For many years, QuickPic was the darling photo gallery app of many. It was small, fast, efficient, and free — a rare combination of features. Then in 2015, QuickPic was bought by Cheetah Mobile and, despite many assurances that the app wouldn't be monetized with ads, those of us who had followed Cheetah over the years could guess that something was up. Now, following a huge Cheetah debacle last month, QuickPic has disappeared from the Play Store. If this isn't indication enough that things are iffy, I don't know what is.

Last month, Cheetah was caught in a massive click fraud scheme, after which Google removed CM File Manager from the Play Store and Cheetah followed up by removing then relaunching CM Locker and Battery Doctor. Soon after, QuickPic also disappeared from the Store, but we didn't really notice it. Since we had installed the app previously, the listing was still working for us. It's only when you browse in Incognito or from an account that never downloaded QuickPic that you notice the listing is no longer available. Searching on the Play Store also doesn't bring up QuickPic. It's been 13 days and the app hasn't resurfaced.

Whether it was Cheetah Mobile that removed QuickPic or Google, we don't know, but the end result is really the same. Something is iffy about QuickPic, and you shouldn't be using the app. If you still have it installed, I advise you to remove it and get a better alternative. My go-to over the past two years has been Camera Roll. It's everything we loved about QuickPic, minus all the Cheetah.

And while we're at it, you should remove any Cheetah app you have on your phone. I was trying to get you the developer link to point you to all apps made by the company, but I was surprised (or not, really) to find that it has over 10 different developer listings on the Play Store. These are the ones I got from a quick search, I'm confident there's more:

I mean, surely, any company that feels the need to create dozens of developer accounts has nothing to hide. Maybe Cheetah should just rename to Hydra. You cut one head and ten more spring up in its place.

So in case you're wondering how to really know whether an app was made by Cheetah or not, your best bet is to browse the app/game's listing on the Play Store and look for the developer information. If it has "cmcm.com," it's no bueno. There are certainly other companies that Cheetah is affiliated with, and you can't know for sure unless you research every developer, but cmcm.com is a good place to start.