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The emergence of the Android application store

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Hey Android Market It was born in 2008, a few months after the first Android mobile phones were released on the market – in August of the same year. It was the Google Play Store, which is the store we know today as Google Play. In its first appearance, one of the few apps available in the store was Snake, known in Brazil as the “snake game”.

Android market logo. Image: Google/Reproduction.

This brand remained for five years, and was later replaced, in 2012, by the Play Store brand, which was later renamed to Google Play. The name change was necessary to pursue Google’s new strategy of offering products beyond Android mobile phones found on other platforms, such as PCs and smart TVs, for example.

Still in the year of change to Play Store, The store is centralized in only two categories: Google Music (later renamed Play Music), Google’s digital music distribution service, and Google Play Store (later Play Books), the company’s e-book store. For example, Google Play Filmes and Play Newsstand were other verticals that have consolidated over the past few years.

In March, the maximum app size limit was increased, giving developers a total of 4GB. In the following years, the Store expanded, becoming one of the largest digital distribution services for apps, games, movies, TV shows, music and books – a competitor to the App Store, from the iOS operating system.

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