Google will close inactive Play Store developer accounts with low app downloads

Abner Li | Jul 28 2021 - 4:11 pm PT

In addition to previewing the “Safety Section,” Google today issued the latest set of Play Policies. One upcoming change will see Google close inactive Play Store developer accounts “after 1 year of dormancy and additional factors.”

“Dormancy” includes developers that have never uploaded an app or accessed the Play Console in a year. Google won’t close developer accounts with Play Store applications that see over 1,000 installs or in-app purchases “in the last 90 days.”

This new policy will come into effect on September 1, 2021. It’s born out of Google believing that “Play remains a safer ecosystem when developers actively maintain their apps.”

Developers whose accounts are closed can create new ones in the future, but they won’t be able to reactivate old accounts, apps, or data.

Elsewhere, Google provided an update on its plan to make opting out of personalized ads more effective. Today, Android’s advertising ID is available to apps even if you’ve opted out of interest-based advertising for analytics and fraud prevention.

Google considers those two use cases “essential” and will provide an alternative called app set ID ahead of the upcoming change, which starts on Android 12 later this year and will see the ad ID switch to a “string of zeros” for privacy-conscious users. This change will come to other OS versions next year.

App set ID is a unique ID that, on a given device, allows you to correlate usage or actions across a set of apps owned by your organization. You cannot use app set ID for ads personalization or ads measurement. It will also automatically reset if all the developers’ apps on the device are uninstalled or none of the apps have accessed the ID in 13 months.

Other upcoming policy changes are summarized here.