That's poor, I'm sorry.
The quota request was denied, but we (Google) failed to communicate the decision properly / at all. Sorry about that.
“Please let me know if I should stop developing apps for Google Products”
141–150 of 197 posts
Re: “Please let me know if I should stop developing apps for Google Products”
#142We developed a product specifically for Google Drive using their JavaScript client. We were hoping to make it commercial but had to abandon those plans due to 3 bugs that have been present since around the beginning of 2013. Also, there's no open bug tracker. The developer relations people are very friendly, but when I ask where to report bugs I'm told "just tell me". So every 2 months I've reported the same 3 bugs i…
Can you link the bugs/stackoverflow you are having trouble with, please? We should be doing a better job of fixing them - especially if they are gating you from releasing a serious app. That is bad, sorry.
Re: “Please let me know if I should stop developing apps for Google Products”
#143I don't understand why all these users who love so much that app can't just pay $3-$5 monthly to help this app survive?
It's not clear how a willingness for the end-users to pay $3-5 monthly would help the situation given that he can't use $$ to increase his quota-controlled access to the api.
Re: “Please let me know if I should stop developing apps for Google Products”
#144You're probably better off creating a product for a more professionally managed marketplace - like the Office365 marketplace - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fp179924.aspx . This lets you develop apps on Exchange (similar to your tasks app). See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj220499(EXCHG.80).a... and http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/office/Exchange-2013-Create-t... Office365 customers (all of them…
> (I'm not shilling for Microsoft. I have no financial interests here). Paid or unpaid, this post is pretty much shilling.
Kinda funny. When someone comes on here and writes about how great some Google service is, it's an interesting post. Now someone writes about good experiences with a Microsoft service, and that's shilling.
Re: “Please let me know if I should stop developing apps for Google Products”
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
The instability/unreliability of the Drive API can't be understated. I used to have almost my entire app rely heavily on gdocs, but the api is far too shaky. Even wrapping every API call in a try_5_times function (which would often take 2-3 requests before getting a non-500), server errors would get through. Critical components of the API would go down for hours -- once, the entire day -- sometimes without even a bli…
I think you meant "can't be over stated" not "under stated" there.
Hah, yes. Thanks.
Re: “Please let me know if I should stop developing apps for Google Products”
#146If you build something on someone else's API, you can get fucked in a million ways. They might shut down the API (Google Reader), take away the functionality you relied on (Google Calendar), limit it (Twitter) or deprecate the version you're using, forcing you to do development work to keep working at the worst possible time for you (IOS). They might also decide that your product is very good and build a version of i…
> They might also decide that your product is very good and build a version of it themselves, using functions not available to you via the public API so that you cannot compete with it (Apple). Can you give an example of that?
Camera apps that wanted to use volume buttons for taking a picture. Apple banned them... and then released it themselves.
I believe at some point iBooks could go to a darker brightness setting than other apps were allowed to.
Those are the two that jump to my mind.
Re: “Please let me know if I should stop developing apps for Google Products”
#147Re: “Please let me know if I should stop developing apps for Google Products”
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google is on track to see a $14 bil pre-tax profit for 2013. If they spent 15% of that ($2.1 bil) on support, with say a mix of 2/3 low pay ($100k/yr cost) and 1/3 high pay ($150k/yr cost) people... they could hire 18,000 additional support staff and still show a great profit. That works out to 30 mil support hours assuming 1680 hrs/yr (35 hrs * 48 weeks) actually spent on support. They could probably hire twice that…
Your numbers don't quite work - Google has to pay taxes, benefits, office space, training, perks, equipment, recruitment costs, and so on. And then, have you tried to hire 18,000 people? Finally, Google's reported head count is around 40K - you are suggesting adding about 50% just for support. That's a tough sell to your investors. Where would all these people go. Mountain View is basically Google these days - the of…
Not to mention the inflexibility associated with having that many people around. Google's lack of support may come with the territory at present.
If someone figures out how to automate support better, they're going to get paid.
At the outset of Google's growth, their products and APIs seemed timeless; with the passage of a little time, that's changed.
Re: “Please let me know if I should stop developing apps for Google Products”
#149If you build something on someone else's API, you can get fucked in a million ways. They might shut down the API (Google Reader), take away the functionality you relied on (Google Calendar), limit it (Twitter) or deprecate the version you're using, forcing you to do development work to keep working at the worst possible time for you (IOS). They might also decide that your product is very good and build a version of i…
I'm on board with most of your examples, but in my mind the iOS example is different from the rest. iOS is an operating system designed to run native apps with a default UI. Apps can build on top of the SDK and optionally build it using the default UI. I've had apps that did these and they've been fairly stable throughout the years. It's even functional for iOS 7 if I wanted to leave it alone. I also have apps that have its custom UI that won't be changing at all for iOS 7. Of course, the same way that a developer might want to update a Win 95 app for Win 7, he or she might want to update apps when new iOS versions come out.
Is the criticism due to the annual version update? Or is it because there are API changes every new version? If it's the latter, wouldn't updates be expected, and in fact desired? It may just be me, but I've had good experiences when it comes to API stability with iOS. I've been unable to keep up with the newer features (I'm indie and only work on apps jn my spare time) but the new features rarely get in the way of my app being able to run with the calls they are already making.
I'm aware of the UDID deprecation from before, but devs were given plenty of time to transition from it. Actually, I was surprised how much time they gave.
Re: “Please let me know if I should stop developing apps for Google Products”
#150If you build something on someone else's API, you can get fucked in a million ways. They might shut down the API (Google Reader), take away the functionality you relied on (Google Calendar), limit it (Twitter) or deprecate the version you're using, forcing you to do development work to keep working at the worst possible time for you (IOS). They might also decide that your product is very good and build a version of i…
> They might also decide that your product is very good and build a version of it themselves, using functions not available to you via the public API so that you cannot compete with it (Apple). Can you give an example of that?
iOS 7 will have a built in flashlight feature.