Hi! I'm the author of the story and want to note that I only asked Google why it wasn't removing the apps after their investigation confirmed a major policy infraction. By then their investigation was close to a week old.

Google confirmed that these apps were committing ad fraud, and told me that ad fraud is against Play store policy. Yet the company was going to keep the apps in the store. That didn't make sense to me. Fortunately, they reversed their position.

(Also, in case it matters, I didn't submit my story here. But I always appreciate the interesting threads on my ad fraud stories.)

Did you ask why those companies (Cheetah mobile, Du group,...) which caught red-handed still allow to distribute apps in Google Play store?

I did. I also asked the same Q when I helped catch Cheetah Mobile and Kika Tech doing ad fraud: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/android-...

And when I busted a large ad fraud scheme of dozens of apps: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/how-a-ma...

In all cases Google basically said it takes action against specific apps found violating policy. It seems unwilling to take action against a developer as a whole and ban them. I would also add that I suspect the Play store is not equipped to enforce a ban. People can easily create a newco and get back into the store. This is definitely a much larger issue. So I think that among other things these stories show that you can be a clear bad actor and still do business in the Play store.

Yes. Google prioritizes themselves, business partners over end consumers. I have seen many high ranked apps, which clearly violate Google Play store policy (For instance, placing ads on user lock screen)

Yet, those apps are being ranked higher than other honest apps, which are doing business in honest way.

These day, Google is not willing to do the right thing, unless being pressured by press media, or EU.

If we take the paragraph at its word, Google had already “found” fake ad clicking, with a high enough level of confidence that they both “confirmed” it to a journalist and banned the apps from ad products. It was reasonable to wonder why the same level of confidence was not enough to remove the apps. There are some potential valid answers to that question, to be sure (e.g. want to be more careful before taking actions that affect users), but also potential invalid ones (they just didn’t care much about ad fraud and only removed the apps due to the pressure).

BuzzFeed News is a trash rag, what are you expecting?

BuzzFeed yes. But this is BuzzFeed News, featuring their Pulitzer Prize winning editorial staff. Very different from BuzzFeed.com.

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

> Pulitzer Prize winning editorial staff

That's no longer a reliable way of trusting the credibility. There's been many Pulitzer Prize news reporting which have come out to be completely false.

Maybe, but it helps make them less of a "trash rag"

And there are two articles from Buzzfeed in the front page right now. I think someone at Buzzfeed has figured out how to game HN.