Google Eliminates Android Market, Combines All Its Stores Into One Big Shopping Experience
March 7, 2012
While Apple's iOS sales platform might see an addition or two come tomorrow's big reveal, we'll be pretty surprised if Cook and company actually address the continuing issue of iStore fragmentation. Even Google knows it's a big problem!
Therefore, it's fittingly ironic that Mountain View pulled a Cupertino and made big waves with today's unveiling of Google Play. After all, it isn't often that someone out-Apples Apple at it's own game of streamlined simplicity. However, according to Network World, that's exactly what's happened:
Dubbed Google Play, the new store will combine Google's previous efforts at selling digital content, such as the Android Market and Google Music, into a one-stop shop for mobile apps, books, movies and music.Aside from condensing its varied avenues of content shopping under one big umbrella, Google's Play service takes a few drops out of Apple's iCloud, offering automatic multi-device downloads and free remote storage of up to 20,000 personal music tracks. A Netflix-like video-streaming service is available, and movie rentals are also on hand. Better yet, everything you buy will be stored for free on Google's servers. Because the platform will also house Android's apps going forward, the Play moniker -- along with the Google Play App -- will actually replace the Android Marketplace on mobile phones and tablets as the service is rolled out over the next few days. Hopefully, the whole shebang will stay properly consolidated. If all goes well, perhaps Apple will finally gather its own stores under a similar, singular roof. And maybe, just maybe, Google TV won't be such a fantastic failure the second time around.
