Google bought a company that develops ways for you to use apps without installing them

Streaming movies. Streaming Music. Heck, even streaming games is a thing now. So why can’t we stream apps? That’s a very interesting question indeed, and it’s one Google has reportedly been thinking about for a while.

Google is said to have quietly bought Agawi late last year, a company that specializes in technology that allows you to stream apps with extremely low latency. “Why stream an app when I can just download it and use it natively,” you may ask.

One use case being offered up is the ability to trial apps instantly and risk-free before buying or downloading them for long term use. This may seem like a trivial use case for most typical apps that come in at just a few megabytes per download, but there are some pretty large apps out there that could benefit from this.

We also imagine the technology could be used as a feature for entry level devices that might not have a ton of internal storage to download many apps. Streaming those apps would allow them to be able to use whatever they want without having to worry about a lack of persistent storage. Agawi also says the technology could be used for streaming games on mobile.

Unfortunately we’re a bit far off from anything we’re slated to see, with Agawi apparently confirming that it’d take them at least a year to implement their wares in whichever ways Google is looking to use it. We’ll wait, though, because we’re sure it’ll be well worth it.

[via The Information]

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