Google Play Store Deletes Bubari’s Defender, Adamu Garba’s Crowwe App From Android …Garba Reacts

Google has deleted Adamu Garba’s social media App, Crowwe from its play store.

The removal comes weeks after the founder touted the App as an alternative to the banned microblogging platform Twitter in Nigeria.

The Crowwe App has been described as an instant messaging and financial transaction app that comes with a digital wallet that helps to transfer and receive money while chatting has received worst reviews.

Policy violation?
There has been no official announcement on the reason for the removal but Google Play policy revealed that the company removes applications that it perceives to have violated its policy

“Once your app is removed, the published version of your app won’t be available on Google Play until a compliant update is submitted,” Playstore policy states.

It added that it will not republish the app until the policy violation has been fixed.

The founder of the app, Mr Garba, however claims that it did not violate any policy in a conversation with The Peoples Gazette. He claims that the company was simply being updated.

His answers, however, seems far fetched as Google itself doesn’t require an app to be deleted completely from the store before an update is uploaded.

“Once your update is available, users can download the update on your app’s store listing page or from their My apps page on the Play Store app,” Googles policy stated.

Other possible reasons for the ban
Following the Twitter ban, the former presidential candidate, Adamu Garba took the opportunity to tout his Crowwe app as an alternative.

“Join Crowwe now! Build your country, Build your people and Build your Brand. Join Crowwe now,”Garba’s tweet.

However, his attempt to seize the opportunity backfired as Nigerians took to criticising the App on several grounds, one of which could have resulted in its removal from the store.

A Twitter user criticized the App of stealing the Terms and Conditions of another app, Spotify. The accusation was made known to the affected platform and it tweeted that it will look into it.

“Check the Crowwe aepp’s terms and conditions. It’s the SAME thing as Spotify. They didn’t even bother editing. Like if you click on the hyperlink it redirects you to Spotify theft. What sort of pangolo app is that?”

Also, Dubawa, a fact-checking platform confirmed the accusation to be true.

Adamu Garba Reacts.
The Chief Executive Officer, IPI Group, Adamu Garba, says he asked Google to take down his social media platform, Crowwe App, from Google Playstore because he needed to update the code.

Garba, who is a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, added that the app would be back up latest by Tuesday.

The APC chieftain, who sued Twitter last year for its role in the #EndSARS protests, told our correspondent that since Twitter was suspended some 10 days ago, thousands of Nigerians had migrated to Crowwe.

Garba, therefore, stated that it was in a bid to make some improvements that he asked Google to take down the app.

On whether the app was removed due to the complaints by Nigerians, Garba said this was not true, adding that Google does not remove apps from its Playstore solely because of complaints.

Garba added, “We took down Crowwe App because we are trying to update the codes and then put it back up. There are some bugs which we identified which can prevent future downloads so we decided to bring it down, edit the code and then put it back up.

“Yes, a lot of people have been posting reports but it has no effect on the app. The truth is that before you publish an app, you have to pass through a lot of audits and a lot of these people commenting don’t know.

“The app being installed has nothing to do with the user but has everything to do with the app itself. There is a bug affecting the contact list information so we had to submit a support report to take it down which was done. We are almost done with the publishing and we will push it back and it might be installed tonight or tomorrow morning.”