

The Android Market - slackerIII
http://www.tomkleinpeter.com/2010/10/12/the-android-market/

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Nemisis7654
Yeah, I completely agree with this post. I recently published my first
application to the Android Market (last month) and was pretty shocked with how
little the Developer Console tells me. I had expected a lot more analytical
data.

Hopefully, as they continue to improve the OS, they will improve the
Marketplace as well.

(Side: I am still waiting to even hear another thing about the Desktop version
that was demoed at the Google IO this year.)

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ESchmidtSeesYou
To anyone who thinks: that a very small team creating an entire, enormously
complex operating system, with unending goals for platforms improvements, that
has already been successfully iterating at an extreme pace, is up against
enormous competition from Apple and Microsoft, and is playing the long game
for the future of mobile and computing as a whole... is really ignoring these
extremely common complaints and resting on its laurels...

...uh, really? There are many very concrete reasons to believe they know about
the vast majority of these issues and have respective solutions addressing
them somewhere in their product roadmap. (ie, major UI revision in
Gingerbread, along with optimization for tablets.) That, and they've been
overwhelmingly successful so far, as Android phones now consistently outsell
the iPhone each quarter.

~~~
jessriedel
> ...a very small team creating an entire, enormously complex operating
> system...

I don't think the size of the team is a defense against the OP's critique.
Criticism of Google's handling of the Android market includes the decision
about how much man-power to devote to it.

This isn't a personal attack on the team members.

~~~
tvon
If the team size is a problem, maybe we can hold a bake sale so Google can
hire another engineer or two.

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jamesaguilar
Thinking about this a little, I can kind of understand why Amazon would
consider entering this business. Even if Apple would allow it, probably no
other company would invest significant resources into trying to unseat the
Apple AppStore. You have to have some kind of leverage to beat a competitor
like that.

The situation is different with Android. Building a better app marketplace
than the Android market is not exactly a very high bar to leap.

~~~
greyman
Microsoft will also invest.

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psychotik
You could fill pages with things that can be improved on Android Market (most
of which are available on the App Store). Most shortcoming are well documented
- things that I would like to see personally:

\- ability to publish what changed in an update

\- track number of users who upgraded vs new users

\- ability to search for apps and see reviews on
<http://www.android.com/market/> (that website is practically useless)

~~~
veeti
The market client also needs some improvement: for example, the search feature
isn't very good. Searching for "ADW Launcher" brings up countless pages of
themes for the ADW Launcher before showing the actual launcher app itself.

~~~
Nemisis7654
I completely agree with you. You would figure that a search giant would have a
good search implementation in their Marketplace.

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drivebyacct2
Ugh, so tired of reading these posts. Has everyone so quickly forgotten Google
IO? They know there are problems with the Market, they plan on having them
fixed for the release of Gingerbread, which according to rumors (which
indicate the SDK will be out next week) could be very soon.

~~~
martythemaniak
If anything, I think there should be far more of these posts, and have been
thinking of compiling my own list on my blog. There has been no indication
from Google that they think anything is wrong with the market or that they're
planning to fix it.

~~~
drivebyacct2
... What are you talking about? They have plans for a web interface that does
the equivalent of app-to-phone like chrome-to-phone. They have acknowledged
problems with app discovery and with the lack of a proper ranking
system/algorithm.

This was all discussed at Google IO when they announced JIT/Froyo. How can you
say Google hasn't indicated there is a problem? I guess they're just planning
a complete revamp/redo of the market for giggles?

~~~
bad_user
Devs are in pain right now, and considering that Google does web apps for a
living, it is actually quite mindbogglingly that the Marketplace sucks so
badly.

If they discussed these at Google IO, that's irrelevant: they should just
deliver, everything else matters less.

Another annoyance the article hasn't mentioned: my European country is not on
their frickin' list (not even with the latest update) and I cannot upload
priced apps, even though I can do that in Apple's iTunes store. I mean, WTF
?!?

~~~
drivebyacct2
> It is actually quite mindbogglingly that the Marketplace sucks so badly
> [...] they should just deliver, everything else matters less.

I agree, but I still don't agree with this...

> There has been no indication from Google that they think anything is wrong
> with the market or that they're planning to fix it.

