For several months now, the Google Play Store has restricted ads to horizontally scrolling carousels it labels as Recommended for You. Now it looks like Google is testing promoting specific apps directly in the store's search engine. But is this really an advertisement?
When you open the Google Play Store and tap the search bar, you'll usually see the four most recent search results below it. As the site found out 9to5Google, this search history is replaced by new app suggestions in store version 33.0.17-21. The search history will be returned as soon as you type the first character of your query in the search engine.
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We don't see these designs on our devices yet, but Google may be A/B testing them. The website notes that it has never interacted with any of these proposed apps and that all of them are games, namely Summoners War: Chronicles, Call of Duty Mobile Season 10, and Fishdom Solitaire. Call of Duty is a popular title that appears very often in the Recommended for you section, but its placement in search suggestions is new.
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Although these "first come first served" suggestions look like advertising, they are not really advertising. At least that's what Google itself claims in a statement for the website Android Police. According to him, this is part of a test of "an organic discovery feature that highlights apps and games with big updates, ongoing events or offers that users might be interested in." The software giant added that the purpose of the test is to "help Google Play Store users find more enjoyable and useful experiences and support the developer ecosystem."
"the purpose of the test is to "help users of the Google Play Store find more joyful and useful experiences and support the developer ecosystem." It has been doing this since the beginning Apple, to dictate to the user how to think and what is best for him! They think for iKrám users, after all AppleAt Androidu we want freedom, here we want to be in control and think for us and not for Google to do it for us! Fortunately, there is already a long-standing solution to get rid of the "Googlexindle" and "De-Google" your phone 😀