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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."
Now we'll be able to get enterprise-grade fart apps.
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
Area51 - We are watching...
It would be useful for something like a timesheet app. Not interesting to the general public, and yet useful within an enterprise.
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.
How? This is not related at all to desktops.
I'm seeing it happen already.
There are plenty of SMEs in Asia using tiny Android PC-on-a-stick computers as basic office desktops. Clipped to the back of a HDMI screen and plugged into a USB hub along with a mouse & keyboard, they're cheap, low overhead and easy to use.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Might be cool if the EFF or FSF put up a channel. EFF could identify apps that don't spy on you. FSF could list apps that offer their source code under a F/LOSS license. Either one could also create an "Approved by EFF" (or FSF) logo program to generate revenue to fund the channel administration.
Malicious apps have emerged as perhaps the most serious threat to mobile devices at the moment
It is true that I am much more likely to install software I believe I can trust,. For me, the EFF and FSF are organizations that I would trust to make the call, not a corporation like Google, Apple, MS, or Amazon. But Google does make it easy to get the software onto my rooted and rom'd Galaxy, and pay the programmers for their work.
It may not have mass market appeal, but it doesn't have to. It only needs to appeal to the hundreds of thousands of technophiles who know about the EFF and FSF; that's enough to make a successful channel. There'd be some decent revenue there, and it would raise the public image of the EFF and FSF as defenders of digital liberty.
Obviously there are EULA, DRM, and walled garden questions that must be contemplated, but there seems to be enough upside to at least go through the thought process and see if it can be reconciled.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Plenty on AliExpress: http://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?SearchText=android+mini+pc&catId=0&manual=y
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Obviously any company, just like anyone else, can load their own apps to their own device.
That is not what enterprise deployment is.
That's hardly the same thing as providing a central repository for employees to pull from.
In fact it is. With an enterprise signed app, you can put an IPA file anywhere you like, and have someone just point any iOS device at it to download and install. There is no need to know the device UDID ahead of time.
The restriction on this from Apple's end is that the people downloading and installing these apps must be employees of the account that has the enterprise license, or you risk revocation. They don't check though - how would they know a device is owned by an employee? They can't and Apple is as I said not even hosting the IPA to distribute.
The employee clause exists mostly to keep people from standing up general purpose app stores for any random user.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
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