Google: YouTube Vanced Manager is malicious and must be uninstalled
Google’s squeeze on the YouTube Vanced project becomes more and more suffocating: after blocking the app with a lawsuit against the developers, the Mountain View house has begun to flag YouTube Vanced Manager as a’malicious app and therefore to uninstall. It is doing this using the service Google Play Protectthe native service of the official Android app store that reports malicious content.
GOOGLE FINAL CLOSE
Someone clarifications to contextualize the new restrictive measure:
- YouTube Vanced is an Android app that allows you to view YouTube content without advertising and without the need to subscribe to a Premium subscription;
- After the application was blocked, the development team made it known that it would still be possible to continue using it until it becomes no longer supported (not earlier than two years, the developers said);
- YouTube Vanced Manager is not the main app but the one you need to install it and manage updates;
- Now YouTube Vanced Manager is marked as a malicious app in the Play Store (but the download link is still present on the official site).
Google’s purposes seem clear: to hinder the use of an app that damages it in terms of advertising revenue related to viewing YouTube videos and that violates several copyrights of the popular video sharing platform (logo and associated brands to YouTube).
The authors of the app provided their reconstruction of the facts a few days after Google’s first intervention, but beyond the reasons, the fact remains that, from any point of view you look at it, YouTube Vanced is an app that illegally circumvents the rules introduced by Google for accessing YouTube – those who are not willing to pay for the YouTube Premium service always have the option of not paying a euro by accepting the coexistence with advertisements.
Now it is hoped that the demise of YouTube Vanced does not open the door to the proliferation of other apps that present themselves as potential replacements but which are actually real malware.
