear of banning, and in the end removed it. I know you can see if an app contains ads in the app page, but not in the search results... or at least not yet, but I doubt Google will add that indication.

[1] https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...




I suspect this is to foreclose against a future option for Google to monetize ‘free’ content in the play store without compensating the developers much as they do people’s videos on Youtube.

For those who aren’t aware, in the games industry the distributor has been in the role of adding DRM to games on the pretense that they are “protecting their interests and channels”. As the distributor, Google may feel empowered to make these sort of “protective” changes, and the one that would be most likely (in my estimation) would be wrapping the APK such that it played a pre-roll ad before your free game started.

I could be completely off base here but to my way of thinking it would be consistent with Google’s moves in the past.


My simpler explanation is that putting "no ads" in title is meaningless and without proof and on its own unenforceable. As a consumer, honestly, as much as I want to rant against big companies and for small developers - yeah, I'm with Google on this one. Putting random unverified claims in title is bad.

(concordantly, I fully support making "no ads" actual metadata searchable/filterable, as well as "Supports Controller" "in game purchases" etc.)


It's worse than just meaningless, it's actively trying to get a bullshit SEO advantage, which is essentially zero-sum at best and makes things worse for users.

If my app is named "CoolBrowser", the title on Google Play should not be "Better Browser than Chrome". If my app is named "SketchyVPN", the title on Google Play should not be "Netflix Region Locking Bypasser".

At best, these are workarounds for the Play store's shitty lack of searchable metadata (why can't I filter out apps that aren't open source?), at worse they're Nigerian prince style scams that suck in unknowledgable users.


> why can't I filter out apps that aren't open source?

This is laughable. It's 2021 and we still can't to basic filtering in our app stores. Maybe google (and Apple) engineers only know SELECT, but haven't learned about WHERE yet? Yeah i know it's a little much to demand. I mean we only went to the moon like 52 years ago.


I basically gave up using the play store since I could not find any way to search/find 'ad free' or 'tracking free' or 'open source' etc.

The very few apps I use from the play store are either ad free or offer a premium version to remove ads completely - it's the only thing I'll put on my phone.

Seems there is too big a conflict of interest for even basic phone functionality - apps with ads make the money tree keep raining.

One day my (paid for prem version) "timed / scheduled silence" app pushed ads out to all users on an update and I had quite the back and forth with them - they fixed it - but did not seem to care one iota that their full screen overlay ads would prevent a mom from answering here phone right away or other basic functions. - It was all about the money and they were going to maximize that.

All the while no incentive for google to make basic functions available in android or find-able in the play store. So little competition for the abusive, ad-ladden, add basic function to your phone parasites.

Glad to find f-droid at least, but I've given up on using my phone for as many things as it's capable of because the search and find is no-ad-hostile.


with currently 2 exceptions, i only use apps from f-droid. I think I'll buy a pinephone one of these days to throw some dev time at it, we really need an alternative to ios and android


It's because Play Store puts a lot of weight on title and very little in the short or long descriptions. For a company that is reputed to be the best in search, Play Store has terrible search policies.

Look up "bypass netflix" and guess what pops up. Unfortunately it's the only way to SEO in the Play Store. The impact is so strong that I avoid branding now, it makes more sense to register your VPN company as "Region Locking Bypasser".


Its the same for Etsy sellers. My wife sells on Etsy and several (non-tech) people that she follows recommend making the title a short description. It's annoying. Yet she does it because it works.


Your point is not specific for ads and completely ignores the dynamics of reviews. Your app will immediately receive a ton of 1 star reviews for misleading the users.


Which is relevant for trustworthy stable apps.

I found it's irrelevant for fly-by-night actually fraudulent apps which are just going to redeploy with slightly different name tomorrow.

(our experienced, mileages, and assumptions/preferences may wary :)


Putting "no added sugar" on a product box isn't meaningless because there are legal reprucussions to fraud. If nothing is happening when games with "no ads" have ads then that is a criticism to bring to the regulators.


No added sugar is something that can be objectively measured. What does "no ads" mean? No Google ads? No sponsored content? Nothing referencing paid products? No soliciting?


Yes, this time it is digital so it's hopeless and since someone may get into a long dispute over product placements, every app should be equally likely to be bringing in protocols that are purely for ads. The only solution is to let the distributor just remove all information that might inform our decisions.

Here is the FDA's rules for the term "lite":

https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFR...

Certainly not perfect, but better than if the next time a product at whole foods gets caught in a fraud we let Amazon remark everything as "food".


