Google Launches Private Android App Stores

Trailrunner7 writes "Malicious apps have emerged as perhaps the most serious threat to mobile devices at the moment, and the major players, such as Apple and Google, have tried several different methods of preventing them from getting into their app stores and into the hands of users. Now, Google is taking one more step with the launch of a new service called the Private Channel for Google Apps, which gives enterprises and other organizations the ability to create private app stores and control the apps their users can download. Private Channel is essentially a way for organizations to stand up their own miniature app stores inside of Google Play--the main app store for Android devices--and publish apps to it. That gives these organizations the ability to point their users directly to the apps they want users to download for their Android devices. The new service will include some of the security features built into Google Play, most notably the anti-malware system and the ability to authenticate users."

Comments

In other news they Axe the Free Google Apps.

[Macfox]

Google Apps Free Edition

Starting on December 6, 2012, Google will no longer offer new accounts for the free edition of Google Apps. Google Apps free edition is sometimes referred to as "Standard Edition."
If you already have the free edition, you can continue to use it for free. This change has no impact on existing users of the free edition.

Please see the Google Enterprise Blog for additional details.

http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com.au/
http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?answer=2855120

So like BlackBerry but not as sophisticated

[accessbob]

Sounds like the device management in BlackBerry but not as sophisticated. With BlackBerry, you can manage what goes on the devices even more precisely. And with BB10 next month comes the private app store where different groups of users can see different sets of apps within your organization. You can also automatically push the apps (and upgrades) to the devices. You can also manage a firewall between personal and corporate content/apps within each phone (it's called Balance). Good to see Google helping the enterprise, but it sounds like they still have a way to go.

So what?

[countach]

I'm not sure why this is interesting. Apple has offered companies a way to upload their own private apps to IOS for years. Slightly different to this mechanism, but the same result.

Re:Watch out Google, Facebook might sue!

[ozmanjusri]

Plenty on AliExpress: http://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?SearchText=android+mini+pc&catId=0&manual=y

Re:EFF / FSF Channel?

[Anonymous Coward]

F-Droid is almost that "FSF channel": only free software built from source. Apps that spy on you are marked as such and aren't shown by default.

(Disclosure: I contributed translations to the project.)

Re:Cool idea...

[TheRaven64]

The problem is that Android only has an automatic software update facility via a market application. So, either the company needs to write their own tool that periodically polls the server for new apks to install, or it needs to tell every user to manually install the new version when there is an upgrade.