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Do we need the App Police?

So to me it sounds like we'd be pretty well off with an enhanced search/sort feature. Sort by, overall stars, number of ratings, downloads, cost. Blacklist developers, exclude searches below a certain threshold on the above criteria. Must have pictures and comments check boxes.

I still think a separate peer-reviewed "approval" website would work well if there was a strong enough desire for it in the dev community. Google doing their own checks could be playing with fire. Even if it were just a "seal of approval" system. Misinterpretations of what the seal means would be common. People would think it's an endorsement rather than a compatibility check. Then if google refused to have an app on the market due to a false positive on an app for something like data mining, then everyone would cry foul about censorship, and "apple in google clothing"... even if the situation got fixed.

Google need to keep doing what they're doing, which is being impartial except for those apps that are blatantly malicious (or otherwise against the sparse rules) and reported as such. But like I said, peer review could work well. Setup the website, have as many other devs sign up, offer a "heythisappisawesomebecausewesaidso.com seal of approval" that people can link in their app descriptions. Have it take you to the webpage containing a recap on the app and the site's peer reviews (so people don't just put a text seal of approval in their description).

A website like appbrain (or one of the many other app sites) could actually integrate it into their current setup. Would take a bit of doing, but could work.
 
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