That would explain why they are trying to convince/coerce/force developers to hand them their signing keys during the last years.


An alternative explanation is that Google was paid off to facilitate state-sponsored attacks.

I wouldn't go as far as to claim that as fact, but it's nevertheless egregiously bad that Google suddenly wants a mandatory backdoor into every new app.


I think the signing keys are required because of features like "play as you download" etc.

[Not an Android dev]


As we've seen with the complaints re: AMP [0], Google is incredibly talented at building "it loads faster" features that are primarily a way to give them greater control over monetization in ways that are less than transparent. Requiring signing keys can be both of these things at once.

[0] https://searchengineland.com/google-throttled-amp-page-speed...


The real Google response would be - it's to facilitate a migration to new signing keys in case the developer:

1. Loses their signing keys

2. Needs to migrate to a better signing algorithm

Google can just handle that on your behalf. Additionally, there's no more need to care about signing keys at any point in the development pipeline. Rather than keep it secret, anyone with proper access to the Google developer console can sign and release apps

More cynically, what they're really guarding against is other app stores. It's MUCH harder to migrate an app from the Play Store to another store if the signatures don't match.

* Without a matching signature, the user can't pull their data from Google in the same way. They'd have to completely uninstall and reinstall the app, potentially losing data if the app isn't backed by a server.

* With a matching signature, the other app store should pick it up seamlessly.

Modifying apps without opt-in seems like a step further than they'd be able to pull off without massive backlash right now.


Frog leaps out of boiling pot, this news and more at 11.


Can we just all agree on an alternative language that means "no ads"?

How about "coool" spelled with 3 o's? As long as you use that everyone will know it means "no ads" if we can get some media to write about it.

I mean, this is exactly what happens on the internet in China when words are banned. No media writes about it but it spreads through social media fast enough such that it's not really possible to ban words. We can do the same for censorship in the US by Google.


How about “Let’s go branding!” /s.


> I suspect this is to foreclose against a future option for Google to monetize ‘free’ content in the play store without compensating the developers much as they do people’s videos on Youtube. As the distributor, Google may feel empowered to make these sort of “protective” changes, and the one that would be most likely (in my estimation) would be wrapping the APK such that it played a pre-roll ad before your free game started.

I'd be quite surprised if Google forced ads into apps that don't have them, knowing full well that Apple would not do the same thing for iOS apps.

While Google and Apple are in different businesses, they are both reliant on the same set of users for their different business models, and from users' perspective, they offer products that are both competitive and mutually exclusive (very few people use both an Android and iPhone daily).

It's one thing to force ads in front of Youtube videos - a given video is hosted on one platform, and users click links to the videos they want to watch with little sense of loyalty to a particular platform in the moment.

But doing the same thing to mobile apps across an entire operating system risks people actually eschewing their product in favor of their competitor's, which would jeopardize the core of their entire business (search revenue is incredibly vulnerable to traffic on walled garden mobile platforms - it's the reason Google correctly saw iOS as such a threat and responded quickly with their investment in Android in the first place).


> the distributor has been in the role of adding

That would cause (relative) avoidance of the distributors - and in the case of APK, any site could be a distributor.


You are underestimating the prevalence and reach of centralized app stores. Consumers could side-load, but the vast majority will not, and that's where the money is.


Good?

What's the alternative? Have a crappy, paid-for, add filled, bloated app promote itself as "Cauliflower Cooker Lite - the #1 free cauliflower app. 100% ad-free".

Metadata like file size, whether there are in-app ads or purchases, etc, should be part of the store's listing - not the title.


> Metadata like file size, whether there are in-app ads or purchases, etc, should be part of the store's listing - not the title.

???? Did I miss the part where Google announced they were adding searchable metadata at the same time they eliminated adding this info to the title?

If not, seems like a clearly anti-consumer move.


App titles not being filled with a bunch of promo crap sounds pretty pro-consumer to me

"It is what it says on the tin"


Unless the tin says anything about whether or not it includes ads.


Referring more to the title field merely being a title, and not some banner to fill with attention-grabbing crap


It's Google's fault that the title is the only field that is searchable. They're never going to add a searchable "ads" field.


Yes, because "Verby Noun" game titles and "<Word>-ly" app titles are incredibly informative at first glance.


Listings show whether they have ads, in-app purchases etc. on a separate screen


Searching 'no ads' seemingly won't query that tag, seemingly.


Seems pretty trivial to eventually add, compared to trying to enforce correctness on results from user-provided tags in titles.

