Google has this morning announced via the Google Blog a sweeping revamp of the whole Android Market and it’s associated content hubs. They are re-branding it as Google Play, from today the Android Market, Google Music and the Google eBookstore will come under the Play banner. The services will be re-named to Google Play Movies, Google Play Books and Google Play Music apps, but only where available so Australia will see the Play Store and Play Books.
The re-branded Play Store app will be rolled out to Android devices running 2.2 and above over the coming days and the Google Play Store will be added to the Google Sandbar as well on the main Google page. All of your purchased content will still be available to you, Google just appears to be bringing all their content hubs into a more cohesive brand that associates more into a Google store rather than an Android specific ‘Market’
To celebrate the update they are offering a whole host of deals on Books and Apps for the Australian market in their “7 Days to Play” sale, the US gets deals on Movies and Music as well, but not much we cand do about that till they offer those services here. The book of the day is by Jodi Piccoult – My Sisters Keeper which is selling for $0.25, and the App play of the day is Where`s My Water. There are also 25 $0.49 apps on sale which you can grab from the Google Play sale link from the Android market. There are some top notch apps in the $0.49 sale including World of Goo, Swift Key, Dead Space and mSecure password manager it’s not clear if there will be more apps added to the sale over the next 7 days but I’m pretty sure that the App Play of the day will be. So hit the source links to the apps and books.
bit of a change now the widget takes up more space wonders why my android app button didn’t work this morning
my android market just got replaced by Play Store on my galaxy nexus
Great marketting move but the name isn’t the best but i’m sure it will grow on us all, like the facebook changes do 😛
The amount of play this change is getting is ridiculous, so it’s definitely going to take away steam from the iPad launch.
Google Play: Crap name or crappest name – you decide.
Ugh… “Google Play”? To steer away from Android branding it would have made more sense to be “Google Market”.
I totally agree, market makes a lot of sense to customers because a market is a store. I don’t see what Google play has to do with anything other than games and to be quite honest the apps I use the most are not games but important organisational tools. Bad move Google.
I think they’re moving away from the “market” branding because market implies it’s just a place to buy things, in Android Market’s case; apps, games, music, books etc. The idea with Google Play is that it’s an entertainment hub that has syncing between devices, cloud storage, start watching something from one device and you can finish watching it on another and all these extra features etc. Play’s services extend past something a ‘market’ would provide.
That’s my take on it anyway.
Coincidence it’s one day for the iPad3 launch?
It is one day from the pre-release announcement. iPad 3 launch is 16th of March.
Remove your tinfoil hat, good sir, no Tech company ever trys to trump another!!!
Renaming a marketplace has about as much chance of diverting attention from iPad HD launch as farting at a nuclear bomb.