In late August Google announced that they would be changing their developer policies… It’s a bold, big move to catch up to iOS.

The ad market has kind of been a grey area on Android,” says Weber.  “Some ad networks have become very spammy because Google hasn’t been very stringent to this point.   It was pretty much anything goes.  This is a jump to improve the user experience and an attempt to catch up to Apple.

The key aspects of these changes are designed to crack down on all manner of “spammy” ad networks, push notifications, and ads in the notification bar space.  This will impact thousands of developers and could cause serious damage to companies reliant on these practices.