Google's app store is no longer called Android Market; it's now Google Play. Take a moment to wrap your head around that one if you must, and then see how long it takes to mentally transition to Google's rebranding effort. More than just a name change, however, Google Play is fully-fledged digital entertainment hub for purchasable content, including apps and games, music, eBooks, and videos.
If you're an Android developer, go ahead and belt out a hearty "Huzzah!" And if you're an Android user, you can do the same. What's all this Huzzah business? It's about bigger apps! Google this week announced that it's lifting its 50MB cap on Android Market apps and replacing it with a much more roomy 4GB cap to accommodate high-quality 3D interactive games and more local resources.
Google’s Android OS often takes a beating from security companies for it’s occasional malware scares. Google has not been silent on the matter in the past, but the OS maker revealed today that it is taking action to combat Android malware. In fact, it has been taking action for the last few months without telling us. Google’s Bouncer project is an automated security scanner that will apparently filter malware from the Market.
Google's Android platform steamrolled into 2012 with more than 400,000 free and paid active applications worldwide in the Android Market, an impressive collection even if you were to remove TootBooth and the other thousand or so fart apps. It's all about steady growth for the Android Market, which topped 200,000 apps in the April 2011 and 300,000 apps three months later.
As Google’s Android platform continues to dominate smartphone sales, the big G has decided to update us all on a significant milestone. As of last weekend, the Android Market has exceeded 10 billion app downloads. According to Google, the current rate is more than 1 billion per month. In celebration of this momentous occasion, Google has worked with top app developers to sell some premium apps for just $0.10.
As if relations between China and Google weren't already tense, it's being reported that the Chinese government has gone and blocked the Android Market in the mainland. There's no love lost between these two giant entities, though why exactly China has chosen to erect a firewall in five major provinces to block users from downloading Android apps is not yet known.
Grooveshark will no longer be able to serenade Android users as Google pulled down the company's music app from the Android Market on Tuesday. The unceremonious removal, according to a Google spokesperson, was consistent with the company's policy of removing all those apps that violate its terms of service. But there could be a lot more behind the removal of Grooveshark's app than the rather hackneyed clarification offered by Google suggests. More on this story after the jump.
If you're an Android user, be prepared to be 'Flashed' by Adobe with version 10.2 of the Flash Player. According to Adobe, this latest update will be available for download through the Android Market beginning March 18th, which is this Friday. This is a production GA (General Availability) release for Android 2.2 (Froyo) and 2.3 (Gingerbread) devices capable of running the Flash Player, and a beta release for Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) tablets like the Motorola Xoom.
If you give Malware authors an opening, they'll take it. In the wake of the recent Android Market malware scares, Google released a special security app that searches for and removes the so-called DroidDream malware. Google is pushing this app to affected phones automatically to take care of the problem. So what did the unscrupulous hacker characters do? They repackaged that security app with a trojan, of course.
Google laid low for awhile after taking down several malicious apps were from the Android Market, perhaps buying some time coming up with the best way to explain what happened. And that's what Google did over the weekend, confirming in a blog post
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