Google is promising to better serve its audience of over 250 million large screen device owners

Google has recently promised to begin surfacing more high-quality apps on Chromebooks. Apps that scale properly and utilize mouse and keyboard or gamepad support are hard to happen upon, and aggregating them all in one place or at the top of the Store makes it easier for Chrome OS users to find and experience content ideal for them.

Over on the Android Developer’s blog, Google is now adding a new promise into the mix in the form of three updates. It wants to help large screen device owners find and use high-quality apps and games, and that’s no longer exclusive to Chromebooks. Since ChromeOS, Android tablets, and foldables have breached 250 million active devices, there’s no more ignoring the massive wave of users who are now integrating these larger displays into their lifestyles.

First, it will update its featuring and ranking logic on the Store when accessed from bigger screens to surface high-quality apps and games based on the large screen app quality guidelines and core app quality guidelines that it recently published. These documents help developers create great user experiences on bigger screens, so that there’s no more excuse for an app to be stuck in phone mode with black bars on the left and right if loaded up on a Chromebook, for example. Obviously, it goes much deeper than that too, as inputs commonly used on these other devices must also be respected, whereas phones use touch input.

Second, it will begin to alert users on these larger screen devices if they are installing “low quality apps“, or those that don’t meet those aforementioned guidelines. Knowing what to expect when you install an app or game should be given to you up front, and this will ensure that this long-overdue expectation is met.

Lastly, Google will do better to separate ratings and reviews based on the type of device. Tablets and foldables, ChromeOS, Wear, and Auto will all be filters you can select while giving or viewing a star rating or someone’s thoughts on their experience so that you can go into an install knowing exactly how it will operate on your device.

At the end of the day, this all means that the company is promising to service a large user base that has gone under served for too long, and I’m extremely happy to see this. If you’re a developer, you’ll also have a breakdown of these metrics on your Play Developer Console, and they will help you better understand your audience and give them what they want and need.