Google has been stepping up its game with app curation in Google Play. TechCrunch has discovered that a record 60,000 apps were pulled from the store in February alone. Coincidentally, Google just launched a major redesign of Play today that focuses on highlighting great Android apps.

While not all of the bad apps are being pulled by Google directly, many of the deletions are related to spamming and other Google Play terms of service violations. You don’t normally think of Google when you hear about an app being pulled, but Apple isn’t the only one who regulates its app store—the two companies just do things differently.

According to TechCrunch, a large number of the removed apps fall under the MP3/ringtone category. Most of them are probably homebrew apps that aren’t paying for proper music licensing. Google has to remove apps that have copyright infringement, malware, spam, explicit content, and so on.

But Google doesn’t vet submissions beforehand; it looks for offenders after they’ve already been made available. Apple has a huge team of App Store reviewers that examine and approve every new submission. Both companies still have to deal with rogue apps that slip through the cracks, but the approaches are quite opposite. Google wants the Play store to be as “open” as possible, while Apple wants as much control as possible.

Google is starting to realize that users want quality apps more than anything. Cutting out the crap will only make Google Play a more attractive place for Android users to shop.

• SourceTechCrunch