Google has been making multiple changes to the Android Market recently, with the introduction of 6 additional screenshots, new promo graphics, YouTube video links, recent changes, and a whole new and refreshed Market app. It looks like they're not planning on stopping, as yet another, more subtle, update just hit the Android Market publishing interface, also known as the Developer Console.

The new change expands the previously measly 325 character Description and Recent Changes fields to a whopping 4,000 characters for the Description and 500 characters for the Recent Changes. It looks like the number 4,000 wasn't chosen at random - application descriptions on Apple's iOS platform can occupy exactly this many characters.

What does it mean for the future of Android apps?

  1. Developers can now finally explain what their apps do, how they work, and why they're better than the competition without feeling constrained and claustrophobic.
  2. While reading so much more text can get a bit daunting and unusual on a small screen device, tablet and Google TV users will not have as much trouble.
  3. Likewise, users reading descriptions using the upcoming official web version of the Android Market should be able to do it with even less trouble.
  4. One thing that concerns me is now developers might start feeling like they need to fill out all of the allotted space, and we'll be flooded with app descriptions longer than they need to be. Keywords, search engine optimization, spam - suddenly, there is over 11 times more space for it. I hope it doesn't end up being a big issue.

Developers, what do you think? Yay or nay?

Cheers for the tip, Yuku