Google Bans Cryptocurrency Mining Apps On The Play Store

Farai Mudzingwa Avatar

When Facebook announced that they would be allowing cryptocurrency advertisements back on Facebook, I thought Google would follow suit and bring back the ads to Google ads as well. My thinking at the  time was, “Google and Facebook are rivals when it comes to advertising. Google will probably follow suit so that Facebook doesn’t take all the money.”

Doubling down

It turns out I was entirely wrong. It’s been exactly a month since Facebook made their U-turn on cryptocurrency advertisements and Google has not made a similar move. If anything, it seems Google are doubling down on their crypto beef. The company recently updated the Google Play Store developers’ policy and

The policy now reads:

We don’t allow apps that mine cryptocurrency on devices. We permit apps that remotely manage the mining of cryptocurrency.

It’s not what it looks like

When it comes to cryptocurrency reporting, there’s usually two extreme camps; the evangelists who shower praises or those who dismiss cryptos entirely. The dismissive group will look to run with this news as if it’s something big but in all honesty this is not ‘another sign of the doom of cryptocurrencies.’

In fact, this is just Google protecting Android users from developers who add mining capabilities in their applications without informing users. Yes, a single phone cannot mine significant amounts of cryptocurrency but once an application has been downloaded by many users the amounts being mined become more significant. This new rule by Google just ensures that this is not the case.

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