Facebook-owned WhatsApp has been in the headlines the past few days for all the wrong reasons. Even if the problem itself isn’t that big, WhatsApp gets all the attention thanks to its massive 1.5 billion user base.
On Friday, the messaging app, due to unknown reasons, disappeared from Google Play Store. Users who either got new smartphones or were looking to use the app for the first time were not able to find it on the Play Store.
Thankfully the app is back on the Play Store now with no explanation whatsoever.
As reported by MSPoweruser on Friday, “Users are now reporting that the Facebook-owned instant chat messenger app no longer appears on the Play Store search results,”
The weird thing is that users who uninstalled the application and were looking to reinstall it could see the app listed in the ‘Previously installed apps’ section. This means that it was neither blacklisted by the Play Store nor was it removed from the database.
The users who already had WhatsApp installed weren’t affected.
WhatsApp for Business Unaffected
For the record, WhatsApp for business did not disappear from the Play Store. Moreover, the vanilla WhatsApp was available for installation via third-party sources.
Facebook, on the other hand, has not commented on the issue and the reasons behind the application’s disappearance remain unclear.
The issue appears to be limited to Android, and not affecting iOS users. In the meantime, it seems that WhatsApp is also not available on third-party app stores, like Huawei‘s AppGallery and Samsung’s Galaxy Store. I’ll be honest, though, I’ve never used either of these stores, so I wouldn’t even know if it was ever there in the first place.