Google Recasts Its 'Android Market' as 'Google Play'

In an attempt to revive its image and draw new customers into its dominion, Google has renamed its online media store from the Android Market to Google Play as a PR move to better compete with online media markets such as Apple and Amazon.

The change went into effect Tuesday and also featured the integration of Google's new bookstore and its recently-debuted music service into the existing platform in order to have all of its offerings in one place.

This move comes in conjunction with other steps Google has taken over the past few months to increase competition across all sectors with names such as Amazon, Apple and Facebook, all of which are spreading out into new markets and have taken hints and territory from Google. Google still has a dominance in the smartphone industry and is poised to remain number one for the foreseeable future but Android itself generates the vast majority of revenue from online advertisements; Google wants to change that so its brand can be more profitable from all angles.

On the heels of its purchase of Motorola Mobility, Google announced that it will also be offering its own line of smartphones and tablets and will also be launching a home entertainment system designed for digital music playback. Google+ was also launched several months back as a way to directly compete with Facebook in the realm of social networking.

Google hopes that it can increase sales in its digital book and music libraries as it has been building these up over the past year-and-a-half. Google finally decided to merge all of these services together in order to have a one-stop shopping experience to offer to its users.

Google is going head-to-head not only with Apple, but with Amazon as well, which has had content purchasing solutions for years and many Amazon customers are also Android users, so it remains to be seen if Google can pull its users into the flock. The company plans on driving new business by offering select pieces of content each week for only 25 cents.