GDC starts this week in San Francisco, and Google is looking to burnish its reputation among game developers with a handful of new announcements. The most newsworthy is “Google Play Instant,” which allows game demos to be played on Android devices simply by clicking a link, rather than fully installing the game. It’s also pointing to improvements in its game ad ecosystem and a new way to set up multiplayer game servers.

The goal of Google’s announcements, so far as I can tell, isn’t to beat back the conventional wisdom that iOS is a more powerful platform for gaming than Android. Google, of course, doesn’t agree with that characterization, noting that it offers the “vast majority of top mobile games” along with a slew of tools to…

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