Google Tests Third-Party App Store Support in Play Store Following Epic Games Antitrust Ruling
Google is currently testing several new features in the Play Store, including an experimental section called Play Labs, support for third-party app stores, and an expanded search bar. These changes have been identified in a recent version of the service, although most of the new capabilities remain inaccessible to regular users at this time.
The most significant development is the planned ability to install alternative app marketplaces directly from Google Play. The company had previously confirmed work on this functionality, which stems from the ongoing antitrust proceedings involving Google and Epic Games. After the settlement between the two companies was withdrawn, the 2024 court ruling once again became active, requiring greater openness to competing stores.
The new menu option for third-party stores was discovered only after direct intervention in the application code. It appears in an additional menu but currently returns an error when users attempt to open an alternative marketplace. In the same area, researchers also found Play Labs, an experimental section where users will likely be able to test upcoming store features before they reach general availability. Google already uses similar experimental sections in other products, including its main search engine.
While Play Labs and the third-party store option are not yet functional, the updated search interface is already working. Google is preparing a two-line search panel designed to accommodate longer natural-language queries, accompanied by an Ask Store prompt. Instead of entering a short app name, users will be encouraged to describe their needs in detail, after which the store will attempt to suggest suitable applications.
These experiments follow recent Play Store improvements such as enhanced search capabilities and the option to test widgets during app installation. Broader rollout of the new search panel is expected in the coming weeks. However, APK analysis only reveals features currently under development, and Google retains the option to modify, postpone, or abandon any of them before release.
The direction of these changes is notable: the main Android app store is preparing to distribute competing marketplaces to users, effectively turning competition itself into a feature that can be installed through Google Play.
Related articles
OpenAI Releases GPT-6.1 Terra: Cost-Effective Model Focused on Computer Control, Image Analysis and Practical Automation
OpenAI has launched GPT-6.1 Terra, a new model positioned between its high-end GPT-6 Astra and more affordable options in the GPT-6 family. The model emphasizes real-world computer interaction, visual understanding of documents and interfaces, and reduced error rates rather than raw reasoning benchmarks. It supports a 1.05 million token context window, image inputs, and tool use through the Responses API while cutting input token prices by half compared with its predecessor. Published benchmarks show substantial gains on Terminal-Bench 4.0, OSWorld 2.1 and Agents' Last Exam, with error rates dropping sharply at both low and maximum reasoning levels. OpenAI stresses that the model still requires human oversight for high-stakes actions and does not directly process audio or video. The release targets developers and enterprises seeking reliable automation of repetitive multi-step tasks at lower cost than flagship models.
Yandex Black October: How Architectural Flaws and Capacity Mismanagement Turned Data Center Losses Into a 11-Day Fintech Coma
In October 2026 three Yandex data centers in Central Russia were physically destroyed within days, triggering the collapse of Yandex Cloud and multiple core services. Between the first and third site failures engineers had 74 hours to restore quorum and rebalance workloads yet failed to do so because Control Plane components remained tied to the lost zone and spare capacity had been eliminated to cut costs. Core banking and BNPL systems entered Read-Only mode after losing quorum, forcing a complete stop-the-world reconciliation that lasted until 22 October. Backups stored inside the same regional S3 buckets proved unusable, resulting in a seven-day RPO and primary-key collisions after restoration. The incident exposed that Metro-Cluster designs had been incorrectly treated as full Disaster Recovery and that aggressive AP microservice patterns created logical split-brain conditions outside the database layer.
Astra Group Releases Low-Code Astra AI Platform for Building Corporate AI Agents in Closed Environments
Astra Group has launched the Astra AI Platform, a low-code constructor designed for creating corporate AI applications that operate entirely within closed circuits without reliance on foreign clouds. The platform targets small and medium businesses as well as large corporations, enabling rapid deployment of AI secretaries, technical support assistants, and other agents in days rather than months. It forms part of the broader Astra AI ecosystem and includes two main constructors: one for machine learning model training and deployment, and another for LLM-based language assistants, document search, and process automation. Users can assemble scenarios from visual blocks, debug them in real time, or extend functionality with custom Python code when needed. The solution supports RAG-based knowledge bases, integration with external tools such as CRM and ERP systems, and the coordination of multiple agents for distributed task handling. One demonstrated use case involves processing ten pages of engineering drawings and specifications in five minutes to prepare data for downstream systems. The product is already listed in the Russian domestic software registry and available to customers.
Multi-Tenancy Isolation in VictoriaMetrics, VictoriaLogs and Grafana: Building Client Separation in a Shared Stack
Voltir runs a single shared monitoring stack consisting of VictoriaMetrics, VictoriaLogs, Grafana and vmalert for all customers instead of deploying separate instances per tenant. Isolation relies on numeric account IDs enforced at every layer: nginx validates tokens against the platform API before proxying writes, Grafana data sources hard-code tenant accounts, and vmalert rules receive automatic account filters. The team discovered that a single malformed rule or template could break alerting for every tenant because vmalert loads the entire rules directory at once. They also found that Grafana automatically created personal organizations granting Org Admin rights, accumulating hundreds of orphaned organizations and users that consumed disk space and resources. A dedicated cleanup module plus hourly reconciliation now removes rules, organizations, series and users when a tenant is deleted, while isolation tests verify both data and API objects across tenants.