Play Store

If lawmakers and regulators were already up in arms about loot boxes, especially in mobile games, they might have a storm coming once real gambling and betting apps start arriving on Google Play Store. Such apps that involve the risk of losing large sums of money have always been a thorny subject, which is why they were limited to an extremely low number of markets. Starting March, however, that will no longer the case as Google Play adds 15 more countries to that list.

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Google Play Store boasts of thousands of apps that would take a large army of humans to review and scrutinize. Of course, that's exactly why there are thousands of apps on Google Play Store, as Google relies instead on AI-powered bots to crawl through these apps, sniffing for policy violations. While highly efficient, these bots are hardly infallible and one recent incident adds to the list of anecdotes showing that this system might not exactly be working in developers' favor.

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If there's one thing Google has been consistent with over the decades is that nothing is really permanent. It often changes names and brands but is also notorious for switching products or even discontinuing projects rather abruptly. Google's messaging services and apps have become the dominant example but the most heated discussions of late have come from Google Play Music users who are now being told that they can no longer buy tunes now that the Play Music Store has closed its doors forever.

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The fight between Apple and Epic Games over Fortnite and app stores is getting uglier by the day. The latter has recently formed a coalition of other developers slighted by Apple's App Store policy, calling for fairness in the app ecosystem. That coalition pretty much singles out Apple in its statements and curiously makes no mention of Google. That, however, could be changing soon if it is really moving to enforce a policy that will give it more cuts from sales made within its Google Play Store.

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Given its more open ecosystem, Android has become notorious for the rampant operation of all kinds of malware. Some of those even get past Google's own scrutiny in reviewing apps for the Google Play Store. Those covertly try to hide their less than innocent behavior but it seems that a certain class of software has been operating out in the open under Google's nose. Starting today, however, stalkerware apps are banned from the Google Play Store, except in cases when they're allowed.

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In just a few hours, the mobile app and gaming market exploded into a flurry of news, removals, and two lawsuits, all revolving around a single game: Fortnite. Epic Games, who has spoken out and moved against the status quo in the game and app store markets, made a daring move to implement its own direct payment system to bypass Google's and Apple's revenue split system. It isn't surprising that both Apple and Google have quickly removed Fortnite from their respective app stores but it's rather curious that Epic Games quickly sued both afterward.

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Apps, be it native or web-based, are the bread and butter of the smartphone experience, making app stores the gatekeepers to that mobile world. These stores have lately come under greater scrutiny, for their alleged anti-competitive practices, unfair revenue splits, or unreasonable decisions. The European Union has just published new rules that will make app stores give developers fairer treatment or at least a fighting chance at appealing their case.

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There are many operating systems available today, from Windows to macOS to Linux to Android to iOS, a bit far too many for developers, especially lone ones, to support equally. There is also no shortage of frameworks and tools, like Qt or Google's Flutter, designed to make that a little less painful but the one platform for that truly permeates all of these is the Web. That is basically the appeal of the new generation of web apps, called Progressive Web Apps, and two of the world's larger software vendors are working together to make PWAs more like first-class citizens of the Google Play Store.

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Chromebooks and Chrome OS have always been designed with a "web-first" experience in mind. Back then, however, that experience was less than ideal due to the lack of apps and immaturity of the web app ecosystem. Fast forward to today, Progressive Web Apps or PWAs have made significant headway into creating an experience almost on par with native Android apps. That, in turn, seems to have made Google confident enough to start making PWAs the default when you try to install an Android app from Google Play Store on Chrome OS.

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The COVID-19 pandemic isn't just an opportunity for some to finally embrace the work from home life, it is also an opportunity for hackers to exploit people's newfound dependence on the Internet and apps. Of course, it does seem that it's business as usual for Android users as news of yet another malware sneaking into Google Play Store surfaces. Given how it has targeted even children's games, it's a worrying precedent that needs to be nipped at the bud immediately.

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Google recently boasted that Google Play Store has netted $80 billion in revenue for developers. Those figures are, of course, only from the legitimate ways app developers earn money, either from outright app purchases, in-app buys, subscriptions, or even ads. The last source of income, however, is rather problematic even for Google who manages the sanctioned apps these apps can use. This is mostly due to less than savory advertising methods which the company has now given the boot from Google Play Store.

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Despite trying to paint an image of being a serious, enterprise-friendly corporation, Google is still pretty much the stereotypical geek among the tech giants. It just loves to solve its problems with machine learning and AI, which is understandable given the amount of data it has to wrestle with. But while there are things that can be efficiently solved with advanced machine learning, some things, like recommending apps for users to install and use from Google Play Store, need a bit of human touch.

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