You probably don’t realize how many of your online experiences these days are curated by an algorithm, but it’s likely more than you think. Every app that shows you a feed, from TikTok and Instagram to Spotify and Reddit — even Amazon and other shopping apps — curates your experience to the extent that it can, based on signals you’ve provided and ones from the wider network.
These feeds are trying to solve the problem of volume, of scale, by deciding on your behalf what it thinks you want to see. TikTok’s feed algorithm, in particular, has been heralded for its so-called “ability” to learn quickly about what you enjoy consuming and giving you more of that thing, but it’s just one example of dozens doing that work every day.
App stores are no different, and after speaking with Sam Bright, the new VP and General Manager of Google Play, it’s clear the curation problem is even harder when the success and failure of entire businesses are on the line. Google certainly thinks its app marketplace is the de facto leader, but in two recent trials, the company has been handed a new reality: that its dominance in Android app distribution is out of step with the natural order of markets, particularly because Google markets Android as an open ecosystem, wherein apps, games and services can be disseminated free of the company’s meddling.
“Every time we think about curation, it’s by definition making an editorial decision about what a user might be interested in."
Epic Games successfully argued that Google operates an illegal monopoly in its distribution of apps, games, and services through the Play Store, and a jury acceded to all of the Fortnite maker’s arguments. And while we’re still waiting for the remedies to be decided in that case, they’ll likely be similar to those meted out by a settlement in anantitrust case that Google settled in September with the attorneys generalfrom every state in the US, opening Android up to increased competition through third-party app stores and a more streamlined method of sideloading.
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When I interviewed Bright, his first press interview since taking over management of the Play Store in January 2023, the results of those two cases were not yet final and he wasn’t willing to talk about specifics related to them. But everything he said was tinged with the impending impacts from those cases: Google wants the Play Store to exist on its own merits, and the company has spent considerable time and resources working with developers to ensure that theywantto work with Google, even with a surfeit of choices available to them.
“We want to help surface apps that are tailored to meet [people’s] specific needs and interests,” he tells me, in order to “help people get more from their devices.” Google’s primary focus in 2023 was to ensure the Play Store works well on all Android devices, including tablets and foldables; it got a fairly significant update to accommodate for the latter for factor, too, which has seen steady growth since Samsung’s Z Flip and Fold series went mainstream in 2020.
But most people don’t really think about the Play Store, at least not directly. It’s a place — perhaps, critically for Google,theplace — to download apps and games on an Android device, and it’s Google’s prerogative to make it as functional as possible. New phone? There’s a list of the most popular free apps to download. Need something to play? There are countless lists, both ranked and curated, available to cut down the hundreds of thousands of options available to you.
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At the core of Epic’s argument was the idea that Google keeps too tight a control on not just the distribution of apps on Android but, crucially, the billing (and therefore commission earned) that allows developers to ostensibly earn a living selling those apps. Bright never wavered from the idea that Google’s only goal with the Play Store is to be a good citizen to all people involved: a safe haven for users to find apps without fear of downloading malware. But as we’ve seen from Apple’s recent changes to their own App Store policies, both Apple and Google clearly believe they’re providing a service — a valuable one — that justifies a cost of between 15 and 30 cents of every dollar spent on their stores.
As the head of the Play Store, Bright has to navigate the business realities of his employer with the need to make the experience good enough on both sides of the aisle. When I asked about why it seemed like, with all of Google’s curatorial expertise across its products like Search, YouTube, Gmail, it seems like the Play Store is uncharacteristically homogenous, he admitted there’s a lot of work still to do.
“Every time we think about curation, it’s by definition making an editorial decision about what a user might be interested in. [What] might be interesting to one group, another group might be interested in something else. We want to get that balance right, and customize it across multiple points.”
In other words, the scope of the Play Store, and the stark realities of its geographic disparities, make algorithmic curation very different than, say, YouTube, which just wants to show you something you’ll want to watch, or Discover, which highlights articles you’ll want to read. For starters, there’s a lot less data to work with: Google knows the apps you’ve downloaded, but not much else. Instead, the onus is on the developer to make each app listing as compelling as possible, and there’s what Bright says the company spent the last couple of years improving.
Bringing AI to the app marketplace
One way is through AI, which Bright says is going to be a big part of the Play Store’s strategy in 2024 and beyond. Not only did the company award several apps that focus on Generative AI during its year-end awards, but the technology is being utilized inside the developer portal to create, or improve, app descriptions and to facilitate A/B tests.
Bright says that his ultimate goal, and that of his team, is to “remove purchase friction” so developers have fewer roadblocks to making money and growing “sustainable businesses,” which means different things to different people. Android Police spoke with half a dozen developers for this story, some of whom wanted to stay anonymous to avoid drawing attention to their relationships with Google. All of them, though, agreed that while the impact of the Epic vs. Google case may make it easier to distribute and sell their apps and services in third-party stores, their priority is still to do so primarily through Google Play.
One developer I spoke to was Peter Huber, who has been growing a small but passionate user base of his custom launcher, Niagara Launcher, since 2018. With a total of seven million downloads and three million daily users, Niagara isn’t a massive player in the space, but Huber, who is based in Germany, says that he is regularly able to work on the app while pursuing his Masters degree in computing engineering. He’s hired one full-time developer to help him, alongside seven or eight part-time contractors, and says despite the app’s modest size, he feels well accommodated by Google’s developer tools and priorities.
