Today, Google announced a way to give users a better way of working with applications within the Android Market, the idea of ‘signed’ applications is to apparently give protection to developers, in a nutshell, copyright protection or licensing mechanisms for developers to utilize to prevent APK distribution over the web.

While the move sounds good and all, to some this is a bad move, and could possibly lead to further issued down the road, not to mention the fact that the Android platform is [technically] open.

From the blog, Google notes,

“This simple and free service provides a secure mechanism to manage access to all Android Market paid applications targeting Android 1.5 or higher. At run time, with the inclusion of a set of libraries provided by us, your application can query the Android Market licensing server to determine the license status of your users. It returns information on whether your users are authorized to use the app based on stored sales records.”

What are your thoughts? Is this the end of the “open” platform for Google, or is this a reasonable measure to help developers protect their intellectual property?

Share with us in the comments.

via Android Developers