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December 2019 |
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| As we ring out another year, I would like to take a moment to congratulate all of you for an incredible year. Thank you for continuing to inspire us with the outstanding and delightful apps and games you build on Android and Google Play. |
| This year we focused on modern Android development—to help you be more productive and efficient; and modern app and game distribution—the powerful and customizable tools supporting your success on Google Play. You embraced these tools, innovating rapidly and reaching broader audiences. |
| In 2019, we also doubled down on our commitment to creating an ecosystem that is safe for and trusted by both users and developers. With 116 billion apps and games downloaded on the Play Store, we have a joint responsibility to keep the ecosystem safe for everyone. We appreciate your partnership in this important endeavor, and are committed to working with you in an open and transparent way to make Google Play and Android better platforms for billions of people around the world and for you to build successful businesses. We look forward to your continued success in 2020. |
| From everyone on our team to everyone on yours, best wishes for a happy holiday season and a prosperous new year. |
| Purnima Kochikar |
| Director, Google Play Apps & Games Business Development |
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| Modern Android development |
| Recommended tools for fast and easy development: |
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Build UIs the declarative way with Jetpack Compose, and benefit from code that is more intuitive and concise. Built using a Kotlin domain-specific language, Compose makes it easy to build beautiful, native apps. You can switch at your own pace, thanks to seamless compatibility with the existing UI toolkit. To get the developer preview, download the latest Preview build of Android Studio. |
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Download the canary version of Android Studio 4.0. Included are Compose Live Preview, Code Completion, and a full Compose app example. There is also a new Motion Editor, Java 8 Language library desugaring, full support for KTS files, Kotlin live templates, and more. |
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| Modern app and game distribution |
| Many of you have switched to the Android App Bundle: over 315K app bundle apps and games are now in production, representing nearly 30% of active installs. Those that switch have seen size savings and more efficient releases as a result. |
| We improved tools which make it easier for you to work with app bundles and adopt the advanced features which it enables. You can now: |
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Speed up build times and engineering velocity by modularizing your app with dynamic feature modules, which are now easier to build and test offline |
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Track your app’s sizes, compare yourself to peers, and get optimization recommendations in the app size report |
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| Protecting the ecosystem |
| In 2019, you helped us make Google Play even safer, building user trust in your apps and Google Play as a whole. Thanks to your hard work, users are not only safer, they also feel safer when they download apps that request fewer permissions. This year, we have: |
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Made Google Play safer for children and families by ensuring apps and games for children have appropriate content, show suitable ads, and handle personally identifiable information correctly. |
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| To help you protect your apps, we’ve improved our ability to detect impersonators, repackaging, bad content, and other forms of abuse. Additionally, we’re investing in resources like policy-focused Play Academy courses to help you better understand and navigate our policy changes. |
| Because the threats are always changing, it’ll take all of us working together to keep users safe and our platform secure. Thank you for continuing to work with us on this. |
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