What Google Said About Play Store Blocking Apps with BitTorrent Mentions

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A recent development regarding the Google Play Store has become viral because of using the word “BitTorrent” in its full description. In a statement released by Google, it considers this as reference to an open-source transfer protocol, which is by nature another brand.

In fact, the Play Store has blocked fully-featured torrent client from being listed in the store. This is in contrast to the past having a collection of BitTorrent apps and other known brands.

The developers of BitTorrent client BiglyBT had learned about the decision of the Play Store. This was after they have forwarded an update of their application on the Play Store in which they were informed about their violation to the metadata policy.

So, this resulted to the surprise felt by BiglyBT developers, who also worked on Vuze and Azureus. So, they expected no issues because BitTorrent was the name of their transfer protocol.

At first, the case was different because Google has not flagged the description to have issues. This was when the app was first submitted for approval. In contrast, something went wrong for the developers.

This may seem that Google has just considered BitTorrent to be a brand. On the other hand, BitTorrent Inc has finally come up to enforce their name. A BiglyBT developer also stated that using BitTorrent as the protocol name may not be good enough anymore.

Another BitTorrent app named uTorrent has also been removed from the Play Store for a number of days, but the reason was not disclosed. It has now returned to the store though with some other apps mentioning BitTorrent on Google Play Store.

After the developers of BiglyBT modified the “BitTorrent” mentions to just “torrent” on the Play Store, their app went back to the store. Nevertheless, Google was unable to clarify this action which remains a mystery to some developers.