Have you seen the latest land grab in user specific data by Google? Yes, that same company which is now obscuring all referral keywords for organic traffic from their search engine because of privacy concerns for the user? Today Google announced: Improved App Insight by Linking Google Analytics with Google Play. Sounds great right, finally you can see the number of downloads on the Google App store, and you can track those users in your app what they are doing and how valuable they are. But guess what, who else can see this with the integration of Google analytics in your App? Right Google!
From the Techcrunch post on the topic (emphasize mine):
The Play Developer Console itself, however, is also getting a bit of an update. It’ll now show information about how often users use an app, for how long and what they are doing inside of it (assuming they have Google Analytics set up in their app).
This two-way data flow, Google argues, “gives you instant access to the in-store and in-app metrics of record in whichever Google product you use.” For most developers, the Analytics integration is probably the most interesting of these two new features, however, as it provides the most comprehensive view of how their apps are performing.
How is it possible the Techcrunch editor, and any other technology writer, totally misses the seismic shift which is happening here. Google getting access to in-App metrics like usage, navigation, in App purchases is a major data point for Google to become the monopoly player on the Android App marketplace. Let me explain:
New Popular Apps
A new App is submitted on the app store. It has the Google analytics integration embedded, which allows Google to track not only the popularity of the App in numbers of downloads, but also would give Google insights into (as mentioned above):
- Number of active users
- Time spend on the App
- Activity within the App
Now do you really think Google would have a popular App like Waze grow as big as it did, before spending over a $1 Billion to buy the popular App? I reckon the business development and the Mergers & Acquisitions teams at Google will keep a close eye on which Apps are doing great after launch, pulling the in-App metrics and negotiate the sh*t out of a deal.
If the App makers don’t want to sell, there is always the opportunity to build your own. With all the internal data available for the dev teams, and a hard coded position in the Google Play store, I bet a native Google – Android App would win it 99/100.
Rankings & Popular Apps
In a private conversation with an SEO I really respect, he brought up a good point on the way Google could use the in-App data in a different way to gain a competitive advantage: Cross referencing the internal data across users, you can figure out which App downloaders are the innovators in the space. A little unclear explanation, so let me give a little bid more details.
Across all the App downloads in Google Play, Google can quickly spot those people who downloads apps early in their lifetime., which become popular. Using statistical modelling and a large data set, they could predict the probability a certain App becomes popular purely based on the fact it’s being downloaded by certain people. This is not only good for early acquisition discussions, but could also become a competitive advantage over other App stores, because Google would be able to recommend better App’s, have better rankings in the App store etc.
Privacy of the User
I more and more get the feeling Google is one creepy company. The argument of privacy within organic search has been made very clear; Google doesn’t want anybody snooping on what people are searching for, see this quote:
We added SSL encryption for our signed-in search users in 2011, as well as searches from the Chrome omnibox earlier this year. We’re now working to bring this extra protection to more users who are not signed in.
So what about the privacy of Android users, downloading an App on their phone, not knowing the big G is tracking every movement, every action and every purchase they make in these Apps? More data for Google, not for us…!
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