14 DAY TRIAL // If you like spending your time playing games, you’re probably familiar with NVIDIA’s Grid service that allows users to stream popular PC games to any Shield device. Well, it appears that soon enough, Google will offer Android a service of the same kind.
According to a new report coming from The Information, Google is hard at work on a secret project that will allow Android users to stream apps over the web. This means you won’t have to download apps and install them locally on your mobile device, as you’ll be allowed to access them directly via your browser.
Sources familiar with the matter explain that Google has acquired the web-based app streaming startup Agawi with the purpose of developing a service of its own.
In the past, Agawi has been known for collaborating with NVIDIA, although the exact details related to their joint effort haven’t been disclosed to the public. Still, it was assumed things were related to NVIDIA’s Grid streaming service we were telling you about above.
Considering that users will be allowed to stream apps as they’d stream music from Spotify, they will not have to pay extra in order to get smartphones equipped with higher memory capacity.
Many people pay premium to get a smartphone with 64GB of internal storage, or even 128GB if that option is available, but if Google’s purported service gets the green light, there’s no reason why customers wouldn’t be able to settle for a lot less.
Google might be looking to make app usage a lot lighter on the device
Most folks don’t use all that many apps anyway, so there isn’t a real need for the lesser-used apps to be stored on mobile devices.
Storing less apps on your phone could also mean a better battery life, since a lot of these applications tap into cellular, Wi-Fi and GPS antenna in order to maintain their up-to-date status.
Moreover, the phone wouldn’t have to arrive with top-tier internal hardware designed for sustaining advanced mobile apps.
On the other hand, some concerns might arise about data usage skyrocketing, but it might be that Google’s service would be able to stream only some parts of the app, rather than the entire app. The same principle applies to Spotify.
The current report also says that this app streaming service might be implemented in the form of free trials at the beginning. So in the first phase, users would be allowed to try the app for 30 seconds or two minutes, during which they would be able to decide whether the app is worth their while or not.
If the user’s decision is against the app, there’s no problem, since no money has been charged, so they can move on to test other applications and see if they like those.
A similar idea was also implemented by Amazon with the Test Drive feature which was made available from their App Store. Sadly, the service was discontinued back in April of this year, so it never really got the chance to shine.
Google has yet to say anything official about the Agawi startup acquisition, so for the time being, take this information with a big grain of salt.