After its own storefront for finding Android apps has fallen by the wayside, Google is fighting back.
The online giant has just released a new version of the Android Market, the digital marketplace within Android phones that lets users search through the more than 100,000 apps and games available for the platform.
“You’ll be delighted to find we’ve overhauled Android Market to make it faster, easier, and more fun to discover great apps, movies, and books. We’ve created more space to feature some of the most interesting content of the week on the home page. We’ve added more top charts, with newer, more relevant items, and we’ve made it easy to swipe through these charts as you browse the store. We’ve also introduced new collections of great content, like staff picks and Editors’ Choice apps,” explained Google in an official blog post.
This comes after users have continuously expressed dissatisfaction with the presentation of previous versions of the Android Market. Despite being the leader in online search, Google had created a surprisingly clunky interface in which to search for Android apps, leading third-party app stores to swoop in and take away some of the glory.
For example, Amazon has its own digital storefront for Android apps called the Amazon Appstore. In addition to using the same intuitive search algorithms and recommendations as the rest of Amazon.com, the retailer has managed to convince numerous mobile publishers to release their apps exclusively through the Amazon Appstore, bypassing the Android Market entirely.
So Google has a lot of catching up to do to remain relevant in its own mobile platform, but this completely redesigned Android Market app – available for Android 2.2 and later – may be up for the task.
