Recommending applications for mobile devices based on installation histories

• US 8,819,025 B2
• Filed: 06/22/2012
• Issued: 08/26/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 05/09/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.)
• Inventors: De Bona, Fabio, Mehta, Bhaskar
• Primary Examiner(s): SYED, FARHAN M
• Application Number:
  US13/530,559
• Publication Number:
  US 20120290584A1
• Time in Patent Office: 795 Days
• US Class Current: 707/741
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/60 Software deployment

Abstract

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for receiving installation data, the installation data corresponding to one or more applications that can be installed and executed on mobile computing devices, receiving metadata corresponding to each of the one or more applications, for each application: generating a time series based on a number of installs, processing the time series and the metadata, calculating a score, determining that the score is greater than or equal to a threshold score, and in response to the determining, adding the respective application to an index of trending applications, storing the index of trending applications in computer-readable memory, retrieving the index of trending applications, and transmitting indications of one or more applications for display based upon the index of trending applications.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

one or more computers; and

a computer-readable storage device coupled to the one or more computers having instructions stored thereon which, when executed by the one or more computers, cause the one or more computers to perform operations comprising;

receiving installation data, the installation data corresponding to one or more applications that can be installed and executed on mobile computing devices, the installation data including a number of installation of each of the one or more applications;

receiving metadata corresponding to each of the one or more applications;

for each application;

generating a time series based on the number of installations;

processing the time series and the metadata to identify a value representing an acceleration of installations of the application over a time period of the time series;

calculating a score based on the value, wherein for each application, the score is based on a fractional installation volume of the application;

comparing the score to a threshold score; and

adding the respective application to an index of trending applications based on the score being greater than or equal to the threshold score.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein each time series comprises the number of installations per time period for a predetermined number of time periods.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the time period is one day and the predetermined number of time periods totals one week.

4. The system of claim 2, wherein processing the time series comprises applying decay factors to modify impacts of time periods in calculating the score.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the score is based on a second-order derivative of the time series.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the fraction installation volume is determined based on a total number of installations of all application.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise filtering applications from inclusion in the index of trending applications based on the metadata.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein the filtering is executed prior to generating, processing and calculating for each application.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise filtering applications from inclusion in the index of trending applications based on the number of installations.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein a particular application of the applications is filtered when an associated number of installations is less than a threshold number of installations.

11. The system of claim 9, wherein the filtering is executed prior to generating, processing and calculating for each application.

12. The system of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise filtering one or more applications from inclusion in the index of trending applications based on the values representing the accelerations of the one or more applications over a predetermined time period.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein a particular application of the one or more applications is filtered when a consecutive number of negative values representing the acceleration within the predetermined time period is greater than a threshold number of negative values representing the acceleration.

14. The system of claim 12, wherein a particular application of the one or more applications is filtered when one or more negative values representing the acceleration occur within a specified sub-period of the predetermined time period.

15. The system of claim 1, wherein the operations are periodically executed to periodically update the index of trending applications.

16. The system of claim 1, wherein the installation data further comprises a number of uninstallations and a number of updates for each application.

17. A computer storage medium encoded with a computer program, the program comprising instructions that when executed by one or more computers cause the one or more computers to perform operations comprising:

receiving installation data, the installation data corresponding to one or more applications that can be installed and executed on mobile computing devices;

receiving metadata corresponding to each of the one or more applications;

for each application;

generating a time series based on the number of installations;

processing the time series and the metadata to identify a value representing an acceleration of installations of the application over a time period of the time series;

calculating a score based on the value, wherein for each application, the score is based on a fractional installation volume of the application;

comparing the score to a threshold score; and

adding the respective application to an index of trending applications based on the score being greater than or equal to the threshold score.

18. A computer-implemented method comprising:

receiving installation data, the installation data corresponding to one or more applications that can be installed and executed on mobile computing devices;

receiving metadata corresponding to each of the one or more applications;

for each application;

generating a time series based on the number of installations;

processing the time series and the metadata to identify a value representing an acceleration of installations of the application over a time period of the time series;

calculating a score based on the value, wherein for each application, the score is based on a fractional installation volume of the application;

comparing the score to a threshold score; and

adding the respective application to an index of trending applications based on the score being greater than or equal to the threshold score.

19. The computer-implemented method of claim 18, wherein each time series comprises the number of installations per time period for a predetermined number of time periods.