I'm a little surprised you can't search for "no ads" apps outside of e.g. Pass listings, but I'm really glad they're not defaulting to just a title text search and cluttered listings of Farming Simulator [NO ADS] [NO IAPS] [NO REFERRALS] [NO TIMEWAITS] [NO DLC].


It's not searchable for a reason. Ad free apps don't generate revenue for Google. So devs added it to the title. Google is now closing that loophole.


Given that they already highlight ad-free apps, prominently display ad-or-no-ad statuses at the top of every app detail page, curate specifically-ad-free lists of recommended apps, and use "ad-free" verbiage as a selling point to promote individual apps (as well as lists of recommended apps), I don't think it's fair to just jump to assuming Google's purposefully against making it easier to find ad-free apps.

I'm not even sure I'm convinced that ad-free apps don't generate revenue for Google, even ignoring the ad-free apps that DO generate revenue for Google through IAPs and other non-ad means.


They don't highlight ad-free apps. They put a "contains ads" note on the others. You mention IAP, which is also a tag you can't search for. I remain skeptical that a company specializing in search won't let you search on that data, 13 years after launch, for any reason other than money.


You can't search/filter for anything other than type-of-app/game. In fact, they added the tags for ads/IAPs and hoicked them to the top of the page, rather than sticking them with the rest of the app metadata below the fold. I'd be more willing to think a lack of ad-status filters was nefarious if it was suspiciously missing from a list of other searchable filters.

The fact that they don't have any support for filtering just says to me that they don't really care about app discovery outside of what they build suggested lists for, which seems orthogonal here since some of the suggested lists they curate are literally titled "Ad-free games" (plus "Offline games", "Premium games", "No-interruption games", etc which are also all largely filled with no-ad games, with a few exceptions).

Maybe they're omitting entire features / filter systems just so they don't have to add the sub-ability to just see which apps don't have ads, but I doubt it. As other comments have stated, a lot of people just don't want Amazon-like product titles crammed with keywords on keywords, especially when they're not even checked for correctness. I'm one of those people.

I'd say this probably boils down to a differing fundamental assumption we have: your comment seems to imply you might think big companies are inherently out to maximize profits through manipulating people, even if that means intentionally making a product worse for customers. If that's the case, there's really no point in debating here since that's a completely different conversation and I doubt either of us have the necessary internal evidence needed to convince the other of the real intentions behind withholding this specific feature.


its trivial to add, yet hasn't been added in almost 15 years, it is very much a title text search and nothing about this move indicates otherwise.

there is no economic interest from google to make ad free apps actually findable, and no chance somebody making a better play store is going to usurp their position.


Even Apple doesn't have a "show only actually-free" toggle on their store for free apps with no IAP and no ads. Which sucks.


User time is valuable, and must be respected. Data being present somewhere, in some form, doesn't mean that it is in a form that can be reasonably used. If I want to find an application without ads, requiring me to open every search result and manually check whether there are ads is very anti-consumer.

My opinion here would be different if an alternative search interface existed. However, the Google Play Store's API is focused on developers and doesn't allow for making searches. In addition, the Terms of Service forbid redistribution of content, so a third-party API that scrapes the results would be forbidden. By removing alternatives, Google has taken responsibility for a good user interface (and blame for a bad user interface) onto themselves.


Would building a Play Store search index that contains metadata and snippets (just like Google itself) be considered "redistributing" that content?

Hasn't Google itself argued that such activities are explicitly not redistribution?


The alternative I'd like is making common user expectations into formalized properties of the software, making them visible and searchable. Like how it lists "Offers in-app purchases" currently, it could also list "Ad-free", "Free", etc.


F-Droid does this already with its listing of 'anti-features' for each app.


Yes, what I've sometimes done is search F-Droid first, then find that same app on the iOS app store.


Yes, and I love it! I'm using LineageOS for the third year now.


> What's the alternative? Have a crappy, paid-for, add filled, bloated app promote itself as "Cauliflower Cooker Lite - the #1 free cauliflower app. 100% ad-free".

That's what we have on Amazon now. Looks like every single product contain all the metadata in product title. SEO spam from top to the bottom of the search results page.

I hate it, but given how crappy filtering on both Amazon and Play store is, I still prefer to see more information about a product in the search result list than less, even if that means bloated titles.

On the other hand, if both Amazon and Play store had usable filtering, all these bloated names would not be needed.


Google themselves have mildly loaded app titles too.

