Google Has Added Human Reviewers for Apps ⇥ techcrunch.com

Sarah Perez, TechCrunch:

Google Play, Google’s marketplace for Android applications which now reaches a billion people in over 190 countries, has historically differentiated itself from rival Apple by allowing developers to immediately publish their mobile applications without a lengthy review process. However, Google has today disclosed that, beginning a couple of months ago, it began having an internal team of reviewers analyze apps for policy violations prior to publication. And going forward, human reviewers will continue to go hands-on with apps before they go live on Google Play.

The most incredible part of this? Nobody seems to have noticed. The only comment I could find about any kind of delay in the approvals process was this tweet, and I’m not even sure it’s directly related. That’s really impressive. I’m not sure how Google is doing this — whether they’re just throwing a lot of people at this, or if it’s mostly automated with a slight human touch — but it’s a target that Apple can aspire to with the App Store.