My first difficulty with this change is the fact the market is no longer a market; it does not make any sense to go on to 'Google Play' to download a productivity suite app or a note taking app, it seems much more logical to head to an 'Appstore' or maybe a 'Marketplace' for this type of app. This means that fundamentally Google is unintentionally misleading consumers, consumers who do not need any more problems navigating around their Android device. These difficulties are proven by the fact that so many people have taken to Twitter to report that their phone has 'lost' the Android Market! This really is something Google overlooked; first they should have advertised the change of naming scheme instead of assuming people actually keep up with the news relating to Android and secondly the rename makes little or no logical sense. (I'll explain this bit in a minute).
Ok, so I am not a big fan of the rebrand, but even I can see where Google are trying to go with this. They are trying to highlight the fact that the Market is not just a place to get apps, instead you can buy movies, books and everything else that I don't buy, but maybe some people do, from the Market. But still the word 'Play' to me evokes notions of gaming primarily, similarly it also evokes notions of video watching, but it certainly does not evoke images of reading, productivity, creation and business, all of which are also
Call me stupid because I'm not the leader of a worldwide, multi-billion pound corporation but I just cannot see why the Market should become Play, although there is one exception and again I look to my limited knowledge of Apple products for the logic behind this decision.
To the best of my knowledge Apple has an 'Appstore' for apps and they also have the iTunes store for movies, books, etc which you can purchase through separate apps (ie not the Appstore) on your IOS device. Now that is a model which makes sense, the reason I bring this up is because perhaps Google is going to fork what was the Market to an appstore on one hand and a video and music service on the other. This would make sense somewhere down the line, but for the moment they saw it best to promote just 'Play'.
This is all pure speculation and perhaps I couldn't be further from the point but the word Play fundamentally does not cover everything Google offers us in the Android Market and that is why, I am not and probably will not be convinced or happy with the rebranding of the Android Market to Google Play.
