The company says fewer criminals are targeting Google Play with malicious apps, and it attributes this change to the tech giant's increased investment in proactive security systems and AI technology.
Google said in its latest Android App Ecosystem Safety Report released Thursday that it will prevent 1.75 million policy-violating apps from being published on Google Play in 2025, down from 2.36 million in 2024 and 2.28 million in 2023.
This annual report shows how Google keeps Android users safe by reviewing and monitoring apps to protect against malware, financial fraud, privacy violations, sneaky subscriptions, and other threats.
Google, for example, announced that in 2025 it would ban more than 80,000 developer accounts that tried to publish these types of malicious apps. This number has also decreased from the previous year, from 158,000 in 2024 and 333,000 in 2023.
Google touted how its investments in AI and other real-time defenses not only helped fight these types of threats, but also acted as a deterrent.
“Initiatives such as developer verification, mandatory up-front review checks, and testing requirements have raised the bar for the Google Play ecosystem and significantly reduced the number of paths for bad actors to enter,” the company said in a blog post, adding that the company's “layered AI-powered protections” are “stopping bad actors from publishing malicious apps.”
Google said it currently conducts more than 10,000 safety checks on every app it publishes, and continues to recheck apps after they're released. The company has also integrated the latest generative AI models into its app review process, allowing human reviewers to uncover more complex malicious patterns faster. Google said it plans to increase its investment in AI in 2026 to stay ahead of new threats.
Additionally, Google announced that it has prevented more than 255,000 apps from excessively accessing sensitive user data, down from 1.3 million in 2024. The company also said it blocked 160 million spam ratings and reviews last year, preventing the average 0.5-star rating of review-bombed apps from dropping.
Meanwhile, Android's defense system, known as Google Play Protect, identified more than 27 million new malicious apps and either warned users or blocked them from running. This is an increase from 13 million non-Play Store apps confirmed in 2024 and 5 million in 2023. These increases seem to suggest that bad actors are increasingly avoiding the Play Store when targeting users with malicious apps.