Google has updated its news apps policy and pretty much aims to kill the news apps’ business model, i.e. ads and affiliate marketing.
Here is an update from Google’s updated policy (emphasis is ours).
An app that declares itself as a “News” app on Google Play must meet all of the following requirements.
News apps that require a user to purchase a membership must provide a content preview for users prior to purchase.
News apps MUST:
- provide ownership information about the news publisher and its contributors including, but not limited to, the official website for the news published in your app, valid and verifiable contact information, and the original publisher of each article, and
- have a website or in-app page that provides valid contact information for the news publisher.
News apps MUST NOT:
- contain significant spelling & or grammatical errors,
- contain only static content (e.g., content that is several months old), and
- have affiliate marketing or ad revenue as its primary purpose.
News apps that aggregate content from different publishing sources must be transparent about the publishing source of the content in the app and each of the sources must meet News policy requirements (link).
Google has started dictating the business model of apps and that really takes things to a different level.
