Google Play Store location and apps availability is currently restricted by location. To evade these geo-limitations on the content accessible on the marketplace, users have employed various methods such as VPN services, location spoofers, market enables, or even modded versions of the Play Store.
However, these efforts have typically offered only partial success since the restrictions are monitored on the server-side. For the first time, now, Google is officially enabling users to check apps, books, and movies from outside of their region. The change comes in Europe only, where users are now able to browse Google Play Store content from the entire EEA area.
According to the support page created by Google, users in the EU/EEA countries are now able to view the app content from other countries in the EEA region. Still, it clearly says that they will not be able to download apps, games, or other content that is not accessible from their country.
How to Browse Google Play Store Content That’s Unavailable in Your Country
To browse content available in other countries, you mush launch the Play Store on your device browsers, log out of your Google Profiles and navigate to the bottom of the page where you can find the location section.
The location segment is interactive only if you’re in any of the regions that are part of EU/EEA, but if you’re from any other country, you can still view the store for other countries by editing the ‘gl’ query parameter in the URL.
For example, modify the URL from play.google.com/store?gl=US to play.google.com/store?gl=IT if you are in the United States, and want to browse content on Google Play Store available in Italy. You can also change the location to any country using its two-letter, or the Alpha-2 code in the URL
With no official announcement, it is rather hard to figure out what compels Google to take this decision; it could be a method to pacify users in the European Union. The company has been for a while now under a rigid scanner of the European Union, and even fined for numerous antitrust violations.