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Like many developers, his chief complaints are focused on Android’s continued fragmentation, which these days has less to do with the specific platform version than the messy and inconsistent ways Android phone makers adapt the software to their needs. “I don’t have much to complain about in terms of the [development] tools,” he tells me. His issues primarily arise when there is an “official” Google-endorsed way to implement a feature, but Android phone makers “do things differently and don’t adhere to the official documentation.”
How dominant is too dominant?
All the developers I spoke to shared the same resigned acceptance of the Play Store’s dominance, saying they don’t anticipate their behavior changing much if and when third-party app stores or payment systems become more prevalent. Many complained about the perception that some developers, particularly larger or more prominent ones, continue to get access to new Play Store features long before smaller ones; or that, after years, they still lacked a direct contact with someone from Google’s support team to resolve problems.
But all of them, including Huber, told me the company’s development tools and interfaces, as well as the Google Play backend itself, has received significant development resources over the past couple of years, and is equal to Apple’s App Store in many respects.
I asked Bright about this ongoing reputation, which persists into 2024, thatAndroid apps are still not up to the same quality standards as their iOS counterparts, and he said that Google shares that responsibility with developers. “People take their impressions of [Google] Play from the Android apps they use, so there’s a shared responsibility to make sure those impressions are what would make us all proud.” He tells me that, from his perspective, there are no impediments, from the development tools to the distribution opportunities, to developers creating apps of the same quality and revenue potential as their App Store equivalents.
Bright says that this year Google is going to expend more time and effort not only curating the Play Store’s landing page, but working directly with developers to provide guidance on improving their apps, through a combination of automated systems and human intervention. “The quality bar is constantly increasing on both sides of the marketplace,” he says, referring to the wide gap between socioeconomic realities between Android’s smaller premium footprint and its massive, but underscrutinized, value segment.
Android’s enormous net is both an opportunity and liability for Google and the developers who sell on its platform. The company says that it plans to expend considerable resources cutting down on payment fraud and scams, which has become a source of frustration for the company and developers. Parental controls, too, are gaining additional features in 2024, an important safety measure that’s not just a table-stakes tenet of any moderated online platform, but was a key message during Google’s recent trials, which challenged the company’s perceived unlawful distribution dominance with its need to address user safety.
“There is an openness inherent to the Android ecosystem,” says Bright, another of Google’s common talking points when defending itself against allegations of monopolistic practices. Bright, and by extension Google, believes that by curating the Play Store — by being opinionated about what apps it does and doesn’t show a user — it can “ensure consistency” in app experience irrespective of device or form factor.
Huber says that alternate form factors like foldables still make up a tiny percentage of his overall base, but those users are more engaged and willing to offer feedback on new features. Bright says this is true across the ecosystem, and it’s why Google is spending so much time curating the app experience for these early adopters, as they tend to have higher expectations. The company also expects to see a surge in demand for high-quality tablet apps over the coming years as both Google and its hardware partners try to recapture market share from the iPad (though how many times have we heard this since 2010?).
“That’s part of the magic of Android, and for developers: there’s one app store in Play, if they choose to distribute through, they’ll have multiple opportunities to connect with the same user across different form factors.”
The best option
Throughout the interview, Bright framed the Play Store of “the best option” of many marketplaces for developers, but many users and developers still see it as the only one, albeit much better than it was just a few years ago. As Apple opens up iOS to third-party marketplaces in the EU, the company will likely see similar challenges.
“That’s part of the magic of Android, and for developers: there’s one app store in Play, if they choose to distribute through, they’ll have multiple opportunities to connect with the same user across different form factors.” Ultimately, he says, “we work for [the users and developers]. Our goal is to make them successful.
“The strategy and direction we’re going in proves that developers want to discover users through Play across a range of devices and they want to do so in as simple and seamless a way as possible.”
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The impression I got from talking to those developers, though, is that they would welcome the opportunity to sell and market their apps in other stores, but ultimately don’t believe the results of these antitrust trials will meaningfully increase the opportunity for them to make money. The Epic trial showed Google’s willingness to disrupt the proliferation of competitors to the Play Store, but even in a world where those roadblocks are legally prevented, there is more ambivalence than optimism in the net effects.
One developer told me that “[we] would love to go elsewhere, but the big clients” — the ones that make Google the highest and most consistent commission through subscriptions — “will go where the users are,” and right now that’s just the Play Store. “These new stores will need to prove their audience before getting the big names interested.”
But Huber and the other devs told me that, for now, they’re relatively happy with the state of Google Play and Android as a whole. “It’s a lot better than it was a couple of years ago,” one says, noting that the change from Java to Kotlin on the development side, the improvements to Android Studio as a full-stack IDE, and the ability to cater to more diverse audiences at multiple price points through the Google Play Console have, cumulatively, had a positive impact on their lives as developers.
Now Google waits to see the impacts of its various lost cases and concessions, and whether or not, by lowering the barrier to competition, the Play Store will actually be able to — or need to — compete. Bright, however, thinks that as long as his team is focused on “improving the experience for users and developers,” they’re in a good place.
