Tag Archives: Google Play Devs

Meet Google Play Billing Library Version 3

Posted by Steve Hartford, Product Manager, Google Play

Google Play is committed to a healthy ecosystem, where developers succeed by creating high-quality apps that users love. Many developers realize that success using Google Play’s one-time purchase and subscription services. Over the last decade, we’ve improved the purchase experience for Android users with features like paying via carrier billing (with over 180 supported carriers today), and tools to budget expenses and easily manage subscriptions.

We’re furthering these efforts with the launch of Billing Library version 3. Now available, this newest version includes new ways users can pay, subscription promotion capabilities, purchase attribution for games, and improvements to purchase reliability and security. Starting August 2, 2021, all new apps must use Billing Library version 3 or newer. By November 1, 2021, all updates to existing apps must use Billing Library version 3 or newer.

Paying with Cash

We continuously work to ensure users worldwide can pay for your one-time purchases and subscriptions in a way that’s comfortable and convenient.

Cash remains the most widely used payment method globally with 2.7 trillion transactions across all goods and services in 2018 (Source: Euromonitor). Last year we previewed a new payment method in which the transaction is completed off-device, such as paying with cash at a local convenience store. According to World Bank, two billion people worldwide do not have access to a bank account, so these pending transactions can help unlock new buyers, especially in emerging markets where cash is a popular form of payment.

Today we’re announcing users can easily pay for one-time purchases with cash in Indonesia and Malaysia at over 50,000 locations, including at leading retailers such as 7-Eleven and Alfamart. Pending transactions will be available soon for all developers.

Cash Purchases using Billing Library 3

Cash Purchases using Billing Library 3

More places for users to discover and purchase

Billing Library version 3 unlocks the ability for users to discover and purchase items outside of your app, such as across the Play store. One example is the new frictionless subscription promo code redemption experience. Now when you offer promo codes for subscription free trials, users can easily redeem them in the Play store - even if your app isn’t installed yet. It’s a simple redeem, subscribe and install experience that reduces the effort required for users to get going.

Purchase Attribution

Many games and apps need to ensure in-app purchases are attributed to a specific in-game character, avatar, or profile. Billing Library now allows you to specify this information when launching the purchase flow. After the purchase completes, you can retrieve the information and correctly attribute the purchase. This removes the need to build a custom solution using the deprecated AIDL developer payload.

Billing Library Version Requirements

Just like Play’s TargetSDK requirements, it’s important that all users are able to benefit from any security, performance, and user experience improvements in new versions of Billing Library. At Google I/O in 2019, we released Billing Library version 2 and announced changes including a two-year support window for each major release.

This means starting August 2, 2021, all new apps must use Billing Library version 3 or newer. By November 1, 2021, all updates to existing apps must use Billing Library version 3 or newer.

After these dates, you won’t be able to publish apps that use older AIDL, Billing Library version 1 or Billing Library version 2 integrations. Apps already in the Play Store can continue to be downloaded and will process in-app purchases. Any subsequent app upgrades, however, will require Billing Library version 3 or newer.

Billing Library version support

Billing Library version support

Availability

Billing Library version 3 is available today for all game and app developers in Java and Kotlin flavors. For game developers using Unity, we also launched a Billing Library 3-based Unity IAP plugin. This plugin allows Unity developers to meet the Billing Library version requirements and access all Play billing features.

Please upgrade any billing-related SDKs and libraries to versions supporting Billing Library version 3. Reach out to the SDK or library owner if one is not available. We’re working with top providers on their Billing Library version 3 compatibility.

Next Steps

While we recommend upgrading annually, we will be supporting each major release for two years. We recommend developers use Billing Library version 3 today for all new apps, and migrate existing billing integrations as soon as feasible - well ahead of the 2021 deadlines.

For developers who haven’t moved to Billing Library, we realize the transition from AIDL can be non-trivial for existing apps, and we want to help make the move as smooth as possible. We’ve created a migration guide for apps currently using AIDL, and there’s also a video walkthrough.

We’ve also updated our documentation - including guides for purchase attribution, using promo codes, and fighting abuse. Please let us know about any implementation issues - here’s how to contact us.

For details on all the Play Commerce platform improvements, watch our “What’s New” video session.

We’re looking forward to working with you to deliver great purchase experiences in your apps and games.

Promoting high-quality, teacher-approved kids content on Google Play

Posted by Michael Watson, Product Manager, Google Play

With more kids spending time at home, parents are looking for ways to find apps and games for children that are both enriching and entertaining. Today, we’re announcing an update that will make it easier for parents to find this content on the Google Play Store. We’re launching the Teacher Approved program, an editorial program to highlight high-quality, teacher-approved apps for kids. This is part of our ongoing effort to create a safer Google Play for kids.


