

Google's Android Market is crippling small development teams - CCapigami

I've been a long time lurker on Hacker News. I apologize for the somewhat sensationalist title, but it really is rather true.<p>Out of Milk started off as a dedicated Android project as our attempt to create an application for Android phones that absolutely screamed quality. We looked at the apps currently available on Google's Market and realized that there is a lack of quality applications with dedicated developers. We have spent a lot of money and a lot of time trying to prove that Android is a robust and high-quality platform. Unfortunately, Google is making this extremely difficult.<p>I am a developer / co-founder of one the most popular Shopping List and Productivity applications on the Android Market. Our application is called Out of Milk (https://Market.android.com/details?id=com.capigami.outofmilk).  As of right now, we are currently nearing 1 million downloads, a gigantic install base of users, and over 6000 ratings, nearly all 4-5 stars.  Over the past several weeks, it is almost as if Google is working against the people contributing applications to their Market.  Google is consistently releasing updates to the Market that is consistently and thoroughly making it impossible to be profitable in one of the most aggressive and fast-moving markets on the internet.  I'd like to outline the bevy of issues we have been facing.<p>1) Statistics - Developers get to see statistics for their applications in the Developer Console which are updated regularly (usually on a daily basis).  These statistics include how many downloads you have had, how many users have your application installed, how many ratings you have, and other important metrics for your application.  The stats showing the total number of users who have your app installed will randomly freeze.  For the past month, it's only been updated a few times due to issues with the Developer Console.  At the same time this is happening, your competitors may or may not be experiencing the same issue.  The stats are a factor in your apps ranking on the Market so if your stats stagnate it may give your competitor an unfair edge in the Market.  Once the statistics start working again, they do not work retroactively, it just starts where it originally froze.  The last time it froze for us, 3% of our install base magically disappeared because we got a ton of downloads but no installations over a 2 week period.<p>2) Market Search - This is the big killer.  Before the updates to the Market over the past few weeks, searching for our application by its content type would consistently put us near the top of the results.  I believe that this is correct due to the fact that we are extremely popular and well-reviewed.  However, now when searching in our application category, we are result #227.  We are consistently being beaten by hundreds of application that have 10-50 downloads, zero ratings, and absolutely no Market history.  This has caused our purchases to fall from doing very well to almost getting no purchases at all.  Google's Market updates are effectively making sure that Out of Milk cannot continue development due to not making enough to cover operating costs.<p>3) Comment Sorting - When visiting applications on the Market, the comment ratings consistently display in a very strange manner, almost as if there is no sorting at all. Instead of showing the most recent reviews that may praise us for adding a new feature or condemn us for a bug, it is displaying reviews from the beginning of the year that may or may not be relevant to the application by this point in its lifecycle.  Users who visit the application and read reviews that are extremely out of date do not get a good overview of what this application is about.<p>4) Google Support -  This is a complete joke. I am not even sure why Google is providing support at all.  We contact Google on a regular basis trying to find out about our issues and how we can recover from them.  If Google replies, it usually takes well over 3 days for them to reply with a canned response. After asking as to how we can fix our Market ranking results in the search and for a status update if they are working on it, the reply was, and this is almost an exact quote, "Google is always working to make the Market even better.".<p>The four issues I have detailed above are game breakers.  How can Google expect developers to get involved in the Market if the success of their application is completely based on the whim of broken updates to their software?  Out of Milk went from doing extremely well to dead in the water almost overnight.  We are working as hard we can to try and figure out solutions from our own end, but Google is the guy driving this bus and we can only do so much on our own.<p>My advice to people who are currently looking to get into developing for Android: wait.  There is absolutely no benefit to spending your time, money and effort on getting involved in the Android Market place at this time. Google is actively working to make sure that you, the developer, cannot and will not succeed in their Market.  That sounds like a bald-faced lie, I know, but it is the only conclusion I can come to in this matter. Visit the support forums for Android Developers and look at the hundreds of threads about these same issues with absolutely zero replies and it all becomes a little clearer.
======
pvarangot
As for #2, if I were you I would change the application name in the Android
Store to "Out of Milk Shopping List", if you really believe search results
matter.

I mean, have you noted that almost all the applications that rank in front of
you have either "shopping list", "shopping" or "list" in their titles? I bet
search gives more relevance to titles than to categories/descriptions, and you
are getting bitten by this. Note that "Mighty Grocery Shopping List" which is
the first paid app on the shopping category ranks on the first page when
searching for "shopping list".

------
tensor
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 Apple app
store lists apps that range from free to $3.00. I'd suggest changing your
business model.

