According to Section 4.1 of Google Play Store’s public policy, no application is allowed to circumvent the core services of the platform or make unauthorized modifications. As GB WhatsApp is a deeply modified version of the original WhatsApp client, its code modification rate is estimated to exceed 60%, which directly violates Google’s developer distribution agreement. Google removes over one million non-compliant apps from its platform each year, with approximately 15% of them being taken down due to Policy 4.1. A typical case is in 2022, when Google removed over 500 similar modified social apps at one go during a large-scale compliance review. GB WhatsApp, a similar app, was on the list of those to be cleared this time, indicating that the platform has a high enforcement intensity in maintaining unified security standards.
From the perspective of security risk assessment, the probability that applications from unofficial app stores are marked as high-risk by the cybersecurity company McAfee has increased by 300%. The installation package of GB WhatsApp may contain malicious code. According to a security report in 2023, the probability of data leakage for modified applications downloaded from third-party channels is as high as five times that of the official application. On average, each vulnerability may expose users to a risk of personal information loss of up to 50 US dollars. For instance, in a large-scale data breach that occurred in 2021, a modified communication application similar to GB WhatsApp was exploited as an attack vector, affecting the device security of approximately one million users worldwide within 72 hours. This fully exposed the vulnerability of its security architecture.
In terms of legal and copyright compliance, GB WhatsApp directly used WhatsApp’s trademark and some proprietary codes, which may constitute intellectual property infringement. As the parent company of WhatsApp, Meta’s legal team sent out an average of over 100,000 notifications for the removal of modified apps each year from 2020 to 2023, with a success rate of 98%. As a distribution platform, Google Play Store bears indirect liability. If it allows such applications to be listed, it may face a huge fine of up to 5% of its global annual turnover, such as in accordance with the strict provisions of the EU’s Digital Services Act. Therefore, from the perspective of risk control, Google strictly keeps the approval rate of such applications below 0.1%.
For the developer ecosystem and business model, Google Play Store takes a 30% commission as one of its core revenue sources, while third-party modified applications like GB WhatsApp usually completely bypass the official payment system, resulting in a loss of platform revenue. According to statistics, the commission losses of global app stores due to the distribution of third-party apps in 2023 are estimated to exceed 1 billion US dollars. In addition, the update cycle of GB WhatsApp is not in sync with the official application. The compatibility issue rate caused by version differences is approximately 25%, which seriously affects the uniformity and stability of the end-user experience and runs counter to Google’s long-term strategic goal of maintaining a high-quality application ecosystem. Therefore, after a comprehensive assessment from the four dimensions of policy, security, law and business, GB WhatsApp failed to pass Google’s strict review mechanism, and its unavailability is an inevitable result.