43 Facts About Google Play

Google Play, branded as the Google Play Store and formerly Android Market, is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google.

Google Play has served as a digital media store, offering games, music, books, movies, and television programs be.

The Google Play Store had over 82 billion app downloads in 2016 and reached over 3.

Google Play was launched on March 6,2012, bringing together Android Market, Google Music, Google Movies and the Google eBookstore under one brand, marking a shift in Google's digital distribution strategy.

In 2022, Google Play Games is expected to shut down its mobile app in favor of an Android emulator for Windows with the same name.

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Google Play allows developers to release early versions of apps to a select group of users, as alpha or beta tests.

Some network carriers offer billing for Google Play purchases, allowing users to opt for charges in the monthly phone bill rather than on credit cards.

Google Play Games is an online gaming service for Android that features real-time multiplayer gaming capabilities, cloud saves, social and public leaderboards, and achievements.

Google Play offers over five million ebooks available for purchase, and users can upload up to 1,000 of their own ebooks in the form of PDF or EPUB file formats.

On September 23,2019, Google launched its Google Play Pass games and apps subscription service in the US.

Google Play originated from three distinct products: Android Market, Google Music and Google eBookstore.

The Google Play eBookstore was launched on December 6,2010, debuting with three million ebooks, making it "the largest ebooks collection in the world".

Google Play Store, including all Android apps, came to Chrome OS in September 2016.

In May 2021, Google Play announced plans to implement a new section with privacy information for all applications in its storefront.

Google Play Music was a music and podcast streaming service and online music locker.

In June 2018, Google announced plans to shut down Play Music by 2020 and offered users to migrate to YouTube Music, migration to Google Podcasts was announced in May 2020.

Google Play Music was shut down in December 2020 and was replaced by YouTube Music and Google Podcasts.

Google Play Newsstand was a news aggregator and digital newsstand service offering subscriptions to digital magazines and topical news feeds.

Until March 2015, Google Play had a "Devices" section for users to purchase Google Nexus devices, Chromebooks, Chromecasts, other Google-branded hardware, and accessories.

In March 2017, Google Play added a "Free App of the Week" section, offering one normally-paid app for free.

In July 2017, Google Play expanded its "Editors' Choice" section to feature curated lists of apps deemed to provide good Android experiences within overall themes, such as fitness, video calling and puzzle games.

Google Play enables users to know the popularity of apps, by displaying the number of times the app has been downloaded.

In February 2011, Google Play introduced a website interface for the then-named Android Market that provides access through a computer.

In March 2018, Google Play experimented by changing the format of the screenshots used for the App pages from the WebP format to PNG but reverted the change after it caused the images to load more slowly.

All developers on Google Play are required to feature a physical address on the app's page in Google Play, a requirement established in September 2014.

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In February 2017, Google Play announced that it would let developers set sales for their apps, with the original price struck out and a banner underneath informing users when the sale ends.

Google Play announced that it had made changes to its algorithms to promote games based on user engagement and not just downloads.

Google Play allows users to purchase content with credit or debit cards, carrier billing, gift cards, or through PayPal.

Google Play began rolling out carrier billing for purchases in May 2012, followed by support for PayPal in May 2014.

Google Play Store, shortened to Play Store on the Home screen and App screen, is Google's official pre-installed app store on Android-certified devices.

Google Play publishes the source code for Android through its "Android Open Source Project", allowing enthusiasts and developers to program and distribute their own modified versions of the operating system.

One of those components, Google Play Services, is a closed-source system-level process providing APIs for Google services, installed automatically on nearly all devices running Android 2.

In 2020, Google Play awarded Disney+ as the top app of the year for users in the US, and SpongeBob: Krusty Cook-Off taking the honors in the gaming category.

In October 2016, Google Play announced a new detection and filtering system designed to provide "additional enhancements to protect the integrity of the store".

In May 2011, Google Play banned the account of the developer of several video game emulators.

In 2017, the Bouncer feature and other safety measures within the Android platform were rebranded under the umbrella name Google Play Protect, a system that regularly scans apps for threats.

In July 2017, Google Play described a new security effort called "peer grouping", in which apps performing similar functionalities, such as calculator apps, are grouped together and attributes compared.

Google Play removed the apps from the Market immediately after being alerted, but the apps had already been downloaded more than 50,000 times, according to Android Polices estimate.

Google Play emailed affected users with information that "As far as we can determine, the only information obtained was device-specific " as opposed to personal data and account information.

Google Play removed some of the apps after receiving reports from Sophos, but some apps remained.

The program, called Tekya, was designed to evade detection by Google Play Protect and VirusTotal and then fraudulently click on ads.

Google Play has removed the apps after being notified of their malicious nature but this malware are still available for download on third-party repositories.

Some developers publishing on Google Play have been sued for patent infringement by "patent trolls", people who own broad or vaguely worded patents that they use to target small developers.