The Play Store is officially 10 years old and Google is very keen to mark the occasion. As well as a new logo in line with the tech giant’s current aesthetic (see above), there’s a promotion starting July 25 offering 10x the usual Play Points to reward program members who make purchases .
Google launched the Play Store in 2012 to unify all its online stores of the time under one umbrella: Android Market (apps), music, e-books and videos. You could effectively buy anything Google offers through a website or a handful of apps. For a while, you can also buy a digital kiosk and hardware products like Nexus devices and Chromebooks. Unsurprisingly, the service has been popular given its importance to Android, with more than 2.5 billion people using the store every month in 190 countries.
The anniversary comes as the service evolves. The company rebranded Play Newsstand as Google News in 2018 and canceled Play Music in 2020 as it completed the transition to YouTube Music. This year, Google is pulling the Movies & TV section to put its content in the TV app. The Play Store is still intact, but it’s much more focused than it was a decade ago.
The Play Store has also endured its share of controversy. Although the Play Protect antimalware system and data security lists have made the store more reliable than in its early days, there are still occasional cases of shady apps that evade Google’s detection system. Google has also received criticism for its policies. Fortnite creator Epic Games and others have accused Google of stifling the use of third-party payment systems and even blocking bids from manufacturers. Google even tightened its policies this June, requiring a large number of apps to use the Play Store’s billing system.
The European Union partially reversed this approach with legislation requiring access to third-party payment platforms. Other regulators have demanded similar changes. As important as the Play Store has been for Android and Google as a whole, there is a chance that it will lose some of its influence in the coming years.
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