Google Play is Android’s official application store and content distribution platform. It began life as the Android Market, which launched alongside the first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1. The official Android Developers Blog confirmed that “Android Market launched for users to download applications along with the first Android-powered phone, the T-Mobile G1,” on October 22, 2008, with developers able to begin uploading apps starting October 27, 2008.
The launch established economic terms that would shape the mobile app economy. Developers paid a one-time registration fee, and for paid applications the blog post stated that “developers will get 70% of the revenue from each purchase; the remaining amount goes to carriers and billing settlement fees, Google does not take a percentage.” This 70/30 style split, which Apple had also adopted for its App Store, became the standard arrangement for app marketplaces for more than a decade. The Android Market was described as “an open content distribution system” intended to “help end users find, purchase, download and install various types of content on their Android-powered devices.”
In March 2012, Google consolidated and rebranded the store. The official Google blog post “Introducing Google Play: All your entertainment, anywhere you go,” published March 6, 2012, announced that Android Market, Google Music, and the Google eBookstore would become part of a single brand, Google Play. The move reflected Google’s intent to position the store as a broad digital media hub for apps, music, books, and movies, not just an app catalog tied to the Android name.
As the default storefront on the vast majority of Android devices, Google Play became one of the largest software distribution channels in the world, the Android counterpart to Apple’s App Store. Its policies on app review, billing, and the developer revenue share made it a focal point of both the mobile developer economy and, later, regulatory and legal scrutiny over the control that app store operators exercise over distribution and payments.