Amid rising digital threats, Google says its strengthened AI-driven defences are making a clear impact. In its latest Android app ecosystem safety report released on Thursday, the company revealed that fewer bad actors are targeting Google Play with malicious apps, crediting proactive security systems and advanced AI investments for the shift.
According to the report, Google prevented 1.75 million policy-violating apps from being published on Google Play in 2025. This marks a decline from 2.36 million in 2024 and 2.28 million in 2023. The annual review outlines how Google monitors and evaluates apps to protect Android users from malware, financial fraud, privacy breaches, deceptive subscriptions and other risks. The company also banned more than 80,000 developer accounts in 2025 that attempted to publish harmful apps, compared with 158,000 in 2024 and 333,000 in 2023.
Highlighting its security upgrades, Google said, “Initiatives like developer verification, mandatory pre-review checks and testing requirements have raised the bar for the Google Play ecosystem, significantly reducing the paths for bad actors to enter,” adding that its “AI-powered, multi-layer protections” have been “discouraging bad actors from publishing malicious apps.” The company now runs over 10,000 safety checks on every app before publication and continues monitoring them afterward. It has also integrated its latest generative AI models into the review process, enabling human reviewers to detect complex malicious patterns more quickly. Google plans to further increase AI investments in 2026 to stay ahead of emerging threats.
Beyond app removals, Google reported it stopped more than 255,000 apps from accessing excessive sensitive user data, down from 1.3 million in 2024. It also blocked 160 million spam ratings and reviews last year and prevented an average 0.5-star rating drop for apps targeted by review bombing. Meanwhile, Google Play Protect identified over 27 million new malicious apps outside the Play Store and either warned users or blocked them from running. This is up from 13 million non-Play Store apps in 2024 and 5 million in 2023, suggesting that attackers are increasingly bypassing the official store.
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