Google Play
Ranked 3 of 14 app stores by recommenders
Recommended for its large app catalog, malware scanning, and sandboxed option. Main caveat: critics say Google's control over Android app distribution and slow reviews hurt developers.
Recommended for its large app catalog, malware scanning, and sandboxed option. Main caveat: critics say Google's control over Android app distribution and slow reviews hurt developers.
415 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 62
- criticize it
- 353
- approval share
- 15%
Recommended in 11 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Owned for 5 years
Median of the 5 owners who said how long they have had it.
Each square is one year.
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 62 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 0.1 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 11 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Malware and scam removal
“Play Store being a cesspit is indeed a problem! But it still is making a constant effort to drive away scammers”
Comment from 28 Apr 2026 in “Phone is about to stop being yours” “Google invests much more into removing malicous apps from the app store than fdroid does.”
Comment from 31 Dec 2025 in “A faster heart for F-Droid. Our new server is here” “The play store scanning apps for malware is an important safety mechanism against this.”
Comment from 24 Sep 2026 in “F-Droid 2.0” Sandboxed Play Store recommended for privacy
“Our recommendation is to use the sandboxed Play Store for installing apps when using sandboxed Google Play in a profile.”
Comment from 18 Feb 2026 in “GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple” “we strongly recommend using the sandboxed Play Store as the primary way of obtaining apps from the Play Store”
Comment from 3 Sep 2026 in “Play Store blocks AuroraStore, hurting GrapheneOS users” “the Play Store does not allow installing an app on your device due to device or georestrictive rules”
Comment from 2 Sep 2026 in “Play Store blocks AuroraStore, hurting GrapheneOS users” - Comment from 17 Feb 2026 in “GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple”
- Comment from 21 May 2026 in “Where to buy a non-Apple, non-Google smartphone”
- Comment from 2 Apr 2026 in “Swappa.com for GrapheneOS compatible devices – Stay Away”
- Comment from 24 Sep 2026 in “F-Droid 2.0”
Large app and game selection
“the app selection is far better on the App Store (and also Google Play Store)”
Comment from 25 Jan 2026 in “Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android” “google play (android) has a lot more games than steam, it's not even close.”
Comment from 30 Nov 2025 in “Bazzite: Operating System for Linux gaming” Easy cancellation and purchases
“Apple and Google do make it pretty easy to cancel though vs the wild west of the web”
Comment from 9 Jul 2026 in “Just Pay the Subscription” “You can buy pretty much any show you want to watch, without ad breaks”
Comment from 23 Oct 2026 in “Disney Raising Prices Days After Confirming Ads Will Now Show Up on Every Tier”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Control over Android app distribution
“a monopolist retains absolute control of what software can run on your devices, and can capriciously deny distribution to developers for whatever reason it likes”
Comment from 1 Sep 2026 in “AnkiDroid: Google Play no longer allowing Open Collective donation link” “But the motivation here isn't just security, it's control. Google doesn't want anyone to have an Android device that is independent of Google services.”
Comment from 16 Sep 2026 in “The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week” “Google has anticompetitively bundled what should be several distinct types of products together as one take-it-or-leave-it package.”
Comment from 26 Sep 2026 in “Breaking Up with Google Play: Why Conversations Is Now Free” - Comment from 2 Jul 2026 in “A new Android malware from Google”
Slow, opaque app review process
“all of the ridiculous red tape around the actual process of getting an app listed”
Comment from 30 May 2026 in “Ask HN: What Is the State of App Development in 2026?” “the Play Store requires every app to find 12 users for 14 days of internal testing before submission for review, which is utterly incomprehensible”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “The Anatomy of a macOS App” “wait for 24-48 hours to be able to use it, then if you try to automate testing, struggle with having to mock a whole Google Account login process”
Comment from 11 Dec 2025 in “Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration” - Comment from 16 Sep 2026 in “The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week”
- Comment from 16 Sep 2026 in “The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week”
Scams and copycat apps in search
“The play store is pretty bad. About half the time I search for an app, BY NAME, without any way to confuse it with another app, the top result is a scam or copy cat, or adware.”
Comment from 6 Aug 2026 in “Meta Ran Ads That Contained AI-Generated Child Sexual Abuse Imagery” “It's quite problematic that someone can currently upload a package name belonging to another organization to the Play Store”
Comment from 28 Apr 2026 in “Phone is about to stop being yours” Account bans and poor support
“I was paying through Google play, and one day account was banned.”
