F-Droid is a free and open-source alternative app store for Android - here are my favorite apps that are exclusively ...

ASTRO is one of Android’s oldest file manager ... Root Explorer has been a favorite of root users for a long time. It’s not the most modern-looking app, but it gets frequent updates.

This isn't likely to be nefarious behavior on Google's part and rather just a bug with Android and/or Perplexity ...