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Google Is Quietly Buying Code From Play Store Developers to Train AI

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Google has quietly been offering to buy access to code written by developers who have released Android apps on the Play Store in order to help the company train its AI coding tools, 404 Media has learned.

Google has emailed some app developers with an offer to “join a confidential content offer pilot,” that will allow developers to “generate additional revenue from your apps,” according to an email sent to the developer of an Android app that has millions of downloads. Google’s email says that the company wants to buy access to developers’ codebases “to help improve Google’s developer tools and products.” 404 Media granted the developer anonymity because they feared retaliation from the company for sharing info about what was described as a “confidential” program.

“Get paid for sharing the code powering your apps, as well as your archived projects,” the email says. The email says that the developer would retain the intellectual property rights to their code, and that the license would be non-exclusive. “Whether it's the active production codebase powering your current app, or archives of prototypes and side projects no longer in use, that code could have untapped value. This is a unique occasion to help transform tools and products, support the developer ecosystem, and unlock new revenue.”

The email does not mention artificial intelligence, but a link in the email goes to a page about “partnerships to improve our AI products.”

That page explains that, beyond the publicly-available data it and other AI companies have scraped from the internet, the company is seeking to “pay for the delivery of non-public content in a range of media formats.”

“We're learning more about the value of different types of content and how we can continue to create mutually beneficial collaborations in the future,” it says. The page frames the training of AI tools as a mission-driven opportunity for “helping individuals, helping businesses, [and] helping society at large: AI presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to help the world combat and manage natural disasters, help doctors detect diseases earlier.”

Google has fallen behind its competitors in creating AI that generates code. Anthropic has rode the success of Claude Code to a valuation higher than OpenAI, and Microsoft’s Copilot has also been widely adopted. The fact that Google is trying to buy code from developers suggests that the company hasn’t been able to create a good enough coding AI using content that it can scrape from the web, and highlights the fact that companies are likely running out of content to train on. Google famously paid Reddit $60 million for access to its site for AI training, the results of which have been a bit of a mixed bag.

The full email is reproduced below:

“We are reaching out on behalf of the Google Partnerships team with an invitation for a select group of Google Play app developers to join a confidential content offer pilot.

We'd like to offer a unique opportunity to generate additional revenue from your apps. You've put a lot of hard work into building your app and growing its user base. Whether it's the active production codebase powering your current app, or archives of prototypes and side projects no longer in use, that code could have untapped value. This is a unique occasion to help transform tools and products, support the developer ecosystem, and unlock new revenue.

The Opportunity: We are looking for high-quality, real-world codebases to help improve Google's developer tools and products. Here is what this program offers you:

• Additional revenue opportunities: Get paid for sharing the code powering your apps, as well as your archived projects.

• Be an early adopter: As a pilot partner, you will shape how Google partners with the developer community moving forward.

• Drive impact: We've found real- world code to be useful to our product and service development across a wide variety of use cases, from understanding complex logic to developing coding evals and benchmarks. Your production tested code can directly help.

• Retain control: This is non-exclusive. You keep 100% of your IP, your app remains entirely yours, and you retain the right to monetize your data anywhere else.

You can learn more about Google's approach to partnerships in our blog post.”

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Google is trying to buy code from some Android developers as part of a "confidential" program.

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Google is trying to buy code from some Android developers as part of a "confidential" program.