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Google's Android Market is crippling small development teams

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61–70 of 81 posts

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

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Go…

Google changed their regular search algorithm to take down content farms

How is changing the algorithm so low quality apps are always first on the results taking down content farms? Sorry but you don't know what you're talking about....

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

#62
post #4

What does "However, now when searching in our application category, we are result #227." mean? When listing top paid apps in shopping, you are second, and in top free you are on the first page. https://market.android.com/apps/SHOPPING

https://market.android.com/search?q=shopping+list&c=apps... (That is a link to the 12th page of results) Look at the applications that are ranking in front of us. As for how we show up in the category view, it bounces around - alot.

When sorting by Popularity you're #9 at the moment...

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

#63
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Go…

Google changed their regular search algorithm to take down content farms How is changing the algorithm so low quality apps are always first on the results taking down content farms? Sorry but you don't know what you're talking about....

the point is if you develop and depend on a particular platform you are at the mercy of the platform owner. You either make changes and figure out how to get around it, like how about less reliance on google's search and go out and do some other marketing.

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

#64
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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, et…

Seems you don't develop for Android or you'll know google messed up the search algorithm and after a lot of complaints from developers and users who couldn't find apps, google started fixing things...

Well I do, but my business is not reliant on being in the top google search results. I have nothing to brag about, or complain about, as like I've stated, everything he's said has been addressed prior.

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

#65
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You mean to say you won't pay for an ad-free version of an application for which the free version contains ads? That seems rather strange.

I think he meant that developers should provide a paid, ad-free version and/or a free, ad-supported version. An ad-supported version that also costs money (even if it's less money) kinda sucks.

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

#66
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems you don't develop for Android or you'll know google messed up the search algorithm and after a lot of complaints from developers and users who couldn't find apps, google started fixing things...

Well I do, but my business is not reliant on being in the top google search results. I have nothing to brag about, or complain about, as like I've stated, everything he's said has been addressed prior.

Well it seems you're mixing things up. Having a change in policy has nothing to do with bugs on the way the market performs.

One thing is a shift in direction from Google and another is bugs that prevents developers and users from finding apps.

On a other post you talk about marketing as if would make any difference. There's a lot of developers complaining users couldn't find their apps after they were told to look for them on the market. How would a marketing campaign solve this problem?

It's Google's duty to provide developers and users with a reliable market experience.

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

#67
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I do, but my business is not reliant on being in the top google search results. I have nothing to brag about, or complain about, as like I've stated, everything he's said has been addressed prior.

Well it seems you're mixing things up. Having a change in policy has nothing to do with bugs on the way the market performs. One thing is a shift in direction from Google and another is bugs that prevents developers and users from finding apps. On a other post you talk about marketing as if would make any difference. There's a lot of developers complaining users couldn't find their apps after they were told to look f…

I've been trying to be constructive and help you guys, but clearly you just wanted to come here and complain. You guy should just give up, because google won't fix their customer service and won't fix your search rankings and probably in general won't do anything to help you. The next think you should try is making another app on either market and complain about all the deficiencies of either market instead of focusing on figuring out how to get over limitations and being successful

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

#68
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it seems you're mixing things up. Having a change in policy has nothing to do with bugs on the way the market performs. One thing is a shift in direction from Google and another is bugs that prevents developers and users from finding apps. On a other post you talk about marketing as if would make any difference. There's a lot of developers complaining users couldn't find their apps after they were told to look f…

I've been trying to be constructive and help you guys, but clearly you just wanted to come here and complain. You guy should just give up, because google won't fix their customer service and won't fix your search rankings and probably in general won't do anything to help you. The next think you should try is making another app on either market and complain about all the deficiencies of either market instead of focusi…

You guy should just give up, because google won't fix their customer service and won't fix your search rankings and probably in general won't do anything to help you.

I disagree, if it weren't for the complains of developers and users google wouldn't fix the search algorithm like it's doing right now. If we developers didn't complain about issues with the Developer Console things would have been much worse than it is now...

If something isn't right we have the obligation to speak and not just accept it like it's a done deal and we can't do anything about it...

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

#69
post #41
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 com…

as an android developer myself...hes hit every point on!! im experiencing the exact same problems...its crazy!!

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

#70

You trying to get blood from a stone here. Google cares for your problems in only the most indirect of manners, so bitching is not really going to help. It is the reality, you are going to have to deal with it. But the thing is, it is a fairly level playing field. Everyone else in the store is dealing with the same thing, more or less. So work with it, not against it. Look for conversions that come from things other…

The difference is that our Unlocker is #2 in the paid category, but our main application is basically off the charts. Almost all of our sales come from the free application -> Users who use Out of Milk and then decide to go Pro. As for the first part of your reply, trust me, I completely agree. We have done nothing for the past week except tweak our market text, change our name to various things, and so forth to figu…

i can totally understand this...we were getting 1000's of downloads a day down to 100 or so.

for an exact search on our app we were 50 out of 50 with the other results being totally unrelated.

it seems as of yesterday they sort of fixed the problem and were ranking first for our terms. have u seen any improvement?

the last 2 weeks have been stressfull!!

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