Google's Killer App: DIY Mobile Development For Android

Google's release of App Inventor for Android is set to cause the biggest change in the mobile app development industry this year. All of a sudden, app consumers have the chance to become app creators. In fact, the site claims that you need no programming experience to write your apps, instead using a drag and drop approach build on the Open Blocks Java library.  As well as adding in user interface related functionality, blocks exist for communicating to services such as Twitter.

Projects are simply created through your browser, and can be downloaded directly to your phone or to your computer. The intro video shows how easy it can be:


I have yet to use App Inventor, but if it creates an initial project structure that you can edit independently after using App Inventor, it could really lower the learning curve for app development in Android. One thing for sure is that by making things this easy for app developers, Apple really need to start taking notice of what Google are doing. For anyone looking to make a quick buck in the app industry, App Inventor will be their way in.