Hey, this is the Daily Overpass! My name is Eric and I make apps.
Now today, let's talk about how Google Play Console has removed the total amount of Installs!
Okay, so this is gonna be a really quick video today. Over the past couple of days,
some of you, guys, have been pointing out that Google Play has removed the total
number of installs from the Google Play Developer Console. This was mentioned two
days ago by DataPlusCode and it was mentioned yesterday by Jek Run saying,
"Has anybody noticed that the total number of installs has been removed?"
And to be honest with you, I hadn't noticed it but I did look at it
afterwards .To be honest with you, I've kind of devastated. So, for
those of you, guys, who don't know, have a look at my screen here, what we're
talking about. Here's my Google Play Developer Console. Hey, let me just say
beforehand that after GDPR, I removed a lot of my apps and then I just recently
put some of them back. Some of them are still not published on. They're in an
unpublished state, so some of these numbers are really low especially the
the paid ones. So, you see some of these here, these numbers it used to say
slash the total number of installs. Like for Ear Agent, it says eighty-seven
thousand, one hundred forty two. It used to say slash five-million, eight hundred
thousand or something like that. So it always made me feel good to
look at it, but I guess we're gonna be all zen about it. It doesn't really make
any difference how many has had in the past. Like four years ago, I suppose all
we need to be concerned about is now, but it's still kind of - I just like seeing it.
It may give me a warm fuzzy feeling inside when I looked at it. So that's
gone. Some of the people on the comments here, Jek Run, you guys
were talking about and DataPlusCode, you talk about how it's probably
because Google's gonna start relying more on retention, rather than on total
number of downloads which I guess, you can understand, but you still can't get
to that data. And it's really weird. I was looking at it saying, "Can I really find
this out anymore?" So, if you go into the application, here I've gone into Ear
Agent, I've gone over statistics, so for me, I was like looking at it. See if I
could still get there. If you go down to total number of total installs and
device, it's really weird because I think it's kind of buggy. It was - it kept doing
this and then I go down to lifetime and then I it will show me the total number
for the entire thing. Oh, this is it installs on acive- you just configure this
report, installs on active device here we go and you see six point, six
point zero, three million per active device, so you still can't go there and
see the total on there. But it's really like and I don't know it
just sort of bothers me. It's no longer there. I think if Google does start going
into retention more, which would make more sense. I mean, if I take my own
personal interests out of the equation, it makes more sense for new
developers coming in. Because they can't keep up with something like, you know, I
started in 2012, other people started earlier and we have this big, you
know, a bunch of apps or total downloads. We still have a lot of reviews, so it may
be very difficult to catch up with the reviews. But it's still slightly -
you can see my - over the entire lifetime of this application - you can see
here I had this at one point, I had like this first month when it was like in the
featured and everything, it was really doing well. Then it just dropped. It
was - it was low for a while. I talk about a lot when we finally went and did the
localization to the top languages that's like here when we just see it
really start to take off. Over here, you can see it like where it
just drops off where it was removed from the App Store for several days, but
anyway. So, but that's all, really, really what I wanted to point out is for those
you, guys, who haven't noticed cuz I hadn't noticed cuz I guess I haven't
been into the Google Play Store for last couple days. I used to check it every day.
I don't know what's - I don't know what's going wrong with me. I missed
that one. It was apparently a couple of days ago that they did that and I
guess it's just the changes to the App Store. I mean, they say at the top of the
App Store now, Google Play Developer console is gonna go through some changes
over the next couple of months and I guess this might be the first of it, and
think it makes a lot of sense for new developers coming in.
It's just - it's like those old - the total number of downloads to me. It
was nothing more than a trophy. It was something for me to say, "Yeah, you know
what, lots of people have had this app over time, but at least, you
can still get to that data for the - for the trophy that it is. For the
bragging rights. But anyway, let me know what you, guys, think. I mean, does it
really affect you at all? Do you think it's a good thing? Do you think it's a
bad thing. Anyway, that's it for today. I will talk to you, guys, again tomorrow.