What a bucket of cold water. If only a week ago we were talking about Nova Launcher due to the launch of its next version, the news is now its acquisition of Branch, a well-known analytics firm in the mobile advertising industry. Not only that: Branch also bought Sesame Search & Shortcuts, another powerful Android tool that extends the functionality of Nova Launcher.

Specifically, Branch hired the two main people in charge of Nova Launcher, and they took over part of the management of the project, which will include the company’s analytics among its functions. and three quarters same for Sesame Search & Shortcuts. In both cases, of course, this is an economic move that… will be negative for users? Without exaggeration, everything indicates that it is.

For more data, and never better to say, Branch is a company specialized in extracting information from links provided by applications internally, as well as monetizing them. Branch does not directly serve advertising, but uses user interaction with applications so that developers can improve them and maximize their benefits. It’s not too different from what Google does before showing an ad.

So it didn’t take long for alarm bells to ring among Nova Launcher users who learned about the purchase agreement, because the founder of the project himself admits that things will not be as they were, although he credits Branch with respecting user privacy – it was not expected , that he will say otherwise – that it will be necessary to find out whether it is fulfilled or not, even if many will not give it a chance.

It should be noted that Nova Launcher already included telemetry, although it was possible to disable it, and despite not being an open source development, it was generally quite transparent and consistent with its user community. Responsible maintenance over the years, excellent customization options and adherence to factory Android ways, as well as a lightweight alternative to everything it has to offer, have taken care of the rest to make it the number one in its category.

In fact, many people are satisfied with using the free version of Nova Launcher because it includes a number of customization options, while the one-time payment model ($3.99/Euro) was not enough to ensure the sustainability of the project. That’s why we’re concerned about reports that raise several issues that will be resolved over time and that also affect Sesame Search & Shortcuts.

For example, will paying users be subject to the same tracking by Branch as those using the free version of Nova Launcher? Can telemetry be disabled? This is important even if the app doesn’t change much for the end user, which it doesn’t: it wouldn’t make sense to buy and download the app. In fact, it could use some improvements in terms of features, including improved Sesame integration with Nova Launcher.

What is known for sure is that The branch will store Nova Launcher usage data and will use them to improve the app, but also for other less dispassionate tasks, as is common for a business like yours. It’s more: they’ve already started doing it. With the second beta version of Nova Launcher 8, the launcher debuts a “powerful branch search feature” that they collect in Android Police.

Nova Launcher has been in a bit of a slump lately as it ditched features like gestures introduced by Android 12, but it’s possible that even that wasn’t on top of its current stumble, though like everything in this life, that remains to be seen . Especially when the final version starter go to Google Play. The same goes for Sesame Search & Shortcuts, although it’s not nearly as popular.