Tag Archives: App Development

#WeArePlay | Meet app founders helping people around the world

Posted by Leticia Lago, Developer Marketing

There are millions of apps available on Google Play, created by thousands of founders across the world. Each single app is unique and special in its own right, but they all have one thing in common - their purpose is to help. From helping motorhome enthusiasts find somewhere to camp, small business owners manage their finances or waste pickers make a reliable income - in this latest batch of #WeArePlay stories, we celebrate app founders who are helping people across the world in extraordinarily different ways.

First we begin with Cristian. Originally from Villa Rica in southern Chile, he made his family very proud by being the first to go to university. During his studies in Santiago, he learned about the local waste pickers – people who make an income by searching through trash cans and finding valuable materials to sell. Despite his mother’s wishes, he was so motivated to help them that he dropped out of university and dedicated all his time to creating an app. Reciclapp works by helping waste pickers connect with local businesses, so they can collect resellable materials directly from them. So far, the app has helped waste pickers across the city save time and guarantee a more reliable income. As Cristian has grown his company to a team of 12 and expanded into Mexico, his mother is now very proud of his bravery and success.

Next, Kennedy and Duke. When they were children, their father’s business sadly failed because managing his finances and tracking spending was too hard. Years later, after a successful career abroad in tech, Kennedy decided it was time to return to his homeland of Nigeria and build his own company. Inspired by his father’s struggle, he partnered with brother Duke and travelled across the country to interview other business owners about their financial struggles. Using this research, they created Kippa - the app simplifies bookkeeping to make sending invoices, storing receipts and setting up a bank account easy. It’s now used by over half a million businesses in Nigeria, as Kennedy mentions “without Google Play, we couldn't help as many business owners”.

To round up today, Gijs and Eefje. The couple adore renting campervans and travelling around to explore the natural beauty of Europe, but they always seemed to struggle with one thing - easily finding places to stay. Feeling like nothing out there could help them, they decided to give app development a go and create Campy. The app works as a digital camping encyclopaedia: helping like-minded campervan enthusiasts discover the perfect spots to set up camp, plan their trips and meet others who love the outdoors. A few years after Campy launched, Gijs and Eefje now have 2 little girls to bring on their big adventures, and are elated with the feedback they have received - “it never ceases to amaze me what a tiny app can do for so many people”.

Check out all the stories from around the world at g.co/play/weareplay and stay tuned for more coming soon.


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#WeArePlay | Meet app founders helping people around the world

Posted by Leticia Lago, Developer Marketing

There are millions of apps available on Google Play, created by thousands of founders across the world. Each single app is unique and special in its own right, but they all have one thing in common - their purpose is to help. From helping motorhome enthusiasts find somewhere to camp, small business owners manage their finances or waste pickers make a reliable income - in this latest batch of #WeArePlay stories, we celebrate app founders who are helping people across the world in extraordinarily different ways.

First we begin with Cristian. Originally from Villa Rica in southern Chile, he made his family very proud by being the first to go to university. During his studies in Santiago, he learned about the local waste pickers – people who make an income by searching through trash cans and finding valuable materials to sell. Despite his mother’s wishes, he was so motivated to help them that he dropped out of university and dedicated all his time to creating an app. Reciclapp works by helping waste pickers connect with local businesses, so they can collect resellable materials directly from them. So far, the app has helped waste pickers across the city save time and guarantee a more reliable income. As Cristian has grown his company to a team of 12 and expanded into Mexico, his mother is now very proud of his bravery and success.

Next, Kennedy and Duke. When they were children, their father’s business sadly failed because managing his finances and tracking spending was too hard. Years later, after a successful career abroad in tech, Kennedy decided it was time to return to his homeland of Nigeria and build his own company. Inspired by his father’s struggle, he partnered with brother Duke and travelled across the country to interview other business owners about their financial struggles. Using this research, they created Kippa - the app simplifies bookkeeping to make sending invoices, storing receipts and setting up a bank account easy. It’s now used by over half a million businesses in Nigeria, as Kennedy mentions “without Google Play, we couldn't help as many business owners”.

To round up today, Gijs and Eefje. The couple adore renting campervans and travelling around to explore the natural beauty of Europe, but they always seemed to struggle with one thing - easily finding places to stay. Feeling like nothing out there could help them, they decided to give app development a go and create Campy. The app works as a digital camping encyclopaedia: helping like-minded campervan enthusiasts discover the perfect spots to set up camp, plan their trips and meet others who love the outdoors. A few years after Campy launched, Gijs and Eefje now have 2 little girls to bring on their big adventures, and are elated with the feedback they have received - “it never ceases to amaze me what a tiny app can do for so many people”.