Google Chrome: Fast & Secure

Google Go: A lighter, faster way to search

Gboard - the Google Keyboard


What information folks are allowed to supply is distinct from ensuring its accuracy, I think. Misleading app names are a problem regardless, but given that many apps have ads and charge for the ad-free experience, it seems odd the developer isn't allowed to highlight that in the title.

But Google can do as they wish: another reason alternative app stores have an important role to play.


> Metadata like file size, whether there are in-app ads or purchases, etc, should be part of the store's listing - not the title.

Well yeah, the theory is easy. I'd say "Yes" to what you say, IFF the metadata is usable as a search filter. Otherwise, it's of no use, thus not a better solution in practice.


> should be part of the store's listing - not the title.

How long has Google store been operating (under various names)? Over a decade I think. Do they know people would love to choose between apps with and without ads? Of course. Why they decided not to implement it in the listing? Because they live from ads. There is exactly zero chance they will do it as you propose.


They've shown whether an app has ads for over five years: https://www.androidpolice.com/2016/04/28/the-play-store-star...


They won't have my appreciation or respect until they let me permanently filter out paid or adware apps and keep them filtered out until I choose to see them again.

It would be so easy to implement, it seems scornful not to. When I want a needle, they hand me a haystack and say "we etched 'this is a needle' into the needles for you so you'll know when you find one. Good luck."

I admit I haven't used android for three or four years so maybe they have this capability now, would love to be corrected if so.


  > I admit I haven't used android for three or four years so maybe they have this capability now, would love to be corrected if so.
Nothing has changed.


You could do a Google search something like this: [inurl:https://play.google.com/store/apps/ -"Contains Ads"]


Absolutely NOT! It's waaay better to have huge multinational corporation dictate what's right and what's wrong and what's good and what's bad! And they do it for you my friend! For FREE!


Well its their platform


It doesn't work like that when you're one of two players in the segment, that's what antitrust is about. "It's their platform" would work well if there were any significant alternatives, which there aren't.


There are many popular app stores on Android and you're free to use any of them (or none of them, if you just download apps directly from websites) without rooting your phone, jailbreaking, etc.

A recent list of someone's favorites: https://42matters.com/blog/?p=the-best-of-2020-a-list-of-app...


Apple and Google together have 95% market share.

From the perspective of an Android user, a lot of the alternatives are interesting. Especially F-Droid.

From the perspective of the app developer, it doesn't work. You use Apple and Google or you lose 95% of the market.

And the same constraint keeps it that way. You lose most of the Android market if you're not in Google Play, so nearly everything that isn't explicitly banned can be found in Google Play, so most users have no occasion to install any other app store and the friction to developers using another one to the exclusion of Google Play remains high.


I'd agree completely if you were talking about Apple and the App Store here, but this is Android. You can install alternative app stores on it without rooting it or any sort of advanced user skills. F-Droid is pretty great IMO.


So, let's be clear here. The problem is not that they've prohibited people from putting this information in the app title. The problem comes if they've done so without introducing another way for the user to express their preference for ad-free apps. E.g. it should even work better if, hypothetically, the search function prioritized ad-free apps anyway when the user puts "no ads" in the search box.

I can't tell if this is the case right now because, well, the store is still full of apps with "no ads" in the title. Those are still coming up first.


Well, we can expect the heat death of the universe before google does something that helps promoting apps that have no ads.


Most of their own apps have no ads...

And google doesn't require a share of revenue for mobile ads either.

Some users clearly prefer apps without ads, and will have a better user experience without ads. Google makes lots of product design decisions to attempt to improve user experience (even if they fail often).

Therefore there isn't a clear incentive to prevent the user finding an app without ads.


What apps are you referring to? Gmail and GMaps, the only ones I use regularly, do have ads.


The gmail app has ads? Where?

The only "ads" I see in gmail is the metric tonne of spam I receive every day, and I can't really blame Google for that.


Maybe they tried them and reverted, I do not see them right now.

But I've seen that previously: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=android+gmail+ads&ia=images...


Sure, has been like that for a very long time: Gmail sorts your emails into "General, Social Networks, Ads and Notifications". Only on the ads inbox, Google shows you ads.


To note, that's an optional thing. I've never seen ads in gmail, as I've never enabled that feature.


If a Google app has no ads, it is because the information they are gathering feeds into the other ad algorithms enough to make it worthwhile. They are in an unusual position of being able to do that because of their size. (Not unique, but unusual.)


Google's curation of the Play Store, while protecting their own economic interests, feels a bit like a dark pattern. The fact that adding " n" to most keywords prompts " no ads" in the suggestions shows how popular this is.

