Apple to Clean Up App Store Spam and Old Apps ⇥ developer.apple.com

Very good news from Apple:

To make it easier for customers to find great apps that fit their needs, we want to ensure that apps available on the App Store are functional and up-to-date. We are implementing an ongoing process of evaluating apps, removing apps that no longer function as intended, don’t follow current review guidelines, or are outdated.

Apple will be providing thirty-days’ notice to developers with apps that have lengthy titles meant to catch searches of popular apps, and apps that have irrelevant keywords. Apps that crash at launch will be removed immediately. This is terrific news.

However, Apple will still reserve the names of apps removed from the store. I think they should use this opportunity to eradicate apps from developers clearly squatting on popular names.