Google Reports 621,464 Play Store App Removals and 18,145 Developer Account Terminations
Google’s UK Mobile Bi-annual Transparency Report (published 30 September 2026) covers 1 April–30 June 2026: 621,464 Play apps removed and 18,145 developer accounts terminated for policy violations, plus 7,104,152 submissions reviewed and 446,593 rejected. The UK title does not define the geographic coverage of the metrics.
Google removed 621,464 apps from Google Play and terminated 18,145 developer accounts for policy violations between 1 April and 30 June 2026, according to its UK Mobile Bi-annual Transparency Report published on 30 September 2026.
App Review and Enforcement
The two-page report’s App Review and Enforcement table lists five metrics for that period:
- App submissions reviewed: 7,104,152
- App submissions rejected: 446,593
- App submissions approved after rejection: 217,850
- Apps removed from Google Play due to policy violations: 621,464
- Developer accounts terminated due to policy violations: 18,145
Rejected submissions were about 6.29% of those reviewed (446,593 ÷ 7,104,152).
That share is derived from the published counts; the report does not print a rejection-rate percentage.
Submission counts are not the same as unique apps or unique developers.
Approval after rejection does not mean an appeal succeeded
Of the rejected submissions, 217,850 were later approved after rejection.
A footnote in the report states that developers can address the issues that caused rejection and resubmit without an appeal.
The figure therefore reflects successful fixes and resubmissions, not a tally of reversed wrong decisions.
Policy-violation removals and account terminations are not broken down by abuse type.
The report does not say how many involved malware, scams, or other criminal conduct, and those rows should not be read as proof that every action targeted a cybercriminal.
Why Google published this disclosure
On the cover, Google links the release to the UK Competition and Markets Authority’s designation of Google’s mobile platform as having strategic market status under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024.
Google says it has voluntarily committed to publish aggregated, anonymized app-review and enforcement metrics for app developers on a bi-annual basis.
That UK SMS / DMCC framing is different from India’s monthly significant-social-media-intermediary compliance reports under the IT Rules, 2021.
The geographical limitation
The document is titled a UK Mobile Bi-annual Transparency Report and says publication is intended to ensure greater transparency for UK developers.
It does not explicitly define the geographic coverage of the five table metrics.
Readers should not treat the figures as confirmed UK-only totals, nor as a labelled worldwide Play total, without further clarification from Google.
The report contains no India-specific figures.
Sources
Source: Google, UK Mobile Bi-annual Transparency Report, reporting period 1 April, 30 June 2026, published 30 September 2026. https://storage.googleapis.com/transparencyreport/report-downloads/pdf-report-dd_2026-4-1_2026-6-30_en_v1.pdf