If I search for "tuner", I get two sponsored results first, then five ad-containing results with average 4.4 rating, then an ad-free app with 4.9 stars.

My preference would be searching by rating with a minimum number of installs. Even using the 4.5+ filter seems to be the quickest way to find completely ad-free apps. But, what really works best (but never quickest) for many apps is to find an APK somewhere else, like Github.


> My preference would be searching by rating with a minimum number of installs

This problem has a better solution - sort/search by the lower confidence bound for the rating: https://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average-rating...


> But, what really works best (but never quickest) for many apps is to find an APK somewhere else, like Github.

My phone isn't totally de-Googled, but I always make a point of seeing if what I need can be found on F-Droid, and only searching the Play Store if nothing there will serve.


Same here. Also, using aptoide for Android TV.


Sorry for the offtopic, but can you tell me the name of the ad-less tuner app? I've been searching for one, but the best I found was Fender's. Which is pretty ok, too.


Free Universal Tuner, by Dmitry Pogrebnyak.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ru.aterlux.gui...

I appreciate that you can choose the microphone source, change detection parameters, and easily select off-440 tunings. It's responsive and accurate enough for my playing.

The only issue I ever had was on the Fairphone 3. Starting a few months ago, if I had Google Assistant always listening, the tuner would stop working. I've since disabled Assistant and changed phones.


I also ended up with Fender's, but it wasn't terribly responsive so eventually purchased a strobe tuner [0]. Has some disadvantages over something like a smartphone, but better for my simple usage.

[0]: https://www.thomann.de/intl/ee/peterson_stroboclip_hd.htm


How can you have an electronic strobe tuner? I understand the mechanics of mechanical ones (they're really quite simple), but how can you have one with an LCD display? Is it merely a weird way of outputting the same electronic tuning you can get from any FFT-based tuning, and they're just riding the reputation of the mechanical devices?


I do have a Boss TU-2, but I'm sometimes in a situation where I'm too lazy to use a cable but have my phone handy (because I record ideas on my phone)


I use TE Tuner and like it. I don't use all the features, but the tuner and metronome are pretty great.


Would prefer max installs filter instead of min to filter out the bigger apps that have budgets for seo


I'm actually glad to see editorializing disallowed in app titles. If everybody did it, the store would be a mess. I mean, it's already a mess, but even more so.


"No ads" isn't editorializing, though. Unlike "best" or "#1", it's a statement of fact, and a fact that is probably useful to shoppers.


Could this be in response to apps indicating that they don't have ads even though they do?


In that case these apps should be banned, not the use of "no ads" in titles.


Or apps which don't have ads when first installed, but ads later get added in an update. The user will likely never see the updated app name.


That or the fact that google massively profits off the presence of ads in mobile apps.


The presence or omission of a fact is often the result of a conscious editorial choice. It is frequently the intent, not the nature of the words themselves, that underscores the editorial nature of the statement.


Buy Uncle Miller’s Corn Flakes — 100% arsenic free!


Exactly. Another textbook example is the language describing meat as coming from pork with “no hormones added” even though it’s unlawful to add hormones to pork grown for human consumption. Sure, it’s a fact; but the choice to include it is made to provide a marketing boost over competing brands that might not have the language on the packaging.


Wow, that's incredibly dishonest to consumers! My turkey states "no hormones added," I assume that's also unlawful like pork?

It should be illegal to advertise you're not doing something that is illegal in the first place if the intent is to imply others are in fact doing it.


The ability to use your regulatory obligations in your marketing materials and spin them as a positive is the carrot for companies to enthusiastically comply.


Correct, both pork and poultry.


Avoid toxic chemicals - drink Coca Cola!


Aspartame just hits different ya know?


The problem (with both app stores) is there are really three types of apps: paid, free, requires subscription. Devs are having to use titles to make it clear which is which since the stores aren't letting them use categories. It's frustrating (for both user and developer) when a user downloads an app expecting it to be free only to find it won't work if you don't pay monthly.


I agree. I'd also like to see information for things like one-time, subscription-based, or repeatable in-app purchases (eg. "gems").

Apple does a better job of displaying this information than Google. Sometimes I check what IAP are available on the iOS variant of an app I'm interested in, just to get a better idea.


But the need does not exists in a void - the store does not allow to filter in searches apps with ads or microtransactions.


The Play Store already has a "Contains Ads" label for apps with ads. Preventing users from searching/filtering with this label is consumer-hostile.

