Google Play celebrates its first birthday

Google Play is celebrating its first birthday by offering a week of deals on apps, games, books and music.

“It was just a year ago today that we launched this amazing shop on the interwebs to offer the best in digital content,” reads a company message on the sale’s landing page. “Since the best parties are the ones that send you home with a present, today we celebrate our birthday with a festive goodie bag full of gifts.”

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Deals on Tuesday included a free download for the pilot of “Breaking Bad,” exclusive characters in the game Yumby Smash, a free copy of “Sweet Jane” by The Velvet Underground and a 10 percent discount on reservations booked through the Hotels.com app.

Last March, Google announced that it would be merging its Android market with the Google Music and eBookstore to make a one-stop shop for all of its digital content. The company offered daily deals for a week at its launch, meaning that this may be the start of a tradition.

Google’s been stepping up its efforts in e-commerce, starting with the decision to unify several stores under the Google Play name. But it’s also made more recent steps to the way people can shop using Google. For example, new changes to Google+ posts make it easier for folks to buy something straight from posts their friends share on the network, and will even download apps automatically to Android devices.

There are even rumors that the company is planning to launch its own same-day delivery service to compete with Amazon’s Prime service.

When asked about those rumors Tuesday, Google said that it didn’t have anything to announce, but was continuing to work on its efforts in the retail space.

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