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Google Bans Cheetah’s Entire Suit of Apps

February 22, 2020 10:52 pm

Google has banned Cheetah Mobile’s entire suite of apps from Android Play Store and its ad networks after ad fraud allegations, according to BuzzFeed News. The removal of Cheetah apps is part of a massive crackdown of 600 apps because those apps violated Google’s disruptive ads policy and disallowed interstitial policy. Cheetah represented 45 of those apps.

The Chinese leading tech company has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange since May 2014, but its shares dipped 15% to $3.6 on February 20 after the report.

Cheetah Mobile said that it received an email from Google which said to terminate the associated contracts with it and to disable its accounts in Google Play Store, Google AdMob, and Google AdManager on February 20.

In the first three quarters, 22.6% of Cheetah’s total revenues came from Google, including mobile advertising business and purchase of virtual items by users on Google.

Cheetah responded this issue in an open letter, saying that the 45 banned apps include Cheetah game apps that were "unrelated to its claim that ‘disruptive advertising issues such as out-of-app ads’, and even some apps from companies we invested in."

The letter also said that Cheetah built a partnership with Google China’s interface team in 2014 in Google advertising operations.

On October 28 last year, Google did a round of advertising effectiveness and experience review at its US headquarter. Then Cheetah cooperated with Google team to actively conduct self-examination, clear up all advertising spaces in its products and engage with Google China to  transparent communication and proactively removed 15 advertising scenes. After the 90-day review period, Cheetah has been asking Google China for review results, but responses always said there was no clear information from the US Policy team yet until the email on February 20 informing Cheetah to termination the cooperation.

Cheetah also said in the letter that Google US team did not notify it about the compliance standards in advance, which is regrettable, and only through the day before’s overseas public news that Cheetah learned that Google adopted a totally new machine-learning method to judge disruptive advertising.

Furthermore, Cheetah complained that Google spokesperson said Google would warn developers to correct the problem first, and if a repeat mistake happens, Google would take measures, but Cheetah did not have that chance.

The company is in communication with Google to appeal the decision and trying to restore collaboration with Google. However, the appealing process could take long time so that around 20% of the company’s revenues may be infected by Google at least in the short run.