Here are a couple of third-party workarounds:

- KPlaySearch (https://playsearch.kaki87.net) lets you search the Play Store and optionally filter by whether the app is free of ads and/or in-app purchases. Source code: https://git.kaki87.net/KaKi87/KPlaySearch

- Aurora Store (https://auroraoss.com/download/AuroraStore/) is an alternative Play Store client that works without a Google account and without Google Play Services. Its app search allows filtering by whether the app is ad-free and/or dependent on Google Play Services. Source code: https://gitlab.com/AuroraOSS/AuroraStore


Users are interested in apps that have no ads. Whether or not an app has ads is not part of the standard app info fields, so while publishers could lie in the title, where else can the users find out whether there are ads and why couldn't Google instead just ban apps that lie about having no ads instead of outright banning "no ads" in the title?

I think Google makes no money from free ad-less apps, so it is plausible that allowing free ad-less apps to promote themselves as "no ads" (over apps with ads or paid apps) is not directly financially beneficial to Google and is perhaps even harmful. You can see the disincentives at work here.


A bit of a tangent but I wish more than anything that App Store/Play Store allowed for more advanced search. Some of what I want I know will never come but I'd love to be able to filter out any games that have any type of coin/gem/currency for sale through IAP. Normally I have to rely on reddit posts or random blogs that I find with search terms like "$gameType game with no P2P/P2W" or "$gameType game with no IAP" but even that's not perfect. I'm perfectly fine paying for a game and I'm fine with the game having IAP for extra things like "No Ads", level packs, or similar but I despise games that have any sort of P2P/P2W, they always optimize for the wrong thing (making money > fun/interesting/etc).


I always wondered why all these stores are so fucking awful to filter. Is it calculated ?


Ye probably they want to manipulate the "feed" like Facebook. Google Play have no way to filter on permissions, ads or price ... has to be on purposely, as it is so user hostile.


Yes. I often find Play "hides" deep in the results apps that I had previously bought, even typing their exact name, in hopes I choose another (always paid or with ads) above them.


> Yes. I often find Play "hides" deep in the results apps that I had previously bought, even typing their exact name, in hopes I choose another (always paid or with ads) above them.

Previously installed apps and games used to be listed under the 'Library' portion of your user profile, now you can find them under 'Manage Apps and Device > Manage > Not Installed'.

Of those path segments, the first is a menu option, the second is a tab, and the third is a drop-down. It is almost as if Google doesn't want the user to find it, while making it technically available.


Both Google and Apple monetize app discovery by selling advertising spots and such, and both collect revenues from inside apps (be it the mandatory-through-them in-app purchasing systems or advertising). As they are monopolies on their respective platforms, they have no reason to improve your experience, and so they do not care if you find the best app.

They care that you find the app that generates them the most revenue, and that's exactly what they're going to do.


I imagine it would be easy to add a search filter for ads or no ads, but they don't.


Are there any third party search interfaces? Seems like it would be pretty easy to add automatic checking for ads.


Yes, Aurora Store provides a filter for this. https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.aurora.store/

And someone else mentioned https://playsearch.kaki87.net/


That second one is great! Although I just did a search for "Music" and it only returned 4 results. I'm sure there's more than 4 ad-free music players.


Along with what other people are saying, the app stores have little competition and already rake in massive quantities of money. They don't have much reason to improve anything.


It will definitely improve the readability of Play Store lists to have those titles removed.


That would make sense if, say, any phrase in square brackets was the reason for the rejection. The fact it appears to be only "no ads" means that clearly isn't the reason.


The alternative is Amazon style titles which contains insane amount of details (because that is/was the only thing Amazon could search).

Ideally Google would allow the apps to be tagged as free, freemium, paid and app supported. I suspect part of Google reasoning is that doing so kill almost all the apps supported by ads.


>I didn't want to test more in fear of banning...

This line says so much more than the words alone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Farmer_and_the_Viper

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:If_you_lie_down_with...


I'm pretty sure the reason I got the infamous 'shadow ban' on Youtube for my Google account (i.e. I can see my comments but nobody else can, and my upvotes/downvotes behave similarly) was that I made a lot of snarky comments about how many ads different kinds of content had per minute of viewing time. I'd also note in the comments when Youtube gave the 'log in to see this age-sensitive content' warning (which didn't show up when logged in).

They don't want anyone questioning their ad revenue model I guess, nor their algorithmic ranking system...


I wish so much I could simply pay for ad-free versions of software, and I don't mean in-app purchases to unlock features, which I wish people didn't do and instead had a paid version in the store.

I use f-droid as much as possible, but there are a few things not available there.