What’s changing

We consulted with academic experts to develop a framework for rating apps for kids. Specially trained teachers across the US will rate apps for kids based on this framework, evaluating things like:

  • Design quality
  • Appeal to children
  • Enrichment potential
  • Ads & in-app purchases
  • Age appropriateness

Teacher-approved apps will:

  • Be eligible to appear in the new Kids section on Google Play
  • Be eligible for featuring in banners or collections on Google Play
  • Display the new "Teacher approved" badge
  • Display information about what teachers found valuable on their app details page
Phone scrolling through teacher-approved app store
The Google Play store featuring teacher-approved apps

As a result of these changes, we are removing the Family star badge and the Family section on Google Play. All apps that were in the Family section will continue to be discoverable on the Play Store and appear in search results. Note that this change will have no effect on Family Library.

Who’s eligible

Apps need to meet the requirements of the Designed for Families program before they’re eligible to be reviewed by teachers. All Designed for Families apps are automatically placed in the teacher review queue.

We made the decision to launch the Teacher Approved program a little early given the vast number of kids at home now. Teachers are working hard to review apps as quickly as possible, but it will take time to review all apps, so we appreciate your patience. Our initial launch will be limited to the US, to be followed by a global rollout in the coming months.

To help developers better understand what the teachers are looking for, we published a new learning path on Google Play’s Academy for App Success, including findings from Google Play’s research into technology usage by parents and kids.

Rewarding for all

We’re committed to improving the ecosystem and partnering with our developers. We look forward to continuing to work with you to create the best possible experience for children and families on Google Play. For more information on the Teacher Approved program, check out our FAQs.

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Promoting high-quality, teacher-approved kids content on Google Play

Posted by Michael Watson, Product Manager, Google Play

With more kids spending time at home, parents are looking for ways to find apps and games for children that are both enriching and entertaining. Today, we’re announcing an update that will make it easier for parents to find this content on the Google Play Store. We’re launching the Teacher Approved program, an editorial program to highlight high-quality, teacher-approved apps for kids. This is part of our ongoing effort to create a safer Google Play for kids.


What’s changing

We consulted with academic experts to develop a framework for rating apps for kids. Specially trained teachers across the US will rate apps for kids based on this framework, evaluating things like:

  • Design quality
  • Appeal to children
  • Enrichment potential
  • Ads & in-app purchases
  • Age appropriateness

Teacher-approved apps will:

  • Be eligible to appear in the new Kids section on Google Play
  • Be eligible for featuring in banners or collections on Google Play
  • Display the new "Teacher approved" badge
  • Display information about what teachers found valuable on their app details page
Phone scrolling through teacher-approved app store
The Google Play store featuring teacher-approved apps

As a result of these changes, we are removing the Family star badge and the Family section on Google Play. All apps that were in the Family section will continue to be discoverable on the Play Store and appear in search results. Note that this change will have no effect on Family Library.

Who’s eligible

Apps need to meet the requirements of the Designed for Families program before they’re eligible to be reviewed by teachers. All Designed for Families apps are automatically placed in the teacher review queue.

We made the decision to launch the Teacher Approved program a little early given the vast number of kids at home now. Teachers are working hard to review apps as quickly as possible, but it will take time to review all apps, so we appreciate your patience. Our initial launch will be limited to the US, to be followed by a global rollout in the coming months.

To help developers better understand what the teachers are looking for, we published a new learning path on Google Play’s Academy for App Success, including findings from Google Play’s research into technology usage by parents and kids.

Rewarding for all

We’re committed to improving the ecosystem and partnering with our developers. We look forward to continuing to work with you to create the best possible experience for children and families on Google Play. For more information on the Teacher Approved program, check out our FAQs.

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Building a safer Google Play for kids

Posted by Kanika Sachdeva, Product Manager, Google Play

At Google Play, we’re committed to providing a positive, safe environment for children and families. Over the last few years, we’ve helped parents find family-friendly content through the Designed for Families program and empowered them to set digital ground rules for their families with Family Link parental controls.

After taking input from users and developers we are evolving our Google Play policies to provide additional protections for children and families. These policy changes build on our existing efforts to ensure that apps for children have appropriate content, show suitable ads, and handle personally identifiable information correctly; they also reduce the chance that apps not intended for children could unintentionally attract them.

Over the next few months, we will continue to roll out additional features that will help parents make informed choices before they install apps for their kids.

What’s changing for developers

We are asking every developer to thoughtfully consider whether children are part of your target audience.

  • If children are part of your target audience, you must meet policy requirements in your app concerning content and handling of personally identifiable information.
  • Ads in your app that are served to children need to be appropriate and served from an ads network that has certified compliance with our families policies.
  • If children are not part of your target audience, you should make sure your app does not unintentionally appeal to them. We will double check your app marketing to confirm this and ask you to make adjustments where required.

