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.
Google's new curation changes are starting in Japan with the launch of a new Comics tab today. Comics is a collection of Japanese Play Store users’ favorite things, including traditional page-by-page manga, new vertically-scrolling manga, anime, and even live chats and videos with your favorite creators.
The inclusion of live tiles, videos, and other personal recommendations based on interests is unique among the many times Google has tried to improve curation over the years. I'm fact, it's part of a larger move to make the Play Store “a destination” instead of a place users only go to for apps.
Jumping to the comics section showed me the latest manga releases, including the ability to read the manga right from the Play Store without having to open another app. Some of this builds on the Instant Apps feature Google launched years ago, but bringing YouTube-style live chats and videos to the platform is something new entirely. In other words, you won't need to go anywhere else to find out what's new, regardless of your interests.
Likewise, Google is expanding this concept to sports, shopping, music, and more with specifically human-curated sections of the store based on your interests. Marathon runners, for example, may find a new section that shows them all the best apps to use to prepare for a marathon, including some obvious picks — like training or dieting apps — but also some less obvious ones, like stopwatches and timers that might not normally be categorized as a “running app,” too.
There's even a new hot bar at the bottom of each curated section, which provides quick one-tap access to recommended apps that can run instantly, whether you have the app installed or not.
Many of these tabs and curated lists are spun off from a new multi-select interests feature that'll be presented to Play Store users over the coming days and weeks, helping to better personalize content. You can even remove installed apps from the personalize list, ensuring that one-off app installs don't mess up your beautifully curated store.
A new resizable widget is also launching to highlight curated Play Store content, giving you quick access to recommendations right from the home screen.
Mobile gamers are getting a few treats in the update, as well. An expansion of Google Play Games for PC now syncs your saves to the cloud so you can seamlessly move between your favorite platforms without losing progress. This makes it easy to play your favorite games on the go and enjoy them on the TV or monitor once you get back home.
Google Play Games for PC is also launching the ability to run multiple games at once, so you can enjoy a more active game while your Clash of Clans session continues on the side.
Mahbod told me these moves are in an effort to make Play Games the “ultimate gaming destination” since you can play all your favorite titles on seemingly any device you want. Yes, that likely includes the upcoming Samsung XR headset being co-developed by Samsung and Google.
These changes also come together to ensure that Google can provide intrinsic value to developers who often struggle to keep users interested in games for the long haul. Curation doesn't just include new apps but also important app updates, helping to pull users back in if they've stopped playing a game for a long period of time.
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.
