Google has always been able to remove installed apps remotely, although I believe they only use it for malicious apps, not for apps that simply get removed from the Play Store.

But I’ve also been mislead by the headline.

Clickbait makes me appreciate my preferred small tech news outlet, which has been doing serious journalism without sensationalism for over 25 years. The authors even interact in their forum, which is still active because of how the site actually cares about the community.

My mental list of sites I try to avoid is longer than the list of actually good sites. Sadly those thrash sites get pushed up in rankings of Google News and similar aggregators because clickbait clicks well.