Check out all the stories from around the world at g.co/play/weareplay and stay tuned for more coming soon.


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#WeArePlay | Meet George from the UK. More stories from Croatia, USA and Kenya.

Posted by Leticia Lago, Developer Marketing

Our celebration of app and game businesses continues with more #WeArePlay stories. Today, we’re starting with George from Bristol, UK - a young entrepreneur taking the streetwear industry by storm.

After spending hours and hours searching for the latest styles in sneakers and streetwear, George realised there’s a market in helping fellow enthusiasts find the latest drops. At just 16 years old, he took it upon himself to learn to code and created his app, Droplist. It points people to upcoming special collections from major labels around the world. Find out more about his story.


Today we also spotlight few more stories from around the world:
  • Anica and Kristijan from an island in Croatia - founders of Dub Studio Productions to help music lovers around the global turn up the bass or lower the treble on their favourite songs.


  • Robert from Wyoming, founder of Bluebird Languages - language learning apps with over 6 million hours of audio lessons spanning 164 languages, from Hungarian to Haitian Creole.


  • And one more new story - because why not! This time, featuring Annabel from Kenya. After struggling to find a mechanic when stuck on the roadside in Nairobi, she and her co-founder created Ziada to help people find local service providers.


Check out all the stories now at g.co/play/weareplay and stay tuned for even more coming soon.

How useful did you find this blog post?

#WeArePlay | Meet George from the UK. More stories from Croatia, USA and Kenya.

Posted by Leticia Lago, Developer Marketing

Our celebration of app and game businesses continues with more #WeArePlay stories. Today, we’re starting with George from Bristol, UK - a young entrepreneur taking the streetwear industry by storm.

After spending hours and hours searching for the latest styles in sneakers and streetwear, George realised there’s a market in helping fellow enthusiasts find the latest drops. At just 16 years old, he took it upon himself to learn to code and created his app, Droplist. It points people to upcoming special collections from major labels around the world. Find out more about his story.

Today we also spotlight few more stories from around the world:
  • Anica and Kristijan from an island in Croatia - founders of Dub Studio Productions to help music lovers around the global turn up the bass or lower the treble on their favourite songs.


  • Robert from Wyoming, founder of Bluebird Languages - language learning apps with over 6 million hours of audio lessons spanning 164 languages, from Hungarian to Haitian Creole.

  • And one more new story - because why not! This time, featuring Annabel from Kenya. After struggling to find a mechanic when stuck on the roadside in Nairobi, she and her co-founder created Ziada to help people find local service providers.

Check out all the stories now at g.co/play/weareplay and stay tuned for even more coming soon.

How useful did you find this blog post?

Migrating from App Engine Blobstore to Cloud Storage (Module 16)

Posted by Wesley Chun (@wescpy), Developer Advocate, Google Cloud

Introduction and background

The most recent Serverless Migration Station video demonstrated how to add use of the App Engine's Blobstore service to a sample Python 2 App Engine app, kicking off the first of a 2-part series on migrating away from Blobstore. In today's Module 16 video, we complete this journey, arriving at Cloud Storage. Moving away from proprietary App Engine services like Blobstore makes apps more portable, giving them enough flexibility to:


Showing App Engine users how to migrate to Cloud Storage

As described previously, a Blobstore for Python 2 dependency on webapp made the Module 15 content more straightforward to implement if it was still using webapp2. To completely modernize this app here in Module 16, the following migrations should be carried out:

  • Migrate from webapp2 (and webapp) to Flask
  • Migrate from App Engine NDB to Cloud NDB
  • Migrate from App Engine Blobstore to Cloud Storage
  • Migrate from Python 2 to Python (2 and) 3

Performing the migrations

Prior to modifying the application code, a variety of configuration updates need to be made. Updates applying only to Python 2 feature a "Py2" designation while those migrating to Python 3 will see "Py3" annotations.

  1. Remove the built-in Jinja2 library from app.yaml—Jinja2 already comes with Flask, so remove use of the older built-in version which may possibly conflict with the contemporary Flask version you're using. (Py2)
  2. Use of Cloud client libraries (such as those for Cloud NDB and Cloud Storage) require a pair of built-in libraries, grpcio and setuptools, so add those to app.yaml (Py2)
  3. Remove everything in app.yaml except for a valid runtime (Py3)
  4. Add Cloud NDB and Cloud Storage client libraries to requirements.txt (Py2 & Py3)
  5. Create an appengine_config.py supporting both built-in (those in app.yaml) and non built-in (those in requirements.txt) libraries used (Py2)

The Module 15 app already migrated away from webapp2's (Django) templating system to Jinja2. This is useful when migrating to Flask because Jinja2 is Flask's default template system. Switching from App Engine NDB to Cloud NDB is fairly straightforward as the latter was designed to be mostly compatible with the original. The only change visible in this sample app is to move Datastore calls into Python with blocks.

