CASE STUDY·TOC
Cover·CASE-PLAY-SUBSCRIPTIONS

Play Subscriptions

Google

Overview

Shipped enhancements to subscription lifecycle flows and developer tooling for Google Play Billing to improve resiliency and analytics.

Context

Google Play Billing powers subscription services for millions of Android apps. The team focuses on making subscription management reliable, transparent, and easy for developers.

Role: Software Engineering Intern — Android Commerce

Constraints & Decisions

Constraints

Working with production systems handling millions of transactions. Changes must maintain high availability and data consistency while improving developer experience.

Key Decisions

Implemented incremental improvements to subscription state management and added analytics hooks for better developer insights. Used feature flags for gradual rollout.

System

Enhanced subscription lifecycle handling, improved error recovery, and added developer-facing analytics APIs for subscription health monitoring.

Outcome

Improved subscription reliability metrics and provided developers with better tools to understand and optimize their subscription flows.

Learnings

Gained experience with payment systems, learned about subscription business models, and understood the importance of developer tooling in platform success.