UC Browser has disappeared from the Google Play store. The Alibaba-owned mobile browser, which garnered more than 500 million downloads last month and has over 100 million users in India, is no longer visible on search - though other UCWeb applications - UC Browser Mini and UC News - still are. The development emerges months after the Chinese app had been accused of sending personal data of its Indian users to a server in China.
The removal of UC Browser from Google Play was spotted by
users and reported late on Tuesday.
Mike
Ross, who claims to work for UC Browser,
tweeted
that
the browser is "temporarily removed" from the Play Store for 30 days
due to adopting "misleading" and "unhealthy" methods of
increasing installs. We've reached out to Google and UCWeb for clarity and will
update this space accordingly.
UCWeb in a statement reponded;
"We were informed by Google Play about temporary removal of UC Browser from the Play Store for 7 days, beginning 13 Nov 2017, under the reason that a certain setting of UC Browser is not in line with Google’s policy. We have conducted an urgent internal investigation and fixed the problem. The new version has been uploaded on Google Play's Developer Console and is awaiting evaluation. We will actively cooperate with Google Play for any concern caused by this unintentional error. In the meantime, users can still download UC Browser Mini from the Play Store, an alternative version of UC Browser. We thank Google Play for their understanding and support extended to us. UC Browser new product package will be back on Google Play next week and, in the interim, users and partners can download the product from our website http://www.ucweb.com."
Personally I enjoy using UC browser when browsing on my smartphone, because of the speed it provides, for browsing and downloading large files.


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