Other stores are liable, but it's not really possible to draw a parallel between a bottle of shampoo and an app. There's just so much more involved in checking if an app is sending or collecting some kind of data on users. I recall around a year ago or so, one of the most popular android file managers was found to be sending user data off to China. Google didn't find it, nobody found it until a security researcher started looking at it.
Blaming Google is like blaming your ISP for getting a virus on a shady porn site.
Other stores are liable, but it's not really possible to draw a parallel between a bottle of shampoo and an app. There's just so much more involved in checking if an app is sending or collecting some kind of data on users. I recall around a year ago or so, one of the most popular android file managers was found to be sending user data off to China. Google didn't find it, nobody found it until a security researcher started looking at it.
Blaming Google is like blaming your ISP for getting a virus on a shady porn site.
Possibly, a judge will decide. Other stores are liable for the products they sell you, so why not Google?
Also Google is an easy target, since they're big and have money. Suing thousands of poor app developers is a bad strategy.