Credit: Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
It’s been 15 years since Google introduced the Android Market (now Google Play Store) on the T-Mobile G1 or HTC Dream. And 15 years since the mobile app ecosystem’s landscape was changed forever and grew from a few billion dollars to more than a six-trillion-dollar economy.
Few apps or services have had as much of an impact on our modern lives as the Android Market. Only the Apple App Store, which launched a couple of months earlier in 2008, can lay claim to a similar impact. So join me as I reminisce about what it was like before app stores were a “thing” on our phones and delve into how Google and Apple convinced the entire digital world of the “there’s an app for that” mantra.