Google wants to make the Android ecosystem safer by adding several new safety measures to the Play Store. The company just revealed its 2025 roadmap to help developers build safe apps from the start and make it easier for users to differentiate between real and fake apps. It outlined a couple of new ways to strengthen the Play Store security, building on top of the existing tools to protect businesses from scams and fraud, identify policy and compatibility issues early, and more.
Google is helping developers build safer apps
Google Play’s policies help ensure a safe experience for users. Play Console’s pre-review checks let you fix policy and compatibility issues before submitting your app. Google is now launching even more pre-review checks this year to help you avoid common policy pitfalls.
In order to provide more policy support, Google is expanding its Google Play Developer Help Community, which allows developers to find answers to policy questions, share knowledge, and connect with fellow developers. The company is also planning to expand the community to include more languages, such as Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, and Portuguese.
The Play Integrity API helps prevent fraud, bots, cheating, and data theft. This year, Google will continue to improve its Play Integrity API with more substantial protection for even more users.
Google Play adds badges to apps so that users can recognize them as safe. For example, official government apps have a “Government” badge. Recently, Google also introduced a “Verified” badge for VPN apps and is now planning to add badges to more app categories in the future.
In addition to helping developers create safer apps on Google Play, Google is also committed to keeping the Android ecosystem secure. Last year, the company blocked 2.36 million policy-violating apps from Google Play using stronger privacy policies, AI threat detection, and other security measures. In its blog post, Google wrote, “This year, we’re working on ways to make it even harder for malicious actors to hide or trick users into harmful installs, which will not only protect your business from fraud but also help users download your apps with confidence.”
