What you need to know
- Google is adding new curated Collections sections to the Play Store and home screen widgets, helping users find apps and content that they love.
- The Play Store is becoming a “destination” rather than just a place to download apps, including live chats with content creators, full comics, videos, and more.
- Google Play Games for PC is getting several upgrades, including synced cloud saves and the ability to run multiple games at a time on a PC.
The Google Play Store has millions of apps to choose from, but while that means you have plenty of options, it also means finding the right app can be difficult. Google is announcing a host of new ways it’s improving curation and app discovery on the Play Store, but it’s doing it in a way I didn’t expect: it’ll be using humans to do the job, not AI. This seems counter to what the company has been doing lately with Gemini. While there’s a light AI component to the equation, Google’s new Collections feature highlights the importance of having humans at the center of a human-focused policy change.
I had the opportunity to interview Aurash Mahbod, the General Manager of Games for Google Play, about this new move and other changes being made to the Play Store and to try out the new changes at a special Google Play press event in New York City.
What this all means
Google has tried to usher in better curation in the past and this is the latest attempt to keep users more interested in the Play Store instead of just coming back once in a blue moon for app updates. This latest move has the real potential to work, but there are also some obvious problems with any sort of “personalization.” At the forefront, Google faces is potential user backlash at becoming yet another ad. Since services like Google and Facebook are free, users are often “the product” as they are served ads in one form or another. While I didn’t see any obvious signs of an “ad” during my hands-on time with the new Google Play updates, there’s little doubt that Google’s curation decisions will be influenced by sponsors along the way.
Moves like this are mainly designed to appease developers, especially as live service games like Fortnite or the latest iteration of Candy Crush continue to cost lots of money to keep updated. User retention is vital to keeping these games alive, and Google has to be creative in its endeavor to keep users interested. But what’s good for developers is also good for users. As consumers, we’re always looking for the next big thing. It’s just the nature of how capitalism works and Google is playing to that with these updates. Giving users what they want — a never-ending stream of great new apps and games — will inevitably keep people happy and coming back for more.
