Google, like every year, has announced the most awaited Android app of the year 2022 awards! The awards themselves were given as best Android Game of the year 2022 as well as best Android App of the year 2022 separately, keeping in line with the target audience for the same.

Google said, “this year we relied on apps to keep us connected and explore new worlds. We found comfort in entertainment, value in learning new skills, and inspiration in everyday routines. That’s why these are Play’s best apps of 2022“.

And the best Android app of the year 2022 overall is Dream by WOMBO.

With Dream by WOMBO, you can create beautiful artwork using the power of AI! Enter a prompt, pick an art style and watch Dream by WOMBO turn your idea into an AI-powered painting in seconds.

WOMBO AI is a Canadian artificial intelligence company transforming the ways that entertainment and AI work together. WOMBO Dream is expanding art to the masses. You don’t need a paint brush, pencil, or any art supplies to make beautiful artwork, all you need is an idea.

Along with the overall winner, Google also announced winners in speicifc categories…

Best Android app of the year 2022 for fun : PetStar

Best Android app of the year 2022 for Personal Growth : Breathwrk

Best Android app of the year 2022 for Everyday Essentials : Plant Parent

Best Android app of the year 2022 in the hidden gems category : Recover Athletics

Best Android app of the year 2022 for good : The STIGMA App

Best Android app of the year 2022 for wear : Todoist

Best Android app of the year 2022 for tablets : Pocket

Google also introduced a new category this year, with their focus being across various platforms where Android works…

Best Android app of the year 2022 for Chromebooks : BandLab

Google Play has been sharing the best Android game of the year since the past few years and this year’s edition was just announced! The awards are a combination of editorial reviews and judgements along with Android owners through the user’s choice.

Google says, “Games are transformative: They help build communities, foster creativity, and communicate complex ideas. This year we explored creative playgrounds, enchanting stories, and huge new worlds. Our picks for this year’s top games cover a wide range of experiences that show how people connect through play; presenting Play’s best games of 2022”.

Overall (editorial as well as user’s choice) best game of the year 2022 goes to Electronic Art’s Apex Legends.

Apex Legends Mobile rose through the Esports ranks, regularly trending and appearing in top 10 download lists throughout the year. The game brings all the excitement of the Apex Legends series to mobile and tablets so you can easily play wherever you are.

It is a multiplayer shooter game featuring FPS, TPS, and combat action. In multiplayer mode, you can team up with two other players in competitive PvP team battle games

Apart from the overall winner, Google also announced winners in specific categories…

Best Multiplayer game of the year 2022 : Dislyte

Best Pick Up & Play game of the year 2022 : Unsurprisingly Angry Birds Journey

Best Indies game of the year 2022 : Dicey Dungeons

Best game of the year 2022 for tablets : Tower of Fantasy

And Google has also come up with 3 new categories from this year…

Best story game of the year 2022 : Papers, Please

Best ongoing game of the year 2022 : Genshin Impact

Best game of the year 2022 on Play Pass : Very Little Nightmares

Best game of the year 2022 for Chromebooks : Roblox

Google is raising the quality bar on Android apps, with sharing insights and notices to both, the developers as well as users. Quality of an app is as important to the end user as it should be to the developer, as that is what will get in the performance as well as good reviews.

One of the most important ways to boost your app quality and attract more users is to focus on technical quality. For this, the developers would need to follow a certain set of guidelines as well as receive insights from Play Store, in order to keep track of the usage and keep improving the app based on the metrics and feedback.

The starting point for maintaing the technical quality of the app should always be Android’s Core App Quality Checklist. Make your app experience as compelling, smooth, and safe as possible. Work through the tests on this page to assess your app’s visual experience, performance, security, and more.

The next pit stop in the journey to improve your app quality would be to keep monitoring Android Vitals in your Play Console.

Android Vitals reports on key user-impacting issues and helps you to debug and prioritize across them. It gives you a comprehensive understanding of your stability on Android with visibility of user-perceived crashes and ANRs (Application Not Responding errors), includes stack traces, event tags, and device information to help you understand and resolve problems as well as set up alerts so you can respond to new and emerging issues as quickly as possible.

To improve quality across the board, Google enforces an overall bad behavior threshold. The threshold is 1.09% for user-perceived crash rate, and 0.47% for user-perceived ANR rate. To maximize your app’s visibility on Google Play, it’s important to stay below these thresholds. If your title exceeds the device bad behavior threshold on any core vital for a given phone model, then Google Play may reduce the visibility of your app for users on that phone model and start showing a warning to the users downloading the app, below the Install button.

Users expect great experiences on their devices, and developers who deliver on their expectations will achieve greater success on Google Play!

Google starts third-party billing in play store with Spotify and Bumble’s users as the chosen ones for the pilot testing.

It hasn’t been a secret that Google and Apple have long been restricting their App developers to use only their own payment gateways for any purchases on Play Store as well as in-app purchases. While this has brought in a lot of revenue to both of them, so has it brought in lot many penalties across many country’s competition watchdogs blaming them of misusing their dominant position in the market and direct terms on the developers going against healthy competition. The latest one of such penalties coming from the Competition Commission of India imposing a fine of $113.60 million on Google for such practices.

Google announced the policy change, called User Choice Billing, in March. They call it a “pilot,” and expanded the test to the U.S., Brazil, and South Africa on Thursday in addition to previous regions including Australia, India, and Europe.

As per the User Choice Billing, Google is basically allowing end users to choose if they want to be billed directly inside the app, without the app owners being charged the, close to 30%, cut by the Play Store, or they want to continue to be billed via the Play Store, where the current commissions remain as they were. So while it is a welcome move by Google to give both, the app owners as well as app users, a choice, they still make it mandatory that the choice should remain and that Google Play Store billing is not going anywhere.

Google said the pilot is available to non-gaming apps that comply with its user interface guidelines about how to implement the billing. Also, Google will continue to charge developers the service fees. Developers must pay Google the applicable service fees. When a consumer chooses to use an alternative billing system, the service fee the developer pays will be reduced by 4% as it helps support their investments in Play Store and Android.

The Competition Commission of India (Commission) has imposed a penalty of Rs.1337.76 crore ($161.95 million) on Google for abusing its dominant position in multiple markets in the Android Mobile device ecosystem, apart from issuing cease and desist order.

In April 2019, the regulator ordered a detailed probe in the matter following complaints by consumers of Android-based smartphones in the country. Android is an open-source, mobile operating system installed by Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) of smartphones and tablets.

As per the release, the Commission has examined various practices of Google w.r.t. licensing of this Android mobile operating system and various proprietary mobile applications of Google like Play Store, Google Search, Google Chrome, YouTube, etc. The demand for the same, come from three different sets of consumers…

• Smart device OEMs who wish to install an app store to make their smart devices commercially viable and marketable
• App developers, who want to offer their services to the end users
• End users to wish to access app stores to access content or avail other services

They found Google to be dominant in all the above mentioned relevant markets.

Google and OEMs enter into multiple agreements to govern their rights and obligations like Mobile Application Distribution Agreement (MADA), Anti-fragmentation Agreement (AFA), Android Compatibility Commitment Agreement (ACC), Revenue Sharing Agreement (RSA), etc.

This leaves the OEMs with no other choice but to make sure that the first entry point of search remains Google search. First choice of video remains Youtube. First choice of browser remains Chrome, etc. Even if the OEMs themselves want to, they cannot replace their own alternatives to the ones pre-installed by Google.

Based on all of the above arguments, the Commission has imposed monetary penalty as well as issued cease and desist order against Google from indulging in anti-competitive practices.

This will be a continously updated article and will post updates as we keep getting them.