AdBlock Fast Gets New Life as Google Reinstates App on Play Store

Last Week, CDA News reported that Samsung’s ad-blocking app was removed from the Play Store for allegedly violating a section of the Store’s developer agreements.

For Google, this is a neat little way to protect the interests of all apps on the Play Store, while also allowing users the option to download ad-blocking apps on their Android devices.

The issue was raised when Adblock Fast submitted an appeal to update its app last Monday, which was rejected by Google on the same day.

Samsung introduced ad blocking within its mobile web browser by launching a Content Blocker extension API, allowing developers to build mobile apps that will allow surfers of the web via Samsung’s browsers to block ads and other content slow down web pages, like trackers, upon installation.

“We’re happy to report that Google has reversed their decision, both accepting our appeal in an email sent to us on Friday evening and approving and republishing Adblock Fast by the time we woke up this morning”, Rocketship wrote in a blog post. It looks like the developers of this app have tweaked something that has brought it in line with the developer agreement, which is why Google has allowed it back on the Play Store once again. The first app to take advantage was Adblock Fast, which promised fewer distractions while surfing the mobile Web. Users have been warned against this practice for years, but third-party app stores continue to exist and thrive.

You’re all done! Just sit back and relax with the knowledge that your Google account is more secure and that you have 2GB of free storage on the way. So, what’s there to do if all you want is to find the newest apps and games available to download on Google Play, the ones released now, today, or yesterday?

Dean Murphy, the developer of Crystal, says that Google has not accepted the update requests made for Crystal.

Google’s decision to reinstate the ad-blocking app seems like a change of course for the company. Another adblock plugin Crystal saw its app update get rejected from Google, on similar reasons. It could also clarify the user experience for those that doesn’t have the Samsung Internet 4.0 in their devices yet.