Hello, Google Play: Google Launches Sweeping Revamp of App, Book, Music, and Video Stores
Amazon, Google, Apple, Barnes and Noble, Sony, and a few others all begin to move to the beat that the future consumers seem to want to dance to.
Now will they play nice together, or will it be a fight in the device space even though the real money is in app and media sales longer term?
I’ve predicted that it won’t be long before several major retailers are giving away devices to keep you in their retail garden and not the other guy’s, so the next few years will certainly be interesting as even the hardware goes Open.
Google is taking a big new step in bringing all of its content arms under one roof — and that new entity is called Google Play. Starting today, Google will begin a rebranding of the Android Market, Google Music, Google Books, and its video offerings. Until now, all of those content hubs had more or less resided under the banner of the Android Market, and it seems like the company is interested in making users understand those disparate pockets of content as a unified whole. A company spokesman called Play “an evolution of Android Market.”
Google Play (called the Google Play Store in some instances) will become the single destination for all of the company’s buyable content. Accordingly, the standard Android books, music, and video apps will become Google Play Books, Google Play Music, and Google Play Movies. But it’s not just about devices. Google Play is meant to bring together the company’s content offerings in both mobile and browser experiences.
Android devices running version 2.2 or later will have their Market app automatically updated “over the coming days,” while the Google Play Store moniker will make its way into the Google sandbar, much like the Google+ service. The Android Market name will be retired, though you won’t miss it much since the Google Play Store looks nearly identical.