The most significant changes occur when moving the upload and download handlers from webapp to Cloud Storage. The video and corresponding codelab go more in-depth into the necessary changes, but in summary, these are the updates required in the main application:

  1. webapp2 is replaced by Flask. Instead of using the older built-in version of Jinja2, use the version that comes with Flask.
  2. App Engine Blobstore and NDB are replaced by Cloud NDB and Cloud Storage, respectively.
  3. The webapp Blobstore handler functionality is replaced by a combination of the io standard library module plus components from Flask and Werkzeug. Furthermore, the handler classes and methods are replaced by Flask functions.
  4. The main handler class and corresponding GET and POST methods are all replaced by a single Flask function.

The results

With all the changes implemented, the original Module 15 app still operates identically in Module 16, starting with a form requesting a visit artifact followed by the most recents visits page:
The sample app's artifact prompt page

The sample app's most recent visits page.

The only difference is that four migrations have been completed where all of the "infrastructure" is now taken care of by non-App Engine legacy services. Furthermore, the Module 16 app could be either a Python 2 or 3 app. As far as the end-user is concerned, "nothing happened."

Migrating sample app from App Engine Blobstore to Cloud Storage

Wrap-up

Module 16 featured four different migrations, modernizing the Module 15 app from using App Engine legacy services like NDB and Blobstore to Cloud NDB and Cloud Storage, respectively. While we recommend users move to the latest offerings from Google Cloud, migrating from Blobstore to Cloud Storage isn't required, and should you opt to do so, can do it on your own timeline. In addition to today's video, be sure to check out the Module 16 codelab which leads you step-by-step through the migrations discussed.

In Fall 2021, the App Engine team extended support of many of the bundled services to 2nd generation runtimes (that have a 1st generation runtime), meaning you are no longer required to migrate to Cloud Storage when porting your app to Python 3. You can continue using Blobstore in your Python 3 app so long as you retrofit the code to access bundled services from next-generation runtimes.

If you're using other App Engine legacy services be sure to check out the other Migration Modules in this series. All Serverless Migration Station content (codelabs, videos, source code [when available]) can be accessed at its open source repo. While our content initially focuses on Python users, the Cloud team is working on covering other language runtimes, so stay tuned. For additional video content, check out our broader Serverless Expeditions series.

#WeArePlay | Meet Melissa from BringFido in South Carolina. More stories from Japan, India & France.

Posted by Leticia Lago, Developer Marketing

We’re back with more #WeArePlay stories to celebrate you: the global community of people behind apps and games businesses.

Following last week’s “virtual roadtrip” of all of the US, today we’re kicking off with Melissa from Greenville, South Carolina. She’s on a mission to make the world a more pet-friendly place. Her app, BringFido, helps people find somewhere to stay, eat or visit with their furry friends. In this film you will meet her, her dogs Ace and Roxy, and hear how she went from idea, to website, to growing app and thriving business.

This week we are also introducing you to game founders from other parts of the world:

  • Arnaud, an AI-enthusiast from Chartres in France, who founded Elokence. This 12-people team created Akinator, which has been downloaded over 260 million times on Google Play.
  • Daigo, a creative indie from Japan, founder of Odencat, whose games have won multiple accolades.
  • Keerti and Kashyap, a cricket-loving couple from Hyderabad in India, who used their life savings to start Hitwicket Cricket Games. Millions of fans worldwide enjoy their games.

Check out all the stories now at g.co/play/weareplay and stay tuned for even more coming soon.

How useful did you find this blog post?

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

#WeArePlay | Meet Melissa from BringFido in South Carolina. More stories from Japan, India & France.

Posted by Leticia Lago, Developer Marketing

We’re back with more #WeArePlay stories to celebrate you: the global community of people behind apps and games businesses.

Following last week’s “virtual roadtrip” of all of the US, today we’re kicking off with Melissa from Greenville, South Carolina. She’s on a mission to make the world a more pet-friendly place. Her app, BringFido, helps people find somewhere to stay, eat or visit with their furry friends. In this film you will meet her, her dogs Ace and Roxy, and hear how she went from idea, to website, to growing app and thriving business.