As a user, I'm constantly bothered by how poor the metadata is about how the app is monetized. And this problem occurs across multiple platforms - Windows Store is even worse.

I do not hold it against developers that they need to make money. But when I'm searching for apps, I want to make an informed decision about how it's going to do that - be it through ads, through paid unlock of the full functionality, through paid subscriptions, or is it a paid-up-front app, or a combination thereof.

The ability to filter on this critical attribute is slim-to-nonexistent.


It's hard to interpret this because in the presence of better searching tools for ads, and better surfacing of metadata fields about ads, this would be a clearly pro-consumer move. It wouldn't even be remotely controversial. And my instinct is to interpret it through that lens, it is a policy that in many ways just makes sense. But I don't think there is a way to exclude apps with ads from search results or to search for add-free apps specifically? Google isn't taking advantage of any of the upsides of having "ad-supported" as a separate category of information. This is a general problem, search in the Play Store is kind of frustrating; it doesn't feel designed to help really filter information.

I constantly wonder if I'm being far too charitable with Google or not charitable enough. It's a hard balance to strike, and I always feel like I'm slightly getting the balance wrong. Maybe the correct thing in this case is not to question the policy itself at all but to redirect all of that energy towards the more pressing question, "why can't I filter based on this category?"

Because we can have a somewhat endless debate over whether this policy is good or bad based almost purely on Google's motivations and what they plan to do next. But most of that is just interpreting Google's intent; in the abstract forcing apps to move information out of titles into easily accessed categories/fields is a good thing. And in contrast to a debate about intentions, the lack of filtering tools around ads, and the lack of any ability for developers to highlight being ad-free as a selling point -- those are pretty unambiguous weaknesses of the Play store that make the store worse regardless of Google's motivations. The search page doesn't even show whether or not an app contains ads (or in-app purchases while we're on the subject), you have to go into the app screen to see that, Google really isn't putting a ton of effort that I can see into surfacing this information.

That kind of stuff is negative, that stuff should be fixed. The search page does show the price of the app directly in the result list. It should also show an icon indicating if the app has ads or not, that's information that is just as relevant as the price. In a lot of cases ads are the price of an app, and so for UX purposes they should often be treated like they're the same category of information.


Good thing there are alternative app stores, and that you can straight up download and install an APK.

I never go on the play store, and no one should.


I fully support this. I truly despise the SEO spam on Google Play. The title should be the name of the app and nothing else.


Is there an unofficial searchable index of Play Store apps?


Not that I know, but there's this search tool which scrapes (so it's slow).

https://playsearch.kaki87.net/


I really want a way to search for ad-free apps. I don't bother very much with the Android store because of this. If I want my 4 year old to use my phone I don't want her clicking some ad and leaving the app by accident.

As a result, I only have apps by the BBC and a couple of others.


I don't know about 4, but for toddlers, use Screen Pinning if you're going to let your child touch any Android device.


Honestly I'm OK with that.

Title doesn't actually GUARANTEE there are actually no ads. I would rather train people to look for actual authoritative answer.

(I also personally hate when games try to put attributes in title, it just makes the entire search list meaningless)


I am an Android user fed up with Google, but I've never really focused on alternatives to stock Android. I briefly investigated Cyanogenmod and its successor, LineageOS, but never to the point of installing it. I do use the Gmail app on my phone, but it's not a requirement for me. Beyond that, I don't really have strong ties to the Google Suite of apps. I do have a few apps I've purchased and use frequently, but most are freeware.

All that said, for those of you who have de-Googled your phone, how much friction was there? Is there a leader of the pack for alternate app stores (if necessary), and/or do you load APKs directly?


have been running de googled for more than last 6 years. during original setup of phone there is a lot of opportunity to shut down Google. how ever, can proceed and succeed most of the way with the right tools, and patience. vigilance in disable options is important. some times you can disable all actions after install - for example location, etc. F-droid is your primary source for apks. they have everything you need, with very good filters and warnings about privacy and other options of their apps. If you need some apk available on that is on Google only, then there are a few other sites, that package them and seem to work quite well. They look sketchy, they promote other apps, but I haven't had any issues using them in over 5 years. just click carefully. for example apkpure. You can get things like Signal, mapy. cz, Wyze and so on, better yet, sometimes older versions. In a few apps, while running, you have to ignore the message that you need Google for this app to work. I haven't had one that actually needed it. even Google photos. (assuming you don't want it linked to Google cloud.)


Can we just all agree on an alternative language that means "no ads"?

How about "coool" spelled with 3 o's? As long as you use that everyone will know it means "no ads" if we can get some media to write about it.


