Google I/O 2022 focuses on app growth

It’s that time again! That’s right, it’s Google I/O time. Google I/O is an annual developer conference, held by Google in Mountain View, CA. At this year’s conference, Google is focusing on three areas to help developers grow their business on Google Play. Let’s jump right in!

Security

Mobile privacy and security is a constantly changing and growing task to handle. To that end, Google is rolling out new tools for developers and users to control their privacy.

• Google Play SDK index: this new tool gives developers insight into each of the approved SDKs and their permissions, best practices, and more.
• Google cloud key management for Play app signing: a change to the way key management works. Will increase security for users and developers.
• App signing key rotation: allowing developers to easily rotate their app keys allows for safer recovery from security incidents.
• Play Integrity API: this API makes detecting fraudulent transactions and erroneous traffic easier to detect and counter.
• Data safety: users can check to see your privacy and security settings, allowing them to feel safer downloading.
• Privacy sandbox preview: a new set of tools to help keep users and developers safe while allowing for effective advertising.

Quality

What better way to encourage app growth than to improve quality? With that in mind, Google has announced several new tools to help improve app quality for Android developers.

• Developer reporting API: you can now access Android Vitals information outside of the Play Console. This allows for easier to access reporting. Also, Google has improved performance within Android vitals as it comes to using along with Firebase Crashlytics.
• Reach and devices: new metrics for revenue and growth help developers plan for their apps future.
• Device catalog overhaul: the new device catalog is much easier to use.
• App testing: now it’s much easier to test your devices on several different form factors, including Android Auto.
• In-app updates API: update notification times are now down to 15 minutes from the earlier 24 hours. The new system will display your “what’s new” message to your users as well.

Growth

Finally, Google is investing a lot of time and effort into app growth. With a number of new features, making sales should be easier than ever on the Play store.

• Store listings: you can now have up to 50 different listings for your app all with their own analytics. Improvements to the store listing experiments also offer quicker results than before.
• Deep links: a new deep links management page has been added to Play to help keep deep links up to date in your apps.
• LiveOps: a new feature for you propose featured content on the Play store.
• Ultra-low price points: it is now possible to list apps for as little as five cents to promote growth.
• New subscription capabilities: instead of creating different SKUs per subscription level, you can manage them under one SKU.
• New prepaid plans: alongside new subscription levels, you can now offer pre-paid plans.
• In-app messaging: if a user’s payment is declined, it is now possible to send a message to their app screen asking for updated payment information.

For more from Google I/O check out the conference going on now!