Declaring a target audience

As part of the new policy, all developers must complete the new target audience and content section of the Google Play Console.

The new target audience and content section of the Google Play Console.

For most developers, the target audience does not include children and this section should be relatively quick to complete. If children are part of your target audience, we will ask you follow-up questions.

We will use the information you provide in the Google Play Console, along with our own review of your app marketing assets, to categorize your app and apply policies according to the following target audience groups: children, children and older users, older users.*

We recommend you review our new policies, developer guide, and this training before starting the target audience and content section so that you clearly understand the implications of your answers.

Rolling out these changes

These changes affect every developer on Play, so if your app is already live on the Google Play store, we want to give you time to make any necessary updates. Below are the key dates to keep in mind:

  • Today: Target audience and content section available in the Google Play Console. All new apps must comply with the updated policies.
  • September 1st, 2019: All existing apps must have filled out the new target audience and content section and complied with the updated policies.

Our commitment to you

We’re committed to providing the resources you need to understand and implement these changes. You can view more information on the Android developers website and access training on our new policies on Google Play's Academy for App Success. We have also increased our staffing and improved our communications for app review and appeals processes to help you get timely decisions and understand any changes that are needed.

Thanks in advance for the work you are putting in. We will continue to listen to your feedback and use it to improve the way we roll out these updates and communicate with the developer community.

*Note: The word “children” can mean different things in different locales and in different contexts. It is important that you determine what obligations and/or age-based restrictions may apply for the countries where you target your app.

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I/O 2019: New features to help you develop, release, and grow your business on Google Play

Posted by Kobi Glick, Product Lead, Google Play

Play and #io19 logos with geometric shapes

Over the last 10 years, we’ve worked together to build an incredible ecosystem with more than 2.5 billion active users in over 190 countries. This would not be possible without you and all the fantastic apps and games you’ve built that entertain, help, and educate people around the world.

Every month, you upload more than 750,000 APKs and app bundles to the Play Console. We’ve been amazed by your enthusiasm, and it’s been our privilege to help you grow your business. This year, we want to help you go even further. So today at Google I/O, we're announcing new tools and features to help you develop, release, and grow your apps and games — many of them based on your feedback and suggestions.

Efficient, modular apps and customizable feature delivery

Last year we introduced Android's new publishing format, the Android App Bundle, and an entirely new dynamic delivery framework on Google Play. There are now over 80,000 apps and games using app bundles in production, with an average size savings of 20%. As a result of those savings, apps have seen up to 11% install uplift. As the future of app delivery, we’re excited to share these latest enhancements to the Android App Bundle.

Dynamic features are out of beta and available to all developers, including these new delivery options:

  • On-demand delivery — install features when they’re needed or in the background, instead of delivering them at install time, and reduce the size of your app.
  • Conditional delivery — control which parts of your app to deliver at the time of install based on the user’s country, device features, or minimum SDK version.
  • Instant experiences — now fully supported, so you only need to upload one artifact for your installed app and Google Play Instant experiences.

During our beta program, many developers implemented interesting use cases with dynamic features. Netflix, for example, now delivers their customer support functionality as a dynamic feature to users who visit the support center. By making functionality available only to users who need it, Netflix reported a 33% reduction in app size. You can learn more in the video below.

Seamless internal testing and increased security

We heard you loud and clear: testing bundles is hard. But with the new internal app sharing, you can now share test builds in a matter of seconds. Just upload your app bundle to Google Play and get a download URL to share with your testers. You don’t need to worry about version codes, signing keys, or most other validations that your production releases need to conform to.

In addition to efficiency and modularity, the Android App Bundle also now offers increased security with the launch of app signing key upgrade for new installs. With this feature, you can upgrade the cryptographic strength of your signing key for new installs and their updates on Google Play. Many developers sign their apps with keys generated a long time ago, and this new feature is the only backwards-compatible way to increase their strength.

Easier for users to update

Although auto-updates reach many users, you told us it was still challenging to get some users to update your apps. Now that our new in-app updates API is in general availability, users will be able to update without ever leaving your app. During our early access program, many developers used our API to create a polished upgrade flow, resulting in a median acceptance rate of about 50%.

The API currently supports two flows:

  • The “immediate” flow is a full-screen user experience that guides the user from download to update before they can use your app.
  • The “flexible flow” allows users to download the update while continuing to use your app.
Two iPhones side by side. The first on displaying Immediate update flow with a pop up recommending an update. The second displaying Flexible update flow with a pop up recommending an update.

Stronger decision-making with new Google Play Console data

The right data can help you improve your app performance and grow your business. That’s why we’re excited to tell you about new metrics and insights that will help you better measure your app health and analyze your performance.

