Google Announces Licensing Service for Android Apps

Mountain View-based Internet giant Google has just announced the introduction of a new service to help preventing the pirating of applications developed for its mobile operating system, Android. The service was announced officially via a blog post over at the Android Developers, and is intended for app builders who have their solutions available for download/purchase via the Android Market.

“In my conversations with Android developers, I often hear that you’d like better protection against unauthorized use of your applications. So today, I’m pleased to announce the release of a licensing service for applications in Android Market,” is what Eric Chu, Android Developer Ecosystem, notes in that blog post.

The new service is simple to use and is offered for free. It should offer a secure mechanism for managing access to the Android Market paid applications that were provided for handsets running under Android 1.5 or higher. “At run time, with the inclusion of a set of libraries provided by us, your application can query the Android Market licensing server to determine the license status of your users. It returns information on whether your users are authorized to use the app based on stored sales records,” Eric Chu stated.

The new licensing service was designed to operate in real time and to offer increased flexibility when choosing license-enforcement strategies was involved. It's also worth mentioning that the service would offer a more secure approach when it comes to protecting various applications in the Android Market from unauthorized use, when compared to the security level offered by copy protection.

Google already put in place the said licensing service, so that developers can benefit from what it has to offer. The company intends to replace the current Android Market copy-protection mechanism within a matter of months. “I encourage you to check out the Licensing Your Applications section of our Developer Guide and the Android Market Help Center to learn how you can take advantage of this new service immediately,” Eric Chu concluded.

Follow me on Twitter @ionut_arghire.