Google rolling out update for Play store

Google is rolling out an update for its official one-stop-shop for Android apps, Google Play. The latest update to the store allows you to remove apps from the All Apps list, which records all your app downloads to date, in addition to remembering your location in lists, and new icons for notifications and installed apps. The latest version number is 3.9.16. Android Police was the first to report on the matter.

In addition, the updated Play Store remembers where you are when looking at a list, including the All Apps list as well as the My Apps list. This feature will remember your location in a list, so that whenever you click on an option in a list and go back, you’re returned right to the place where you were earlier.

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What’s more, you can now multi-select apps in the All Apps list. Selecting multiple apps is done by long-pressing an app, and tapping the More apps option. You can delete apps from the lists in one go.

Google has also chosen to change the notification icon for new app updates. Notifications by Play Store are now expandable, and show more information about app updates. The icon for individual apps after they are installed no longer shows a generic icon; you now get the icon for the app in the notification after you install it.

Google recently held a massive discount sale in celebration after its Play Store recorded 25 billion app downloads. The search giant was offering top rated games and apps at discounted rates of just 25 Cents (Rs 13). The company was also promoting special collections like 25 movies you must own, 25 banned books, 25 albums that changed the world and the store’s 25 top selling magazines, at special prices.

New Google Play update brings minor improvements.

However, Goole hasn’t been particularly kind to India. It was recently revealed that India’s listing in the official list of countries where developers could register as certified Google Checkout Merchants was short lived. Pluggd.in’s Ashish Sinha writes, “So for India based Android app developers, things are back to what it was earlier – i.e. you cannot sell paid apps in the Play store (some workaround here). We have asked Google to update us on the final status (or was it some drunken employee updating the support page?). For sure, Google needs to revisit this strategy. If not, Microsoft is going to snatch away these Android app developers with a better integrated strategy (it’s already happening).”

Earlier, Indian developers needed to go to a country where Google Checkout merchants are allowed, such as the US, and register a local bank account in the name of a US resident in order to sell apps on the Google Play Store. With reports about India featuring on that list, it did seem as if troubles were over. Now, however, things stand the way they were. 

Smartphone apps are serious business, though developers of Android apps were left in limbo. In India, developers were only allowed to publish free apps, and this had limited the potential for innovative apps because of lack of incentive.

Reports quoted P R Rajendran, Director of Next Wave Multimedia, a Chennai based company as saying, “We have lived with this condition for some time now where we literally run two companies, and are subject to dual taxation". Rajendran’s company was reported as having published more than ten apps on both Apple iTunes as well as Google Play.