
Android Market Web Store just Launched - jdavidson
http://market.android.com/
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bjonathan
This Market is a good news BUT it seems so much like an unfinish product. That
another proof of the difference in the attention to details between iOS and
Android.

This is a screenshot of the Market from France: <http://i.imgur.com/lchpI.jpg>

Half the page is in the french, half the page is in english and IMO the worst
is the "~" before the price (they convert $/€ so it's ROUGH price wtf! ). The
website doesnt feel that it can be trust IMO if you look to it like a John
Doe.

This is definitely a step in the good direction but please Google please
polish a little more your android products so that they appeal the masses!!

~~~
estel
In fairness, their announcement does say: "We are releasing the initial
version of Android Market on the Web in English and will be extending it to
other languages in the weeks ahead."

~~~
delackner
That's pretty hilarious considering it forces geo-location-based language
localization on me, despite my google account being set to ENGLISH. Can't
count the number of times that a google product has spit a local language UI
back at me despite being logged in.

~~~
jsnell
Yes, I was once again annoyed by a market partially displayed in German even
while I was logged in, and other Google properties were just in English. The
semi-random locale switching makes for a lousy user experience especially for
expats.

Adding ?hl=en to the URL fixed it for me (just having it here once was
enough).

~~~
jcampbell1
I am visting the marketplace from China via a proxy server in St Louis, and
the site is in half spanish, with Euro pricing. My Google account location is
set to New York. There is clearly a bug somewhere.

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hkuo
Just happened to go to the Chrome Web Store, and suddenly thought, why didn't
they just imitate this layout? Of course they had different teams, but their
own Chrome Web Store's layout beats this Android one by a mile.

Link for comparison: <https://chrome.google.com/webstore>

Just a thought.

~~~
sandipc
this isn't a great reason, but perhaps this is because users of the Chrome Web
Store are guaranteed to be using a modern web browser (Chrome), while regular
computer users of the Android Market can be using any browser. (Does the new
Market work in IE?)

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rst
The bigger news from the announcement, to me, was that in-app purchases are
promised "soon".

EDIT: docs here ---
<http://developer.android.com/guide/market/billing/index.html>

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aristidb
I cannot log in. Others experience the same problem?

~~~
jlgosse
Ditto. I was about to buy some random stuff, too.

~~~
bad_user
Me too, I was willing to spend 10000 USD, but now I guess I'll go elsewhere.

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hkuo
Very clean and simple overall. The green and white make it feel a bit XBox to
me, but that's neither here nor there.

The details page probably needs some tweaking. The Related column takes up way
too much space and shouldn't be on the left side commanding so much immediate
attention. That should come visually last in the flow of what the user is
looking for on this page. The main column with details, images and reviews
thus feels awkwardly scrunched, particularly with the thin About This App
column seeming haphazardly floated right. The worst is the lightbox function
when enlarging an image, which forces me to click the small X button to close
the lightbox, rather than being able to click in any dead space.

But overall, I think it's fantastic this is finally available and a great
first iteration.

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streeter
Not only is the store 8 months late (announced at Google IO last May), it's
buggy and I can't log in. I'm not quite sure what took Google so long to get
the store up and running, but it's been really frustrating to wait this long
for it.

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marcc
I like it, and it's certainly about time. What's going to happen to AppBrain,
etc now? They were definitely filling a niche and now will be forced to
compete with the source.

~~~
tensor
Better having to compete than being completely banned from the platform as
would happen on iOS, I suppose.

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usaar333
Overall great marketplace.

One feature that would be nice would be the inability to hide applications
that don't work on your device (as is done in the android market) I've gotten
all excited for certain apps only to be told they can't be installed on my
phone.

Also needs to discriminate better between 'install' and 'installed'; perhaps
with colors or just outright hiding installed apps

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GBKS
A big problem I see is the focus on popular apps, instead of a mix of new
apps, curated lists, etc. The home page solely focuses on top and popular
apps, just like category pages. This might not be good for new apps to enter
the system and get discovered through the market

~~~
zacharycohn
Popular is not JUST by number of downloads, or else it'd be a self-
perpetuating problem. Age, number of downloads, number of ratings, actual
rating, and I'm pretty sure the delta of all of these play a part (as in how
rapidly it's growing).

[edit]Not to say I don't agree with you. There should be some sampling of new
applications there too.

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nrbafna
First thoughts. Seems neat. Cannot login. Some useful details listed - last
update date, minimum android version. much easier to browse the reviews than
on the mobile version. search has spell-corrector. related apps listed on
details screen. useful.

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dangero
Quality is definitely lacking compared to the App Store in a number of ways.

I wonder if the poor quality stems from the fact that Android is probably not
even paying for itself internally at google and they don't properly account
for all the mobile web traffic it brings to google.com, so the team size is
really small right now. This is certainly not the place for using the whole
"beta for 5 years" concept because the competition is already polished.

~~~
shareme
this my th has been brought up before..

Google makes more than $1 billion or more on mobile ads..are you aware of
that? That means in fact android does pay for itself..

