Presumably (some faction inside) Google wants to warn users about scam apps. However this seems like blatant shaming and ostracization of smaller developers who did not spend $$$$$ on Marketing through Google's Ad Network.
Seems Monopolistic of Google to me.
If the angle here is running ads and if they are already taking a cut, why are they doing this? If the angle is security, why not test the apps and have them removed! And in either case, why keep the developer in the dark? And why is there no way for small time insignificant devs like me to know how to get rid of the banner!
Asking seriously. I don't get why these types of questions even come up. Google already claims to manually review all apps, so they know the Bank of America app isn't Bank of America, so why is it even allowed on the store? Why would anyone think it's hard for them to draw a line that would exclude fake Bank of America apps, but wouldn't exclude normal apps? I could understand the concern if it was a completely unmoderated store, or if the only tools available were some kind of keyword filtering. But that is not the case.
No matter how you scream, if you demand Google play the cop, they'll play the cop in the easiest, cheapest possible way in situations where anything is unclear. The situation in this very topic was exactly caused because Google is trying to play a cop while crushing small devs underneath their anti-fraud measures.
There are no better outcomes in this situation. Not on Play Store, not on AppStore, not on any other store. Megacorps can't be cops, courts and enforcers at once and do a good job of it.
Let's talk more when you decide that perhaps policing should remain in hand of governments where it belongs.
Guess what, I can go to Walmart and buy just about fucking anything and I can be very certain:
1. It won't kill me or seriously harm me if used in a manner consistent with it's instructions.
2. The product is what it says it is.
3. The product will do what it says it will do, to a reasonable expectation.
How did they do it? Did they burn the company to the ground with all this anti-fraud? No. And, I will give you this, they do get some help from consumer protection agencies like the FDA. But they put in effort, too. For example, the above does not apply to Amazon!
That (wrong and stupid) argument goes like this: "We can't make it illegal to poison the water, because that would make the government big, and big governments do bad things like eugenics/Mao's Great Leap Forward/the Holocaust. Better to leave the water being poisoned, to avoid any risk of that happening!"
In this case it's "We can't require Google to ban obvious trademark infringements, because that would make Google's app store review onerous, and onerous review processes block legitimate apps like Netflix and Fortnite. Better to leave the trademark infringements there, to avoid any risk of those apps getting blocked!"
(Usually while also complaining how Google can't be trusted too :P)
Or (the ads faction that effectively runs the company) wants to warn users about apps that don't spend much on AdWords and Play Store ads.
Although, I spent a while trying to find an app that did have the banner, and nothing seems to get it on my account.
https://chromewebstore.google.com/search/ublock
As a user who suddenly knows nothing about uBlock the ad blocker, are you going to trust an addin with 2k installs and 4.3 stars, or an addin with 30m installs and 4.7 stars?
Install base can be informative when choosing.... anything, really. In many people's minds something that is used more is better in some metric, be it performance, reliability, price, et. al.
EDIT: My numbers were way off :-)
I am increasingly convinced they are trying to direct traffic to apps that use their Ads network under the guise of such vaguely-about-security messages.
If you download an App using MSFT Edge on Windows, it will warn you (MoTW). If you download an App using any browser on macOS, it will warn you (also MoTW). But if you grab apps via the App Store, there's no warning.
Is that also unfair?
While it's been many years since I did hands on end user support, or even worse, support for family friends back in the 9x days, people still have little clue about what they're doing without a big flashing warning sitting in front of them..., which even that sometimes does not work.
Even I'll often choose an extension for Firefox that has more installs. If I'm going to get a SAML decoder, I want the least phishy SAML decoder available.
Play Store isn't a web browser.
Play Store is NOT a web browser. It downloads from one place and one place only.
Those warnings in the Store aren't meant for you or I.
"This page has fewer links to it than others, therefore it will be buried in search results"
I think most people appreciated Google's early search algos that prioritized "well-traffic'd" sites and sources over others. Obviously that was a long time ago before SEO (and Google themselves) destroyed everything. Back then there were actually still competitors in the search market so it didn't matter. Not the case now.
But in the end, it's network effects, only that this banner seems to enforce it manually and explicitly. The old way would've been to not show apps with few users in the top spots.
The difference here is that the play store is the one and only way to get apps for a regular user. By putting that banner up, they're discouraging anyone from trying it even if they found out about it through other channels.
The analog in 2000 or so would be if Microsoft added a warning banner to any website you visited in Internet Explorer with a low link count.
The entire point is that you can find the app through other channels -- articles, posts, social media.
They just link to the Play store, but that's how you find them. The banner shouldn't be discouraging if you've come from a post that explains it's brand-new!