Google no longer requires new Android devices to ship with Google+, Google Newsstand, Google Play Games and Books apps pre-installed
Your new phone will have less Google bloatware, and that's awesome — You might have heard that the new Samsung Galaxy Note 5 comes without Google+ preinstalled.
Context & Ripple Effects
In 2015 Google quietly loosened one of Android's oldest bundle deals: the requirement that every new device ship with Google+, Google Newsstand, Google Play Games and Books is gone, and Samsung's Galaxy Note 5 is the first visible beneficiary. It reads as Google admitting which of its apps earned their slot — Search and the Play Store stay mandatory, while a struggling social network and two content apps no longer ride along.
The move sits early in a longer arc the corpus traces well: three years later Google would start blocking uncertified Android devices from using its core apps, showing that fewer mandated apps came bundled with tighter control over who gets Google services at all. The preinstall lever has since cut in both directions — Samsung itself decided in 2024 to drop Samsung Messages from Galaxy flagships in favor of Google Messages, while OnePlus went the other way with uninstallable Facebook preload.
First-order effects
- OEMs like Samsung gain immediate flexibility over which Google apps ship on each device — the Galaxy Note 5 launching without Google+ proves the policy change is live on hardware shipping now.
- Users of new Android phones see less duplicate or redundant first-party software out of the box, reducing the storage and home-screen clutter the bloatware label implies.
Second-order effects
- The apps that keep mandatory status — Search and the Play Store — become relatively more valuable placement, since they are now the guaranteed distribution channel while everything else competes on merit.
- Google's simultaneous tightening of certification requirements signals the trade it is making: less forced breadth across all devices, but a firmer gate around the core apps themselves.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, preinstallation stops being a blanket default and becomes a negotiated, app-by-app decision — with Google differentiating through its own software-tuned hardware rather than universal bundling, per the shift away from the Nexus approach toward feature-rich Google-branded phones.
- The precedent points toward OEMs treating default app slots as strategic currency, choosing between Google's suite, their own apps, or third parties like Facebook depending on the deal — a structure where distribution power is explicitly traded rather than assumed.
The trend: Android app distribution is moving from universal mandatory bundling toward selective, negotiated placement, with Google trading breadth of preloads for firmer control over its certified core.