Google Android Market

The popularity of the Google Android Market is growing by the day. In fact, according to Google, there have been more than 10 billion applications downloaded from the Android Store. These are very good figures given that the Google App store was launched after other mobile applications stores operated by other companies. It can be said that the reason for this number of downloads is the widespread use of smart phones based on Android Operating System (AOS).

Over the past months, Google Android Market has undergone a couple of changes especially the applications store. Initially, the store had a simple user interface with minimal features. However, recent upgrades have seen the introduction of several features and an overall improvement of the user interface. One of the recent changes that the Android Market app store has undergone is the introduction of the app filtering system.

Since Google does not place too much restrictions of the apps developed for its Google Android Market, users have trouble knowing the quality of the applications. However, with the launch of the filtering system, users can give their feedback on particular apps. Other Google Android Market users can then read these reviews prior to downloading any app. For instance, users can categorize app reviews based on their release dates, star ratings and even helpfulness of the review. Thus, they can easily decide whether to download a mobile application or not.

With the update to the Google Android Market, users have the ability of knowing the finer details of an app based on the review. This is very much welcomed since we all know that the Google Android Market is pretty fragmented and has all types of hardware available in different shapes and different Android OS versions. Being able to separate the reviews and make them relevant is good news to both app developers and end users.

As mentioned above, the Google Android Market is full of thousands of mobile applications. The main reason for this number of apps is the freedom that apps developers have when it comes to developing apps based on Android OS. Unlike the Apple app store that monitors and screens every mobile application prior to availing it for download, the Google Android Market does not place stringent conditions on the applications. This means that developers have a wide variety of apps to develop and in turn gives users plenty of Android applications to choose from.

Google Android Market is an open source alternative to that provided by Apple and this has enabled it to attract plenty of mobile and web applications developers from around the world. However, the open ness of the Google Android Market has also brought about some negatives. Since the applications are not monitored, there are high chances of developers building apps that have malware or viruses. Indeed, there has been news of several applications developed for the Android Market being malicious. Google Android Market has however reacted by removing the malicious apps from its store, some of which were sending short messages or sms to premium users without their consent.