TL;DR
Starting in August 2021, Google will require all new Android APKs to land on the Play Store as App Bundles instead.
This will invariably result in smaller file sizes and other boons for the end-user.
However, it will also require app developers to push out APK versions of their apps to other non-Play Store channels, as they won’t support App Bundles.
For as long as Android has been around, Android apps have been launched in the APK format (which stands for Android Package). However, in 2018, Google introduced a new format called Android App Bundles, or AAB (with the filename .aab). Google touted that this new format would result in smaller app file sizes and easier ways to control various aspects of apps. Of the millions of apps on the Google Play Store, thousands of them already use the AAB system.
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