Article: The Trouble with Google's Android Market

[Makani]

I'm written a new blog post detailing 10 reasons why Google's Marketplace sucks from a developers perspective:

The Trouble with Google's Android Market

 

[AndroidSPCS]

I agree with your points. Hopefully Google will listen to developer feedback and improve things.

I've used Google checkout to buy overseas apps - Swift Keyboard being one. So your friend's paranoia about not wanting to pay via Google checkout is pretty sad. If he trusts Google with his most sensitive info - contacts, calendar, email, then what the hell is he thinking he can't trust Google, one of the most cash rich companies, with his lousy credit card info?

 

[IOWA]

Getting a 500 error.

 

[Makani]

Fixed it. Please try now.

 

[marefin]

Google definitely needs to a lot better job at managing the app market. I don't care if they are less apps, I care more about the quality of the apps. Not having a formal approval process seems to render the later useless. And even if Google was not going to change the approval process, they at least need to figure out a way to organize the app market better and improve the search options. I mean for a SEARCH engine, Google doesn't seem to have implemented a very well search option for the app market.

 

[Makani]

I mean for a SEARCH engine, Google doesn't seem to have implemented a very well search option for the app market.

Ha ha, so preplexing isn't it?!

 

[Martimus]

One criticism of the Android Market not on your list is the continued lack of PayPal support. They've been promising it for a while but have yet to implement it. I, for one, have no interest in giving Google my credit card information. It's bad enough giving it to PayPal.

 

[Medion]

I would honestly be fine even if Google adopted a stringent app approval process, like Apple. Why? Because for apps that don't meet approval, you can still side-load, unlike Apple.

Face it, the Android Marketplace numbers are grossly inflated by "apps" that amount to nothing more than being a wallpaper or ringtone.

 

[thrawn86]

a few thoughts.

1. ? the game shows up properly for me in USD. definitely not a problem on verizon.

2. How are we supposed to trust *any* app is good without free/trial versions? anything I'm paying a cent for warrants at least an appbrain lookup, and probably a few youtube demo videos. I've also seen a few demographics that put iOS game usage as much, much higher than on android.

3.what kind of crap do you propose we filter off the market? fart apps (an apple exec has fart apps published) Who would review the games? What score merits disapproval?

5. isn't this what places like xda are for? But yeah, it seems like there should be somewhere that you can talk to for higher level support.

9. fair point, but luckily things like appbrain exist. I can't tell you the last time I've actually done anything in the real android market, aside from click 'install' from appbrain qr links.

10. also fair, theres an awful lot of spam. isn't this a problem with the app store as well?

 

[Martimus]

I would honestly be fine even if Google adopted a stringent app approval process, like Apple. Why? Because for apps that don't meet approval, you can still side-load, unlike Apple.

Face it, the Android Marketplace numbers are grossly inflated by "apps" that amount to nothing more than being a wallpaper or ringtone.

The challenge, I suspect, is that Google probably doesn't want to commit the resources that would be required to make this happen. They'd have to define a set of minimum standards for inclusion in the market, create review standards and criteria, and most probably argue with every developer whose software doesn't qualify for inclusion in the market.

Personally I also think it's a good idea... but I suspect the powers that be at Google have enough headaches at the moment...

 

[AndroidSPCS]

...Face it, the Android Marketplace numbers are grossly inflated by "apps" that amount to nothing more than being a wallpaper or ringtone.

While true, this is no different from the Apple app store. I find most of the apps on the iTunes app store to be useless crap. Farting apps? How many do you want on the iPhone?

 

[Makani]

Actually Apple has now got a policy against fart apps saying they have enough of them. Compared to Android, Apple still has far fewer crap apps. Also, knowing that Apple has gone through each app gives the consumer more confidence that the app they are downloading is not going to hack them. On Android, trojans and other fake apps are easy to distribute. I agree with Martimus in all this, that really Google isn't too interested to deal with all of this.