Google Is Quietly Paying Android Developers for Their App Code to Train AI

Google Goes Shopping for Code

Google has quietly begun offering to buy access to source code from select Android Play Store developers as part of a confidential pilot programme designed to sharpen its AI-powered coding tools, according to a report by 404 Media published on 2 June.

The company's Partnerships team has emailed a handpicked group of developers, inviting them to "join a confidential content offer pilot" that would let them "generate additional revenue from your apps." One email obtained by 404 Media went to a developer whose app has millions of downloads. That developer was granted anonymity because they feared retaliation for revealing details of a programme Google labelled confidential.

What Google Is Asking For

The email asks developers to share "high-quality, real-world codebases," including active production code as well as archived prototypes and side projects. Curiously, the email itself never mentions artificial intelligence. It simply states the code would help "improve Google's developer tools and products." A link inside, however, points to a Google page about "partnerships to improve our AI products," which explains the company wants to "pay for the delivery of non-public content in a range of media formats."

Developers who take part keep full intellectual property rights under a non-exclusive licence, meaning they retain ownership of their code and can still monetise it elsewhere.

Why Google Needs Private Code

The move comes as Google has slipped behind rivals in the AI coding race. Anthropic's Claude Code has helped push the company to a valuation exceeding that of OpenAI, while Microsoft's GitHub Copilot has won wide adoption. The initiative suggests that publicly scraped code is no longer enough to build a competitive coding AI, underlining the broader problem of companies running out of fresh content to train on. Google frames the effort as mission-driven, citing AI's potential to help combat natural disasters and help doctors detect diseases earlier.

A Familiar Playbook

The approach echoes Google's earlier content deals. The company paid Reddit $60 million for access to its platform's data, a deal with mixed results. Unlike most web-scraped material, Android app source code is generally private and not published online, making direct payment a more defensible route to acquiring it.