Google's Android Market is crippling small development teams • Hacker News Board

Re: Google's Android Market is crippling small development teams

#41

Post by dpcan » Fri, Jul 15, 2011, 10:03 PM UTC

tensor wrote: post #29

A brief look at the market shows that you have competitors. At the least, OI Shopping list appears to have a lot of downloads as well. Your app does show up in the side bar, and in the top free category. This doesn't sound like a market problem so much as a business model issue. If one of the free apps does what people need, they won't pay for a $5.00 version, even if it's slightly prettier. Hell, a quick look at the…

Off topic?

You completely missed the point.

He's not complaining about his business model, free competitors, or price.

He's venting his frustration with dealing with the Android Market as a developer:

1) Stats seem to keep breaking which seem to affect visibility and rank of his app.

2) Search is a problem. He went from top 10 to 200+ and with no understanding as to why that would happen - and so abruptly.

3) The comments system on Android is a mess. (sorted strangely, randomly?)

4) Google has a serious lack of good support for its developers.

I'd like to add:

5) There needs to be more game categories.

6) We want to be able to reply to comments in order to support our customers.

Re: Google's Android Market is crippling small development teams

#42

Post by Hisoka » Fri, Jul 15, 2011, 10:15 PM UTC

About #2: Isn't this similar to complaining your website isn't ranked in the first page for a keyword in Google? Yes, it's unfair, but if you're basing your entire business on whether Google is giving you exposure, isn't that a flaw in your business? Perhaps you need to find other venues to market your product. Again, I'm just addressing #2. The other points are valid...

Re: Google's Android Market is crippling small development teams

#43

Post by angryasian » Fri, Jul 15, 2011, 10:16 PM UTC

mmmarvin wrote: post #40

angryasian wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My only point is he is blaming google for everyone of his own failures. Rather than blaming google, do something productive about it. A lot of these issues have been known issues and if he did any sort of diligence would be fully aware of these by now. As I pointed out there are plenty of successes on the Google Market, and a lot of developers on doing very well on the Market itself. I welcome his advice for other de…

Your point makes no sense. How is the fact that Google has horrible support his fault? How is the fact that Google isn't updating the stats his fault? How is the fact that Google changed the search algorithm his fault? > "A lot of these issues have been known issues and if he did any sort of diligence would be fully aware of these by now" Oh, so these are known issues now and not "his fault." Becoming "aware" of thes…

no need to be argumentative, but again.. no one is telling you guys to develop for the Android Market, go do apps on the Apple market if all these things are so troublesome for your team. I imagine you can do search and see all these issues in the past, and rather ranting figure out how to work around it, theres actually been a lot of good suggestion in this thread, and I can see you continue to place the blame on Google. So what it is their fault.. they won't fix .. now do something about it. Believe me theres plenty of opportunity on the Android market for good apps.

Second, working on any platform changes occur all the time.. example: Twitter and Facebook developers get screwed all the time, Apple just changed their subscription policy, Google changed their regular search algorithm to take down content farms.. Yes companies change their policies constantly its up to the developers to adjust or quit.

Re: Google's Android Market is crippling small development teams

#44

Post by angryasian » Fri, Jul 15, 2011, 10:24 PM UTC

Gobiner wrote: post #39

angryasian wrote: post #21

Everything you've pointed out are sort of known issues with the google market. Instead of complaining switch to Apple store and see if you do any better. To me this is almost a trolling rant, to ignite the Apple vs Android debate and possibly a marketing ploy. Theres been plenty of posts about successes in the Android market. I actually think you've done quite well on the Android Market. Release your game on the Appl…

You clearly did not read the posting you're commenting on. Nowhere does he say he made a game. Nowhere does he say he's never tried to find his own solutions. Nowhere does he say he hasn't done well. In fact he stated the opposite. He is no longer doing well because Google broke their own shit and don't seem to be in any particular hurry to address it. In case you missed it: Out of Milk went from doing extremely well…

"Google's market problems aren't app developers responsibility to overcome just because they are 'sort of known'."