With “Aurora Store” you can filter out apps with ads, paid apps, or GSF dependent apps. Updating apps requires manually pressing “install”, but other than that it's pretty neat.


the problem i faced is that aurora store is disliked by google and my account was terminated. would recommend though.


Your google account was terminated because you installed a different app store on your phone?


Aurora offers to use some built-in account, which sometimes doesn't work, or to use your own. I guess OP used their own and got banned. Similar can happen to NewPipe etc users, Google doesn't like third party clients - allegedly.

Hacker news discussion of the NewPipe account ban incident: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21247759


If I remember correctly, Aurora recommends signing into the app with a burner Google account in case of issues like this. I think Google's problem is not so much installing a different app store, but signing into your Google account from it.


I'm pretty sure you can use aurora store without connecting it to your Google account, though you can only install gratis apps this way.


FWIW, the store itself already displays whether the app has ads -- directly below the app title [1]. This seems reasonable to me. I'd imagine you probably couldn't add [no IAPs] to a title, either.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.StudioWhee... (random app with ads)


It would be nice if there were better filtering options when searching the stores.

Open source would be nice, but some validation would be nice and not sure that is easy.


Yea same here, recently got my app rejected because of "no ads". Not a fan of this change either, makes me prefer f-droid even more.


You can still put [no ads] or [PRO] in the icon, pro/paid in the title.

That said, a no-ads app still has ads in Google's eyes if there is any promotional link, i.e. to your website or your other apps. Google takes down those apps if you don't label the links as "advertisement".


Very good to know! I had been mulling an app company that did privacy centric paid variations on popular free* apps, but it depended on being able to market them as being ad and surveillance free.

However, if this policy precludes that, it does seem a bit anti-competitive.


I use e.os from the e.foundation. Good if you can live google-free. My app store I use is f-droid. It has instructions for reproducible builds of apps and, for each app, it clearly indicates its license and if it has anti-features.


I don't know why they have the policy. It is also possible that they don't want you to put something in the title that they don't have the means (or maybe resources) to check.


This is frustrating.

One of my wife's favorite apps, Instagram's Boomerang, has been broken on Android 12 since release. No sign of fixing it. The app store has been flooded with 1 and 2 star reviews as a result. I went digging for an alternative. It's just playing a 5 second loop forwards and backwards, so it can't be hard to re-implement, right? Someone's gotta have an alternative.

You have now entered the Clone Wars. Dozens of imitation apps that claim to do the same, with similar names, touting similar features. Except they are riddled with ads and often don't even do what's advertised without some big watermark or outright paying for it. I'd love to find the one that's ad-free and just does what it should but I'm wading through what looks like aisles of a dollar store. The curation has gone to hell and this isn't helping. We need better ways of sorting and filtering on the app store.


I use LineageOS with F-droid without GAPPS... missing some things, but overall very happy. The worst thing is probably how bad the search feature is in OsmAnd.


Have new changes affected anyone else's Play Store Explore traffic?

Would love to chat if so. We've seen a significant decrease and can't figure out why.


Title is marketing drivel. If it is ad-free, that should be evaluated not by the developer. I'm a huge fan of not trusting developers :)


Try using alternative Unicode characters; chances are the Google maggots forgot to normalize the characters in the title before looking for the substring.

ℵ0 ÅⅮȘ

or whatever.


Ads is google's god.

"No-ads" is like coming to google church and offending the religion.


It makes sense at face value. But knowing google, there's something very off-base at play here.


nо аdѕ

The text above is spoofed Unicode and may bypass simple filters. Enjoy.

In the event HN reverts these to ascii glyphs, try a regen from here: https://onlineunicodetools.com/spoof-unicode-text


You can’t also add “new” in your game title. They deleted my account, just for that reason


Good. Phrases like that are just spammy and annoying and don't belong in app titles.


Like the terms "fast" and "secure" in "Google Chrome - Download the Fast, Secure Browser from Google".


I wonder if no-аds would work. see I used Cyrillic a here.


Mobile platforms are the 21st century nanny state. You can only do what we allow you to do, because it's for your own good.


Is foreign lanaguage OK?


ah so that's why my app got denied an update


>Regular Expressions: Now You Have Two Problem

When do they crack down more like how https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian will autoremove your comments if your username has the string 'ad' in it?

I'm serious, this isn't going to be enough. Liars and scammers will find out how to get around the filter and create badly named apps regardless, just like how my spam is barely readable English. I can read it but a filter can't.




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