Yes Android users, the Android Market (along with other services like Google Music and Google eBookstore) is no more, in its place Google has created a service called “Google Play” where you get apps, games, movies, music and books, all in one place.
Google would like you to think of Google Play as your “digital entertainment destination” and while you might not see much of a difference in the Android Market at the moment, in the coming days, the Android Market icon will change to “Google Play Store” icon.
Google Play is Google’s attempt to bringing some serious threat to Apple’s dominant iTunes service for music and video and also to compete more aggressively with Amazon’s Kindle service allowing users to access content seamlessly across platforms be it on their Android device or the Web.
Unfortunately though most of the great features on Google Play are – at the moment – not available to Malaysian users, this is because beyond apps, there are really not much else we can purchase online via the service. Content like music, videos and books are not available for most Malaysians to purchase online. This is mostly because of copyrights issues that need to be sorted out. For now, we can only hope for the ability to purchase content online come to Malaysia soon.
In any case, to celebrate the launch of Google Play, Google is offering massive discounts for a lot of great apps like “World of Goo” (US$0.49) and “Where’s My Water?” (US$0.25). The SwiftKey X Keyboard is also on offer going for US$0.49 in conjunction with the launch of Google Play
To learn more about Google Play, head over to play.google.com/about or you can check out the Google Play Google+ page here.
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