Has the Play Store even been ambushed like this before?

[Snazy]

I just wondered if this is a one off aimed at damaging BlackBerry even more, or if the constant flood of fake versions of BBM into the Play Store happens a lot when new popular apps are launched?
It seems unbelievable that someone or an organisation is hell bent on stopping this launch go ahead, and is able to bombard the Play Store over and over again with these fakes, and even more surprising is their ability to get 2-3,000 fake reviews from accounts rating it as 5* with a simple 'good' comment.
I thought spam was more a forum or email thing, not this kind of behaviour.

 

[SpookDroid]

Nope, it's fairly common (unfortunately) in the Play Store. Google needs to do a better job at filtering these things out though.

 

[Jerry Hildenbrand]

This is what happens when you ask people to police themselves.

Some people take advantage of the situation.

Some people wring their hands and worry about it.

Some people ignore it, and prefer it to censorship.

Actual copyright/trademark infringement is dealt with when reported. Anything else has a hands-off policy from Google.