Paper Planes app from Google I/O launches on Play Store

We first saw Paper Planes at Google I/O earlier this year, and Google and Active Theory have partnered up to bring it to the Play Store in celebration of International Peace Day.

The app is pretty simple: it essentially lets you stamp a piece of paper, fold it into a paper plane, and send it into a virtual world, which can be caught by someone else around the globe. You can also catch a random paper plane by shaking your phone, and it’ll show you which countries it’s been through.

It’s a nifty app, but ultimately, it doesn’t really serve any other purpose than being a celebratory gesture from Google and Active Theory. After all, it is an Android Experiment: it’s not supposed to be a practical app, necessarily, but rather something that brings people together through creativity as Google explains:

We’re working to document creative experiments like these and make them open source so anyone can see how they are made, or get inspired to create their own. Our hope is to encourage more developers to challenge how we interact with the devices we use every day.

I enjoyed the throwing gesture by which the app lets you send your paper plane, but as the app warns, be careful not to let your phone go. One thing that I noticed, however, is that you get two app icons once you install it, and that’s something that other users have reported as well.

If you visit the official website, you can even see your plane being launched. You can click the download button below to try Paper Planes. Remember, the main goal of the app is to showcase Android creativity, and although it has no social or practical functions, its application could mean interesting apps are on their way!