Ummm yes they are. When apple changes their policy for subscription, you either quit or adjust.. When twitter says no in stream ads to an ad company like ad.ly, they either quit or adjust, when facebook says no to an app that notifies users of changing relationship , you either quite or adjust... etc, etc.

Re: Google's Android Market is crippling small development teams

#45

Post by notyourwork » Fri, Jul 15, 2011, 10:43 PM UTC

tensor wrote: post #29

A brief look at the market shows that you have competitors. At the least, OI Shopping list appears to have a lot of downloads as well. Your app does show up in the side bar, and in the top free category. This doesn't sound like a market problem so much as a business model issue. If one of the free apps does what people need, they won't pay for a $5.00 version, even if it's slightly prettier. Hell, a quick look at the…

I won't pay for an application with Ads period.

Re: Google's Android Market is crippling small development teams

#46

Post by thijser » Fri, Jul 15, 2011, 10:51 PM UTC

There are alternative frontends to the Google market, such as AppBrain, of which I'm one of the co-founders. Exactly due to the problems you describe, we have been able to get a loyal following of both users and developers, for whom we develop better tools to browse through the Android market. Your app is actually listed #10 in our all-time popular shopping charts: http://www.appbrain.com/apps/popular/shopping/

You might also be interested in our developer stats, which also update daily: http://www.appbrain.com/info/developer-dashboard

Any suggestions of what you'd like to see more (if it's available for us to engineer) are welcome!

Re: Google's Android Market is crippling small development teams

#47

Post by martingordon » Fri, Jul 15, 2011, 11:10 PM UTC

erikpukinskis wrote: post #33

Steko wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed on #4. On #2 I've always found it crazy that Android market is an also ran in app search and discoverability -- Apple has not set the bar very high and that's supposed to be Google's forte anyway.

I'm not surprised. Gmail for quite some time couldn't find emails like this when you searched for "bank": Hey Steko, I'm going to the bank. Erik Note the ending period. I know it takes time to sort out internal APIs so that you can re-use code effectively, but you think Google would have at least the basics of search split out into re-useable modules that they could snap into new applications. I guess not though.

It's even worse than that: a search for "doc" does not return results that contain "document".

Gmail is great, but it's search is appalling, and it's even worse that it's coming from Google.

Re: Google's Android Market is crippling small development teams

#48

Post by mbrubeck » Fri, Jul 15, 2011, 11:19 PM UTC

I'm on the Firefox for Android team, and we've had our share of problems with the Market too - mostly outright bugs, like apps appearing on devices they aren't compatible with. While any service has bugs, the Android Market is especially frustrating thanks to the duration of serious problems and complete lack of transparency and communication.

Re: Google's Android Market is crippling small development teams

#49

Post by cageface » Fri, Jul 15, 2011, 11:21 PM UTC

mbrubeck wrote: post #48

I'm on the Firefox for Android team, and we've had our share of problems with the Market too - mostly outright bugs, like apps appearing on devices they aren't compatible with. While any service has bugs, the Android Market is especially frustrating thanks to the duration of serious problems and complete lack of transparency and communication.

I think this is going to become a bigger problem for Google in the long run. I understand why they don't want to pay people to do customer or developer support but sometimes you run into a wall with their automated support systems and there's nothing you can do.

Re: Google's Android Market is crippling small development teams

#50

Post by Hisoka » Fri, Jul 15, 2011, 11:28 PM UTC

I think you need to seriously reconsider your business model. If you're trying to earn revenue thru 1-time app sales, then I'm afraid you're in a losing game if you're content with building just 1 app. When it comes to to-do lists, no matter how great it is, the market is flooded with those, and a lot of them are cheap.

"Google is the guy driving this bus" Maybe it's time to branch out. Explore other money making opportunities.. Maybe, just maybe building a very very good app isn't enough to build a sustainable business. Yes, it makes you proud as a developer to build an app. But we're talking about building a business.

There won't be a lack of developers developing for Android, trust me... when the audience is so huge, it doesn't matter how much friction there is. Huge companies will pay ppl tons of money to deal with the BS. They're 10+ abstraction levels away from the bullshit. They'll just tell the developer team: DEAL with it, develop this in 1 month or you're all FIRED.