Noam Galai/Getty Images for TechCrunch
- Trading app Robinhood app has sunk back down to a one-star rating on Google Play Store.
- Google deleted 100,000 negative reviews on Thursday, written after Robinhood limited purchases of GameStop stock. This brought the app back up to four stars.
- But Google is not stepping in for a new wave of negative reviews, it said.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Stock-trading app Robinhood on Tuesday dropped down to a one-star rating on the Google Play app store for the second time in less than a week – and this time, Google isn’t riding to the rescue.
Google previously started removing negative reviews of the Robinhood app on Thursday, saying that “ratings and reviews meant to manipulate an app’s average rating or top reviews” violate its policies.
The tech giant has said the new reviews are compliant with its policies, and won’t be removed, per The Verge.
As of writing, Robinhood has a 1.1-star rating from more than 310,000 reviews on the Google Play Store. On Thursday, the app also had just one star, before Google bumped its rating back up to four stars by deleting 100,000 reviews from unhappy users.
Their anger stemmed from Robinhood’s decision to limit purchases of GameStop stock, as well as other stocks promoted by the WallStreetBets Reddit community.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev told CNBC on Thursday that the trading app acted to protect itself and its customers. In an interview with Tesla's CEO Elon Musk on Sunday, Tenev said Robinhood had been forced to temporarily stop users from buying those stocks because the surge had resulted in a deposit requirement of $3 billion from the National Securities Clearing Corporation.
This echoed an email Robinhood sent to members Monday, which said: "We didn't want to stop people from buying stocks and we certainly weren't trying to help hedge funds."
Google said that it had a way of identifying spam and abuse of the app review systems, adding that it wants trustworthy reviews in the Play Store.
It added that it had public guidelines that outline policies on app reviews and ratings, and request that users don't post fake reviews intended to increase or lower ratings.
On Apple's App Store, Robinhood had a solid four star rating at the time of writing, but the number of negative reviews is growing. On Thursday, the app had 2.4 million reviews. Since then, this number has jumped to 3 million.