Comment from 23 Jun 2026 in “Ask HN: Anthropic banned me from using Claude Code and I don't know what to do” “I've had way too much trouble with Google flagging an internal app as problematic and then getting no where with Google "support" when we still used Google play.”
Comment from 20 Mar 2026 in “Android developer verification: Balancing openness and choice with safety” “I tried to create a refund request but its not allowing to create one since the date of the transaction is out of our refund policy”
Comment from 26 Jan 2026 in “JuiceSSH – Give me my pro features back”
Other app stores people recommend
The four most recommended other app stores, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| F-Droid | 230 | 91 | 72% | 12 | 10 yrs5 owners | Approved |
| Apple App Store | 75 | 483 | 13% | 12 | 10 yrs4 owners | — |
| Google PlayThis page | 62 | 353 | 15% | 11 | 5 yrs5 owners | — |
| Aurora Store | 61 | 20 | 75% | 11 | 11 mo4 owners | Approved |
| Obtainium | 38 | 6 | 86% | 11 | 1 yr3 owners | Approved |
What people said
40 of the 508 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“it'd be hard to call those various services (Google Drive, Google Play, etc.) anything other than successful.”
“do verification of the applications you download to verify that it's an untampered app”
“You can buy pretty much any show you want to watch, without ad breaks”
“GrapheneOS also doesn't come with sandboxed Google Play included and works very well without it.”
“Without privileged access, Google apps get access to nothing more than what other apps can get access to on Android.”
“But you can install the Google Play Store on a Fire Tablet. This is the hack”
“Google has anticompetitively bundled what should be several distinct types of products together as one take-it-or-leave-it package.”
“The play store scanning apps for malware is an important safety mechanism against this.”
“Graphene recommends using Graphene's sandboxed Play Store instead”
“you'd think they could use some kind of exponential back-off type algorithm for apps that have been successfully reviewed many times”
“But the motivation here isn't just security, it's control. Google doesn't want anyone to have an Android device that is independent of Google services.”
“It took the whole year before v21 was finally approved, so seems only fair they publish minor v21 revisions multiple times a day!”
“we strongly recommend using the sandboxed Play Store as the primary way of obtaining apps from the Play Store”
“It was the best way for them to provide compatibility without destroying the privacy of their platform”
“the Play Store does not allow installing an app on your device due to device or georestrictive rules”
“I've never had that experience with the Play Store. If there's an update, it updates.”
“a monopolist retains absolute control of what software can run on your devices, and can capriciously deny distribution to developers for whatever reason it likes”
“The play store is pretty bad. About half the time I search for an app, BY NAME, without any way to confuse it with another app, the top result is a scam or copy cat, or adware.”
“Apple and Google do make it pretty easy to cancel though vs the wild west of the web”
“Google is using its oligopoly power to shut out competing app stores and applications that can be installed outside the Play Store”
“I was paying through Google play, and one day account was banned.”
“it doesn't definitively solve fundamental problems with running unwanted software on your device”
“Sandboxed google play does not grant google code any kind of privileged access.”
“all of the ridiculous red tape around the actual process of getting an app listed”
“There is a security AND privacy advantage by using sandboxed google play”
“It's quite problematic that someone can currently upload a package name belonging to another organization to the Play Store”
“Play Store being a cesspit is indeed a problem! But it still is making a constant effort to drive away scammers”
“Google lets you refunds or partial refunds and still don't disclose any customer details.”
“Sandboxed Google play really is the non-tinkerer's approach on GOS”
“I've had way too much trouble with Google flagging an internal app as problematic and then getting no where with Google "support" when we still used Google play.”
“Our recommendation is to use the sandboxed Play Store for installing apps when using sandboxed Google Play in a profile.”
“we recommend using the sandboxed Play Store for users who using sandboxed Google Play”
“Google always allowed you to bypass that by allowing users to install apps outside of their store”
“I tried to create a refund request but its not allowing to create one since the date of the transaction is out of our refund policy”
“the app selection is far better on the App Store (and also Google Play Store)”
“Google invests much more into removing malicous apps from the app store than fdroid does.”
“Google Play requires apps to rebuild targeting the latest Android ABI all the time.”
“wait for 24-48 hours to be able to use it, then if you try to automate testing, struggle with having to mock a whole Google Account login process”
“the Play Store requires every app to find 12 users for 14 days of internal testing before submission for review, which is utterly incomprehensible”
“google play (android) has a lot more games than steam, it's not even close.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.