The company says fewer malicious actors are targeting Google Play with malicious apps. This is thanks to the tech giants increasing their investments in proactive security systems and AI technologies.
In its latest Android App Ecosystem Safety Report released on Thursday, Google said it has prevented apps that violate its policies from being published on Google Play. This is a decrease from 2.36 million in 2024 and 2.28 million in 2023 to 1.75 million in 2025.
The annual report shows how Google keeps Android users safe by reviewing and monitoring apps to protect them from malware, financial fraud, privacy violations, sneaky subscriptions, and other threats.
For example, Google said it banned more than 80,000 developer accounts in 2025 for attempting to publish these types of malicious apps. This figure decreased year-on-year compared to 158,000 in 2024 and 333,000 in 2023.
Google touted how its investments in AI and other real-time defenses have not only helped combat these kinds of threats, but also served to deter them.
“Measures such as developer verification, mandatory pre-review checks, and testing requirements have raised the bar for the Google Play ecosystem, significantly reducing the entry points for bad actors,” the company blog post said, adding, “AI-based, multi-layered protection is stopping bad actors from publishing malicious apps.”
Google says it currently runs more than 10,000 safety checks on every app it publishes and continues to double-check apps after they’re published. The company has also integrated state-of-the-art generative AI models into its app review process to help human reviewers find more complex malicious patterns faster. Google announced that it plans to increase AI investment in 2026 to stay ahead of new threats.
Google also said it has prevented more than 255,000 apps from having excessive access to sensitive user data, compared to 1.3 million in 2024. The company also blocked 160 million spam ratings and reviews last year and prevented the average rating of apps subject to review bombing from dropping by 0.5 stars.
Meanwhile, Android’s defense system, known as Google Play Protect, identified more than 27 million new malicious apps and warned users or blocked them from running. This is an increase compared to 13 million non-Play Store apps identified in 2024 and 5 million confirmed in 2023. This increase seems to suggest that malicious actors are now more likely to avoid the Play Store when targeting users with malicious apps.