  • Core metrics refresh — better understand your acquisition and churn, including data on returning users, automatic change analysis, install method (such as pre-installs and peer-to-peer sharing), metric benchmarking, and the ability to aggregate and dedupe over periods from hours to quarters.
  • App size metrics and reports — gain insights about your app size in Android vitals, including download size, size on device (at install time), changes compared to peers over time, and tailored optimization recommendations.
  • Developer-selected peer benchmarks — create a custom set of 8-12 peers to compare your app to, then see the median value of the set and the difference between your app and its peers for Android vitals data as well as for public metrics like your rating.
  • Market insights with curated peersets — in the coming months, you’ll also be able to compare your growth against an automatically generated, curated peerset of around 100 apps similar to yours for business-sensitive metrics like conversion rate and uninstall rate.
Android Vitals Overview dashboard on Peer group screen

Making it easier to respond to and improve user reviews

We’re also making big changes to another key source of performance data: your user reviews. Many of you told us that you want a rating that reflects a more current version of your app, not what it was years ago — and we agree. So instead of a lifetime cumulative value, your Google Play Store rating will be recalculated to give more weight to your most recent ratings. Users won’t see the updated rating in the Google Play Store until August, but you can preview your new rating in the Google Play Console today.

Every day, developers respond to more than 100,000 reviews in the Play Console, and when they do, we’ve seen that users update their rating by +0.7 stars on average. So in addition to the ratings change, we're making it easier to respond to reviews with suggested replies. When you go to respond to a user, you’ll see three suggested replies which have been created automatically based on the content of the review. You can choose to send one as-suggested, customize a suggestion for more personalization, or create your own message from scratch. Suggested replies are available in English now with additional languages coming later.

Google user review with suggested replies in Beta.

Better Google Play Store listing targeting and customization

Your store listing is where users come to learn more about your app or game and decide whether to install. It’s important real estate, so we’re releasing new features that let you optimize your Google Play Store to address different moments in the user lifecycle.

  • Following the launch of custom listings by country at GDC, we’re announcing a new early access program that lets you create custom listings by install state. Increase acquisition, retention, and re-engagement by providing customized marketing messages for users who haven’t installed your app, users who have your app, and users who have uninstalled your app. If you’re interested in joining the program, sign up here.
  • Now that pre-registration is available to all developers, we’re launching two new features to help you make the most of it: custom listing pages for pre-registration and pre-registration rewards, which let you incentivize players for signing up for notifications before you launch.

Learn more about these and other Google Play features at Google I/O. Join us live or watch later on the Android Developers YouTube channel.

You can also take your skills and knowledge to the next level with our e-learning courses on Google Play’s Academy for App Success, and sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date with our latest features and updates.

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Grow your app business internationally through localization on Google Play

Posted by Chris Yang, Program Manager, Translation Service

It is not uncommon for developers to have the following concerns and thoughts when considering whether to localize their apps: "I just don't have the time!" "Translation is too expensive." "High-quality translation is just hard to find.'' Does this sound familiar?

At Google, we consider translation a key component of making the world's information universally accessible and useful. This commitment extends not only to localizing our own products, but also to providing tools to help developers and translators more easily localize their apps.

Introducing the Google Play App Translation Service

Available in the Google Play Console, the Google Play App Translation Service simplifies localization of your app user interface strings, store listing, in-app product names, and universal apps campaign ads. Thousands of developers have already used this service to reach hundreds of millions of users worldwide.

Here is an overview of some of the ways it can help:

1. Quick and easy - Order in minutes and receive your translation in as little as two days.

  • Small translation orders can be completed in only two days. All orders are completed in eight days or less.
  • Apply translations directly in the Play Console or download to build with your app.

2. Professional and human - Get high-quality translations by real human translators.

  • All translations are carefully crafted by professional translators just for you.
  • Translation providers are selected by Google based on quality and speed.

3. Value for money - Translate your app for as little as $0.07 per word.

  • Pricing is upfront and simple. You only pay per word for each language you translate.
  • For example, translating 200 words into one language at $0.07 per word would cost only $14.

Ordering a Translation

Find the Translation Service in the Google Play Console:

When you're ready to translate, just select the languages to use for translation, choose a vendor, and place your order.

Select languages to translate into.

Choose what type of content you want to translate.

Easily complete purchase of the service.

Language recommendations

You can also expand your global footprint with translation recommendations that can help increase installs. The recommendations can be found in the Google Play Console.

The language recommendation feature is developed using machine learning and is based on your app's install history and market data.

Did you know that you can reach almost 80% of internet users worldwide with only 10 languages. In particular, the Google Play opportunity in Russia and the Middle East continues to grow. Let us know once you have localized for these markets so we can consider featuring your app or game in the Now in Russian and Now in Arabic collections on the Play Store.

Launching the translation

Once you download the translation, you'll be ready to publish your newly translated app update on Google Play.

Get started with the App Translation Service today and let us know what you think!

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