Google Play

Google recently announced it's change of the Android Market branding to Google Play. Now, I know I may be a little late on this one, and I normally talk about development on Android devices and my own personal projects (which are still underway, I can guarantee), but bare with me.

Google has been recently been making a shift in strategy, one that may only be apparent to the most fanboy-ish of followers. They started and continue to run a large television campaign for the Galaxy Nexus (one that seems to be very successful) and one for their social service Google+ (not so successful). 

To most, this may just appear like business as usual. However, in my eyes at least, it's just the beginning.

Google has been making a strong effort to coordinate its efforts across the organization. They have gone on with multiple "Spring cleaning" efforts, some being only a few months apart. They have begun integrating their products across many of their services (mainly Google+). They have started using a unified appearance for all past and future Google properties. All of these things shows a much tighter approach to their branding.

This brings me to Google Play. In the past, Google has had a somewhat haphazard approach to selling media. Google Movies never had a strong "online" selling point. Google Books was never well publicized as a place to... well, buy books. Google Music didn't even originally have a store! With Google Play, Google now has a centralized, branded approach to media. This not only simplifies it for the user - it simplifies it for advertisement, something Google has been making a strong push in recently.

Is there really much of a difference?

So, is Google play a funny name? Probably. Does it cover simplify Google's services even further for the user? Most definitely.