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by the_common_man 3199 days ago
I read your comment and checked the app page. (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...) It had 4.5 stars. I was like what is this commenter talking about.

I then dig into the comments and there are a massive number of negative comments. I am not sure what is happening here but the rating seems artificially inflated. It shows that there are only 9 1-stars and yet in comments there are way more 1-stars. Really sad to see this sort of gaming at the play store level.

3 comments

I don't know how the Play Store commenting system works, but I think before jumping to conclusions then it's important to consider that if there were any foul play then it would probably have been better achieved through "shadowbanning". I do feel it would make sense if the Play Store didn't count comments made by newly registered users or known bots.
Let's not assume Google just decided to break the trust of billions of users just to inflate the ratings of one of their apps.

Many possible explanations: different caching, some of the 1 star comments were by people who didn't use the app, bots, etc.

Right now I see 3.2 stars and doing the calc with the votes it is right