Google Revamps Android Market to Give App Recommendations

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Google said Wednesday that it had revamped its Android Market, with an eye toward putting a greater number of popular, quality apps in front of users.

The new features, which include "Editor's Choices" and other editorial recommendations, are currently live on the Web version of the Android Market, and will be arriving on tablets and phones "soon," Google said in a blog post and an announcement at Google I/O, its developer conference in San Francisco. "The Web version of the Market allows us to iterate quickly," said Chris Yerga, director of engineering for Google's cloud services.

The new version of the Market includes five new features: new top app charts, the "Editor's Choice" lists, a list of top developers, related apps, and trending apps.

Google made the announcement after its morning Google I/O keynote, where Google announced its first Chrome OS "Chromebooks", complete with per-user, per-month plans for businesses, schools, and governments.

And that was after the first day of Google I/O, which included the formal disclosure of its next Android releases, improved video services, and the so-called future of Android, or Android@Home. Google also launched its Google Music Beta, possibly including anti-piracy protections. It also disclosed that it could pay up to $500 million to settle a Department of Justice investigation.

"Surfacing" as many apps as possible is Google's goal. "The reason we wanted to introduce a bunch of different lists is that we did a lot of work on what type of lists would be best used to surface an application," said Eric Chu, who oversees the Android Market for Google.

Google said that Android applications have been installed over 4.5 billion times to date, covering 200,000 discrete apps. The idea, of course, is to elicit more. Google takes a 30 percent cut of all Android Market sales, and Google's keynote pitch to add in-app payments through a single line of code provides it another route to higher revenues. Chu said that Google didn't have any plans to cut its revenue share to 5 percent, as it will do for the Chrome App Market.

The new top app charts will rank apps by country. The top free and paid apps will also be available on the main Android Market page, as will a list of the top revenue generators, by gross revenue. A list of trending apps will highlight those on a sharply upwards "hockey stick" growth curve.


The "Editor's Choice" list will include picks by the Google staff. In a related note, Google will also highlight its preferred developers (in terms of quality and popularity) and give them a special star next to their name. The first list will include 150 developers.

The Android Market will eventually come to the Google TV, but Yerga said that he didn't want to steal any of the thunder from the Google TV team with any announcements. He did say, however, that it will be "designed to be a 10-foot experience, not a two-foot experience, one that scales really well for a remote-control device and a pixel density that you would expect for the TV."

Yerga also said that Google may be making some changes to the refund window associated with new Android applications, which currently allows just 15 minutes for a refund after the app is downloaded. "We're going to be making some changes to start at the appropriate place," Yerga said.

Posted by Alain.co @ Wednesday 18 May 2011 0 comments

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