Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google Play Retailer is testing a brand new minimal design for app listings for sure core system apps.
- These new listings present solely fundamental details about the app and take away suggestions mechanisms.
- This may very well be a option to forestall evaluate bombing of system apps that customers don’t absolutely comprehend.
The Google Play Retailer is residence to tens of millions of apps, video games, and different content material, and Google is consistently experimenting with options and UI adjustments to higher serve customers and builders alike. Through the years, app itemizing pages have gained options to extend the chance of customers trusting a brand new app and downloading it. Curiously, one latest change to the Play Retailer removes options from them as a substitute of including them. Regardless of the characteristic regression, this alteration to app listings might assist avoid wasting apps from being unfairly review-bombed by ignorant customers.
An APK teardown helps predict options that will arrive on a service sooner or later based mostly on work-in-progress code. Nonetheless, it’s potential that such predicted options might not make it to a public launch.
Google Play Retailer v44.1.17-31 introduced alongside an fascinating change: a much less detailed model of the app itemizing pages. We managed to allow this much less detailed model of app listings for a number of apps within the Play Retailer. These itemizing pages have virtually no areas for person engagement, help, and suggestions, as they merely show solely a handful of particulars, just like the identify of the app and its icon, the app developer, a name to motion button (“Uninstall” most often), and an outline of the app.
Listed below are screenshots depicting Play Retailer app itemizing pages of Google Play Companies earlier than this alteration and after we activated this alteration:
The second screenshot exhibits a comparatively minimal structure with merely an app description. In case an app has been up to date, additionally, you will see the changelog as supplied by the app developer. These minimal listings haven’t any opinions, rankings, app help, or carousels for comparable apps.
Listed below are some extra examples of those minimal app listings on the Play Retailer:
Eagle-eyed readers would have observed that these minimal app listings are solely being showcased for sure core system apps. Actually, you will be unable to land on these app listings by a search within the Play Retailer, as these system app listings will be accessed solely by an exterior hyperlink equivalent to this one for Google Play Companies or in your Pending Downloads each time there’s an replace accessible for a few of these apps.
Since first recognizing this alteration, we’ve waited a number of weeks to see if Google would reverse it. The corporate hasn’t, so we’re inclined to consider that that is intentional.
We will solely guess what Google’s intentions are for such a change, however an excellent guess may very well be that such minimal app pages for core system apps might assist them keep away from being review-bombed by ignorant customers. We’ve observed such habits on a few of these apps whereby customers who don’t absolutely perceive the app’s function would go away behind 1-star rankings and destructive/sarcastic opinions just because they noticed the app on their system and hadn’t deliberately put in it. Such ignorant and unwarranted criticism usually creates a suggestions loop the place different customers additionally develop suspicious of such system apps. The evaluate bombing finally ends up inciting a mass of customers to uninstall updates to those apps, updates that may very well be fixing some essential bugs. So, customers find yourself capturing themselves within the foot as a rule in such conditions.
Simplifying the app particulars web page for core system apps and having them keep on with the fundamentals seems like a good suggestion for probably the most half. Nonetheless, the opposite facet of the coin is that the app developer might and may do a greater job at describing their app, its capabilities, and its significance. They need to educate customers on why the app is current on their system and why uninstalling its updates would typically be a nasty thought. Such an method would cut back panic and distrust; in any other case, customers will merely take to badmouthing the app on social media.
What do you concentrate on these minimal app listings on the Play Retailer? Tell us within the feedback beneath!