Google Play Services 5.0 Release: What's Inside

Now that Google Play services 5.0 has rolled out to devices we’ll take a peek at what it means for app developers. This release introduces Android wearable services APIs, Dynamic Security Provider and App Indexing and provides updates to the Google Play game services, Cast, Drive, Wallet, Analytics, and Mobile Ads.

Google Play services 5.0 introduces a set of APIs that make it easier to communicate with apps running on Android wearables. The APIs provide an automatically synchronized, persistent data store and a low-latency messaging interface that provides the ability to sync data, exchange control messages, and transfer assets.

Makes available an API that apps can use to install a dynamic security provider. It includes a replacement for the platform's secure networking APIs, which can be updated frequently for rapid delivery of security patches. The current version includes fixes for recent issues identified in OpenSSL.

Quests are a new set of APIs to run time-based goals for players, and reward them without needing to update the game. To do this, developers can send game activity data to the Quests service whenever a player successfully completes an action. This tells Quests what’s going on in the game, and allows that game activity to result in the creation of an unlimited number of new Quests.

Saved games lets developers store a player's game progress to the cloud for use across many screens using a new saved game snapshot API. Along with game progress, developers can store a cover image, description and time-played. Adding cover images and descriptions provides additional context on the player’s progress and helps drive re-engagement through the Play Games app.

The App Indexing API provides a way to notify Google about deep links in native mobile applications and drive additional user engagement. Integrating with the App Indexing API allows the Google Search app to serve up an app’s history to users as instant Search suggestions, providing fast access to inner pages in an app. The deep links reported using the App Indexing API are also used by Google to index an app’s content and surface them as deep links to Google search result.

The Google Cast SDK now includes media tracks that introduce closed caption support for Chromecast.

The Google Drive API adds the ability to sort query results, create folders offline, and select any mime type in the file picker by default.

Wallet objects from Google take physical objects (like loyalty cards, offers) from a wallet and store them in the cloud. In this release, Wallet adds "Save to Wallet" button support for offers. When a user clicks "Save to Wallet" the offer gets saved and shows up in the user's Google Wallet app. Geo-fenced in-store notifications prompt the user to show and scan digital cards at point-of-sale, driving higher redemption. This also frees the user from having to carry around offers and loyalty cards.

Users can also now use their Google Wallet Balance to pay for Instant Buy transactions by providing split tender support. With split tender, if a Wallet Balance is not sufficient, the payment is split between the Wallet Balance and a credit/debit card in Google Wallet.

Enhanced Ecommerce adds the ability to measure product impressions, product clicks, viewing product details, adding a product to a shopping cart, initiating the checkout process, internal promotions, transactions, and refunds. This helps developers gain deeper insights into the performance of their business, including how far users progress through the shopping funnel and where they are abandoning in the purchase process. Enhanced Ecommerce also provides the ability to analyze the effectiveness of marketing and merchandising efforts, including the impact of internal promotions, coupons, and affiliate marketing programs.

Google has now added a default implementation for consumable purchases using the Google Play In-app Billing service.

More information is available at the link below.