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kenjackson
Is it just me or do the product "posters" look really pixelated? Like they
were done at 3/4 the resolution and then scaled up to what they're at on the
screen (64x64?).

~~~
estel
That's probably because they were. Developers previously have uploaded various
promotional images at resolutions suitable for the mobile Market, but the web
market seems to use resources at a range of different resolutions. Whilst I
haven't tried it yet, I imagine that there will be a few more fields to upload
appropriate images to, and frequently updated apps and popular apps will not
suffer from this within a few days.

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jonursenbach
Did they get this design from OSWD?

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eagletusk
Google has kept a record of all of the apps that you have downloaded over the
life of your Google account. What does that mean? If you loose your phone and
need to re-populate it you know what you had. Nice, paid apps as of now will
re-download after a few clicks. I have not found a easy way to re-populate my
android with the unpaid apps, hopefully that is coming soon.

Update; You can remotely updated apps from your computer: Awesome.

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sharmajai
We should take a breath and mark this day as when Google fully jumped into the
mobile app business. Apart from giving Android apps the visibility they
deserve, this site will be a great boon for the in-market app rankings, since
Google can now use their magical web ranking algorithms to rank apps using the
rankings of their corresponding pages. Brilliant.

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moskie
So, is this meant to be accessed from only Android devices? Is there a use for
using it through Chrome on a desktop? Would I be able to purchase an app from
my desktop, at which point my Android phone would (potentially) automatically
download and install the app?

~~~
StavrosK
It's meant to, from what I can tell, it just doesn't work now.

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makecheck
A rather big problem in my browser: on any given page of apps, the entire
bottom row shows only icons; the "buy" buttons are cut off no matter what font
size or zoom I use.

So basically, they make 4 apps per page impossible to purchase due to shoddy
web design.

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program
The lot of icons are pixelated (upscaled maybe) and not very good to see. Take
a look at the Angry Bird one for example:

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15741404/ab-as.jpg>

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eapen
Polished or not, the ability to remotely install apps on the phone is a killer
feature!

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dansingerman
The design is ok-ish to not that great.

But being able to install direct to the phone without going via an iTunes-like
think is amazing.

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lucasr
It somehow resembles Ovi Store (not a good sign) but slightly better. The
design is a bit too busy. Not bad for a first iteration though.

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drewda
Hmm, doesn't seem to allow me to sign in with my Google Apps account (which
I'm using on my Android just fine).

~~~
drewda
Never mind. Seems like I forgot to transition that Google Apps domain to the
new style of Google accounts.

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koushikn
15 min on the website, I am out of space on my phone.. Time to get 2.2

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nhangen
I can't get over how amateur it looks. Really expected more.

~~~
jlgosse
Based on my experience using the iTunes App Store, it is quite usable and
looks a lot better than none at all.

Some things that make it instantly better than purchasing iPhone apps from
your computer:

1\. This web interface is lightning fast, iTunes is horribly slow. 2\. You get
to use the standard browser controls over the random clutter of controls in
iTunes. 3\. Pressing "install" installs to your phone without having to plug
it in, or sync, or worry about losing your shit.

I think it's a great first iteration, and it's definitely something that has
been a long time coming.

~~~
masklinn
> Pressing "install" installs to your phone without having to plug it in, or
> sync, or worry about losing your shit.

From your desktop web browser?

~~~
jlgosse
I have a feeling it only works with 2.2+ (Chrome-to-phone styles), but
regardless, it is badass.

~~~
dlib
Works on my 2.1 HTC Hero. It surprised me, didn't think it would be so simple.
I'm a bit concerned over the privacy and security implications of this feature
though. How is it guaranteed that only Google can trigger app installations?
What else can Google trigger on my phone?

~~~
spiffworks
They can trigger remote uninstallations as well. I can't find a link, but when
the apps which were sending private data to some server in China were
discovered about 6 months back, Google remotely uninstalled the app from
users' phones. It's my least favourite feature of Android.

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doki_pen
Wow. I can push apps to my phone and it happens instantaneously. I wonder how
that works and if I can manage to push apps to other peoples phones. :O

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iqster
I also got the invalid request error. I just watched the Honeycomb event, and
am boggled that Google can't be bothered to hire decent graphic designers. The
icons and general feeling on Android looks unpolished compared to my iOS
devices. The app prices on Android market seem to be x2 what they are on iOS.
I've probably spent 100 bucks on apps on my iPad/iPod touch. Money spent on
apps for my Nexus One (shitty phone) and Nexus S so far: $0.

I also don't understand why they need a web store. I buy apps on my iOS
devices all the time. Is the point that general usability on Android devices
is so bad that you need to use a desktop to purchase apps that will then get
transferred to your mobile device??

~~~
dpcan
First, I sell apps in the Android Market and do well. Lots of people pay.

Second, having a web interface just makes it easier for people to search and
find apps with ease from their computer.

It will REALLY help me because I can now easily link to my apps from Facebook
and Twitter, and it looks like users will be able to click INSTALL and have
the app go right to their phone so the next time they are ready to play, it's
there waiting for them :)

I love it.

~~~
iqster
dpcan: You make a good point about linking to apps from Twitter and web sites.
I didn't think of that. Thanks for your thoughts.

Glad to know you are doing well on Android Market. I'm still confused at my
personal tendency to readily make app purchases on my iOS devices but not on
my Android phones. But then again, I guess we aren't the average mobile user
these days.

~~~
dpcan
I make far fewer purchases on my Android devices over my iPhone as well. It's
just that the AppStore continually updates their Featured pages, and I'm
constantly buying from there. On Android, the same scrolling apps at the top
have been there a long time, and all you have are the categories that seem to
stay the same (like the AppStore, BUT there isn't a Featured This Week section
or anything)

~~~
jlees
if you install the new market widget, which came by default on my Nexus S,
you'll see a new featured app every time you swipe to the homescreen with the
widget on. I've bought about 5 apps from this alone.

Once I bought my first android app (a $.89 game or something) I opened the
floodgates, and now buy more apps for my android than my iOS devices (kindle
books notwithstanding), so each to their own.

