The new Google Play Store Algorithm aims to reduce app data-sizes
The new Google Play Store Algorithm aims to reduce app sizes

The new Google Play Store Algorithm aims to reduce app sizes

With the increasing number of Android users, Google has decided to pay special attention to Google Play Store. App sizes matter not only for your phone’s onboard storage or RAM but also for your data pack. If you are using Wi-Fi connection, then the app size won’t bother you probably. But if you are using Mobile Data packs, then it becomes costly to download apps of any size. Thus users need to put a restriction on their urge to download more and more apps.

The new Google Play Store Algorithm aims to reduce app sizes

Google has looked into the matter very seriously and to proliferate users’ experience with Google Play Store, it has introduced a new algorithm that aims to reduce app sizes. The algorithm is known as Delta algorithm, bsdiff, which reduces the app update size and saves on the data required for updating them.

He said:

“For approximately 98 percent of app updates from the Play Store, only changes (deltas) to APK files are downloaded and merged with the existing files, reducing the size of updates. We recently rolled out a delta algorithm, bsdiff, that further reduces patches by up to 50 percent or more compared to the previous algorithm. Bsdiff is specifically targeted to produce more efficient deltas of native libraries by taking advantage of the specific ways in which compiled native code changes between versions. To be most effective, native libraries should be stored uncompressed (compression interferes with delta algorithms).”

Anthony Morris, SWE Google Play, says that 98% of Android apps are updated via Google Play Store. Hence, they decided to launch the algorithm that will reduce the app update sizes.
He also added that new algorithm has been applied to APK Expansion Files also which enables user to include additional large files of up to 2GB in size with their apps. With this algorithm implementation, the app sizes reduce by 12% and download size reduces by 65%.

“APK Expansion Files allow you to include additional large files up to 2GB in size (e.g. high resolution graphics or media files) with your app, which is especially popular with games. We have recently expanded our delta and compression algorithms to apply to these APK Expansion Files in addition to APKs, reducing the download size of initial installs by 12 percent, and updates by 65 percent on average.”

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