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Google says it will start downranking non-tablet apps in the Play Store (arstechnica.com)

submitted 1 year ago by BrikoX@lemmy.zip to c/android

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[-] RegalPotoo@lemmy.world 119 points 1 year ago

I wonder why the tablet app ecosystem on Android is so poor? Could it be that the Google has spent the best part of the last decade firmly pretending that Android tablets don't exist, and people should just buy a Chromebook? Maybe that might have something to do with it?

[-] warmaster@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Google:

Am I out of touch?

No, its's the devs who are wrong!

[-] Suoko@feddit.it 5 points 1 year ago

ChromeOS does benefit from android apps for tablets. Chromebooks are next gen android tablets.

[-] entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I agree with the first statement and firmly disagree with the second. Chromebooks are not inherently tablets and they inherently do allow multiple windows open at once without split screen, something that you basically never see with the tablet computing paradigm.

[-] Suoko@feddit.it 1 points 1 year ago

I didn't get you. Tablets allow only to split screen (except for some launchers that allow a kind of tiling with multiple apps) while Chromebooks allow standard windows like any X/wayland DE, plus they allow tiling similar to tablets.

[-] mikestevens 3 points 1 year ago

That's what he said.

[-] entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Right, you just said the same thing as me but with more detail. Your earlier comment said Chromebooks are essentially tablets. I was saying they're not like tablets because they have a more traditional desktop/window management paradigm.

[-] justalittleguy 69 points 1 year ago

Finally. This is my favorite side effect of the advent of foldables - more people seeing the big tablet landscape mode of apps, and thus the fact that so many apps are incompatible coming to light.

[-] warmaster@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

Also for desktop mode (Google's DEX) for Pixel 8.

[-] sabreW4K3@lemmy.tf 49 points 1 year ago

Google says this every few years and never follows through.

[-] relative_iterator@sh.itjust.works 24 points 1 year ago

They push things briefly and then quickly abandon.

[-] APassenger@lemmy.one 5 points 1 year ago

They have no heart or soul, only brief flickers of "try" followed by "squirrel!"

[-] RegalPotoo@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

The reasons for this are actually kinda fascinating (at least in a "root cause analysis of an engineering disaster" way).

The way performance evaluation works at Google very heavily takes into account what things your (and if you are a manager, your team) have delivered recently. Maintenance doesn't really count, so if you want to get a good performance review (and promotions, not be first to go when it's redundancy time etc) you have to be doing "new". You can get away with ongoing evolutionary development of a thing if it's a product or if it's visible and important, but the unsexy, unglamorous things like looking after small corners of the developer ecosystem that (until very recently) weren't strategic priorities is a very good way to kill your career.

[-] sabreW4K3@lemmy.tf 5 points 1 year ago

Yep, sadly this is the case and it's not even just Google, it's the whole of Silicon Valley. You'd think that given the size of Google, they'd be so big that they could avoid this, but nope, they have to always deliver for their shareholders, so they need a culture that creates new products constantly. Still though, I would love a small team that got to focus on the old unglamorous stuff and didn't have to worry.

[-] Spudziki@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

So…. Instagram?

[-] can@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 year ago

That's a good point. We'll see if they stick to it.

[-] mikestevens 4 points 1 year ago

I wouldn't be surprised if the unsaid part is that they're focused more on productivity apps than social apps, but I could be wrong. Also wouldn't be surprised if Instagram doesn't care about getting downranked, given its brand and market awareness somewhat transcends the need to appear in top-apps lists.

[-] Im28xwa 1 points 1 year ago

Firefox too

[-] RanchOnPancakes@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Google. "We gave you so many years. Not a single bite on the carrot. Here comes the stick. "

[-] mikestevens 2 points 1 year ago

What carrot? A carrot is an incentive. Google didn't embrace the tablet format until very recently, in the grand scheme of things. They haven't offered devs any special deals that I'm aware of — say a revenue split from the play store or paying them to deliver a tablet version of their app — so they didn't incentivise devs to focus on Android tablets.

iPads have dominated the market for so long, and remain a fairly predictable and consistent device to develop for, so... why would an app developer have poured time into an app for Android tablets in years past?

[-] kratoz29@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

I don't have an Android tablet, only iPad but I think this is a good move, do we know if Apple does the same?

[-] Freedom@exploding-heads.com 1 points 1 year ago

Use F-droid.

[-] rodneyck@lemmy.world -5 points 1 year ago

Who turned up Google's nazi dial?

this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023

176 points (96.8% liked)

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