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Google Play Store Ratings Drop

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Re: Google Play Store Ratings Drop

#41

Post by V-2 »

nacs wrote: post #17
dredmorbius wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's rapidly in the process of un-nailing it. Having used DDG as my primary search engine since June 2013, I prefer its presentation. I find Google's dynamic "oh, we're going to clear the page while you're refining your search terms to focus on higher relevance based on the results you're looking at now while you're typing that up" particularly egregious. Google's win right now is in specific categories and sub-class…

Don't forget the best new feature: Google+ integration right in your search results! Now you can see all the Google+ post blurbs right at the top of your results even if they aren't good ones! Also, Google+ notifications about random people adding you? That's right, it's right at the top of every Google search page with a nice red highlight so you don't miss it!

That's a simple one, I just don't use Google+. I toyed with it for a while and deleted my account. Yes they nag me about joining Google+, but this is it. My search results are clean and no red square.

Re: Google Play Store Ratings Drop

#43

Post by tomp »

V-2 wrote: post #28
banachtarski wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google design sucks. They've never in the history of the company made a solid effort to nail UI and it's not part of their culture at all. Every one of their products is marred by UI inefficiencies, clutter, or inconsistency.

I wouldn't say so. With Chrome they practically redesigned web browsers. "Clutter" is what they were before.

Chrome, as Google Search (google.com main page), was very well-designed at the start. From there, it only went downhill, as soon as the marketing people interfered.

Re: Google Play Store Ratings Drop

#44

Post by dredmorbius »

spb wrote: post #24
dredmorbius wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the worst sins of UI is "unification". It's helpful to have meaningfully consistent metaphors and themes across applications. For the UNIX / Linux commandline, that's processes and pipes, BSD and GNU argument flags, and the like. There are various competing keyboard accelerator schemes: emacs, vi, Wordperfect keyboard templates, DOS, Windows 3.x, Windows 9x/NT, Apple's Mac hotkeys, GNOME and KDE.... There are…

You can actually hit CTRL+C when a Windows dialog is focused to copy the text of the window.

I haven't made any real use of Windows in over a decade. I know that functionality didn't exist as of WinXP and probably later. When was it added / where do you see it?

Re: Google Play Store Ratings Drop

#45

Post by Kudos »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #27
abcd_f wrote: post #16

So here's the UI in question - http://blog.testfairy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/quick_s... - and apparently the large stars represent not a suggestion rating, but an app rating. So dismissing suggestion as a bad one you'd basically give a 1 star rating to an app. Or so the devs claim. Coming from the iOS side, I just don't get it. How can you rate an app that you haven't downloaded? And then if you did download i…

Also, if the dip affects everyone equally, then its more like a rescaling (presumably on average these reviews are lower than before, I'd guess because no-one bothers to review a 2-3 star item, only if they love it or really hate it)

Not until the users view of those ratings rescale too.

Re: Google Play Store Ratings Drop

#46

Post by hrjet »

banachtarski wrote: post #8
dredmorbius wrote: post #7

That's a nice bit of legwork to show that poor UI design translates directly into erroneous user interactions. In conjunction with other recent Google stories ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7107325 ) it's both cautionary, largely exculpatory of users (Google caused this problem), and speaks more than slightly to Google's hubris (I've seen plenty of poor UI from them over the past several years). An interestin…

Google design sucks. They've never in the history of the company made a solid effort to nail UI and it's not part of their culture at all. Every one of their products is marred by UI inefficiencies, clutter, or inconsistency.

I would say Google's design sucks today.

Their websites were much more usable before the UI makeover. I guess the focus of the new UI is to make it appear shiny and vibrant and spacious at first glance. But it has come at the expense of usability.

Re: Google Play Store Ratings Drop

#47

Post by ygra »

dredmorbius wrote: post #44
spb wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can actually hit CTRL+C when a Windows dialog is focused to copy the text of the window.

I haven't made any real use of Windows in over a decade. I know that functionality didn't exist as of WinXP and probably later. When was it added / where do you see it?

This goes back to at least XP, if not 2000. You don't see it since you're just pressing a hotkey and get something in the clipboard. In the same way you would make a screenshot which is also not a visible operation per se.

Re: Google Play Store Ratings Drop

#48

Post by PaulHoule »

Google Play is a joke.

Maybe it's better if you have a different version of Android but when I search for anything broad I see a bunch of free shovelware apps. I'd like to have an option to see just the paid apps or the most expensive apps just to clear out the noise and the spam.

Re: Google Play Store Ratings Drop

#49

Post by V-2 »

tomp wrote: post #43
V-2 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say so. With Chrome they practically redesigned web browsers. "Clutter" is what they were before.

Chrome, as Google Search (google.com main page), was very well-designed at the start. From there, it only went downhill, as soon as the marketing people interfered.

What are you referring to? If I recall, it hasn't really changed a lot, other than minor things such as replacing the wrench icon with a hot-dog

Re: Google Play Store Ratings Drop

#50

Post by fharper1961 »

I'm Android dev, and I think the "Want quick suggestions?" feature is a good addition to Google Play, because it encourages users to rate apps.

Yes, the average rating for my app has gone down since Google made this change. But rankings are relative, not absolute, and all apps are being treated equally, so it shouldn't make a difference in the rankings.

What wasn't mentioned is that the number of ratings has increased substantially. I get at least twice as many ratings as before.

In my opinion, more users giving ratings will result in more reliable rankings.

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