This week we are also introducing you to game founders from other parts of the world:

  • Arnaud, an AI-enthusiast from Chartres in France, who founded Elokence. This 12-people team created Akinator, which has been downloaded over 260 million times on Google Play.
  • Daigo, a creative indie from Japan, founder of Odencat, whose games have won multiple accolades.
  • Keerti and Kashyap, a cricket-loving couple from Hyderabad in India, who used their life savings to start Hitwicket Cricket Games. Millions of fans worldwide enjoy their games.

Check out all the stories now at g.co/play/weareplay and stay tuned for even more coming soon.

How useful did you find this blog post?

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

#WeArePlay | Meet Melissa from BringFido in South Carolina. More stories from Japan, India & France.

Posted by Leticia Lago, Developer Marketing

We’re back with more #WeArePlay stories to celebrate you: the global community of people behind apps and games businesses.

Following last week’s “virtual roadtrip” of all of the US, today we’re kicking off with Melissa from Greenville, South Carolina. She’s on a mission to make the world a more pet-friendly place. Her app, BringFido, helps people find somewhere to stay, eat or visit with their furry friends. In this film you will meet her, her dogs Ace and Roxy, and hear how she went from idea, to website, to growing app and thriving business.

This week we are also introducing you to game founders from other parts of the world:

  • Arnaud, an AI-enthusiast from Chartres in France, who founded Elokence. This 12-people team created Akinator, which has been downloaded over 260 million times on Google Play.
  • Daigo, a creative indie from Japan, founder of Odencat, whose games have won multiple accolades.
  • Keerti and Kashyap, a cricket-loving couple from Hyderabad in India, who used their life savings to start Hitwicket Cricket Games. Millions of fans worldwide enjoy their games.

Check out all the stories now at g.co/play/weareplay and stay tuned for even more coming soon.

How useful did you find this blog post?

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

#WeArePlay | Discover the people building apps & games businesses

Posted by Patricia Correa, Director, Global Developer Marketing

Over 2.5 billion people come to Google Play every month to find apps and games created by millions of businesses from all over the world.

#WeArePlay celebrates you: the global community of people behind these businesses.

Each one of you creating an app or game has a different story to tell. Some of you have been coders since childhood, others are newbies who got into tech later in life. Some of you are based in busy cities, others in smaller towns. No matter who you are or how different your story is, you all have one thing in common - you have the passion to turn an idea into a business impacting people all over the world.

Now, and over the coming months, #WeArePlay celebrates you by sharing your stories.



We are kicking off the series with the story of Yvonne and Alyssa, the London-based mother and daughter duo who created Frobelles - a dress up game increasing representation of African and Caribbean hair styles.



You can now also discover the stories of friends Ronaldo, Carlos and Thadeu from Hand Talk Translator (Brazil - my home country!), art lover Zuzanna from DailyArt (Poland) and travel-loving couple Ina & Jonas from TravelSpend (Germany).





To all apps and games businesses - thank you for being a part of the Google Play community. Your dedication and ambition is helping millions of people learn, connect, relax, exercise, find jobs, give back, laugh, have fun, escape to fantasy lands, and so much more.

Read more and stay tuned for many more stories at g.co/play/weareplay


How useful did you find this blog post?

#WeArePlay | Discover the people building apps & games businesses

Posted by Patricia Correa, Director, Global Developer Marketing

Over 2.5 billion people come to Google Play every month to find apps and games created by millions of businesses from all over the world.

#WeArePlay celebrates you: the global community of people behind these businesses.

Each one of you creating an app or game has a different story to tell. Some of you have been coders since childhood, others are newbies who got into tech later in life. Some of you are based in busy cities, others in smaller towns. No matter who you are or how different your story is, you all have one thing in common - you have the passion to turn an idea into a business impacting people all over the world.

Now, and over the coming months, #WeArePlay celebrates you by sharing your stories.




We are kicking off the series with the story of Yvonne and Alyssa, the London-based mother and daughter duo who created Frobelles - a dress up game increasing representation of African and Caribbean hair styles.



You can now also discover the stories of friends Ronaldo, Carlos and Thadeu from Hand Talk Translator (Brazil - my home country!), art lover Zuzanna from DailyArt (Poland) and travel-loving couple Ina & Jonas from TravelSpend (Germany).

To all apps and games businesses - thank you for being a part of the Google Play community. Your dedication and ambition is helping millions of people learn, connect, relax, exercise, find jobs, give back, laugh, have fun, escape to fantasy lands, and so much more.

Read more and stay tuned for many more stories at g.co/play/weareplay


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