Try in-app ads with a lower cost ad-free version (say $1). Or add features
that are both extremely useful and hard to duplicate for a competitor that is
working for free. Some ideas: GPS proximity alarm when passing a grocery
store, or a tie in to a desktop client or website.

~~~
dpcan
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 comments system on Android is a mess. (sorted strangely, randomly?)

4) Google has a serious lack of good support for its developers.

I'd like to add:

5) There needs to be more game categories.

6) We want to be able to reply to comments in order to support our customers.

~~~
tensor
I understood those complaints and I'm not disagreeing with them. However, I
don't necessarily agree that these issues are solely responsible for his lack
of profits as he seems to be implying.

------
mbrubeck
I'm on the Firefox for Android team, and we've had our share of problems with
the Market too - mostly outright bugs, like apps appearing on devices they
aren't compatible with. While any service has bugs, the Android Market is
especially frustrating thanks to the duration of serious problems and complete
lack of transparency and communication.

~~~
cageface
I think this is going to become a bigger problem for Google in the long run. I
understand why they don't want to pay people to do customer or developer
support but sometimes you run into a wall with their automated support systems
and there's _nothing_ you can do.

~~~
mey
In theory this is the benefit of 3rd party stores, but the only viable one is
the Amazon Appstore, but that has it's own massive issues. (To be part of the
free day promo you give up that revenue, absolutely no concept of what is
actually compatible with the target phone, web experience is better then the
handset experience)

------
dpcan
The worst part is, not only are you right on the money, but you're top #4 are
not everyone's top 4, and this is only the tip of the iceberg.

For ME, I want 2 things, and have been BEGGING Google for them for a year now.

1) Let me reply to comments so I can SUPPORT my customers.

2) More game categories. If there were more categories my apps in Sports would
not be LOSING to chess and penguin games.

~~~
cpeterso
_> Let me reply to comments so I can SUPPORT my customers._

Similarly, a bug reporter/tracker in Market might discourage people from
posting negative reviews to report a bug.

------
iminay
This is the problem with only having one source of apps on the android market.
Sure there is amazon, but google won't allow users to install this without
jumping through hoops. Even though Apple isn't much better, at least their app
store treats developers fair (that is if you can get your app through the
censorship board)

Google needs to step up their game, or it will stop attracting quality
developers. There is so much crap on the market in the form of malicious apps
and low quality 1 day development duplicates. Without the quality
teams/companies contributing to the app market, Google will dig the android
grave.

~~~
sp332
_google won't allow users to install this without jumping through hoops._

Well, one hoop. Settings -> Applications, click the "Unknown sources" box. I
think this just disables signature checking on .apk's or something.

~~~
ydant
Also the requirement the user interact with a system dialog for every
application installation.

This isn't MUCH different from what market was not that long ago, but now that
Google's market does seamless background updates, Amazon's at a bit of a
disadvantage. Even updates require the user interact with the system dialog.

It's a small thing, but it does make a difference.

I expect Amazon to "fix" that with their phones coming out, since they will
control the firmware. I'm actually surprised they haven't worked with ROM
developers to get their market app trusted by the aftermarket ROMs, too.

------
thijser
There are alternative frontends to the Google market, such as AppBrain, of
which I'm one of the co-founders. Exactly due to the problems you describe, we
have been able to get a loyal following of both users and developers, for whom
we develop better tools to browse through the Android market. Your app is
actually listed #10 in our all-time popular shopping charts:
<http://www.appbrain.com/apps/popular/shopping/>

You might also be interested in our developer stats, which also update daily:
<http://www.appbrain.com/info/developer-dashboard>

Any suggestions of what you'd like to see more (if it's available for us to
engineer) are welcome!

~~~
_debug_
> There are alternative frontends to the Google market, such as AppBrain, of
> which I'm one of the co-founders.

FYI, I have a new Android phone (Galaxy S2) and I would have never realized
this had I not been on HN! I wonder how you can get yourself more publicity?
Maybe advertise more?

------
bryanlarsen
You say that #2 is the big killer for you. This also significantly hurts
Google, so presumably it will be fixed. Of course, it's a higher priority for
you than it is for them.

But #4 is baked into the Google culture and is very unlikely to change.

~~~
Steko
Agreed on #4.

On #2 I've always found it crazy that Android market is an also ran in app
search and discoverability -- Apple has not set the bar very high and that's
supposed to be Google's forte anyway.

~~~
erikpukinskis
I'm not surprised. Gmail for quite some time couldn't find emails like this
when you searched for "bank":

    
    
        Hey Steko,
    
        I'm going to the bank.
    
        Erik

Note the ending period. I know it takes time to sort out internal APIs so that
you can re-use code effectively, but you think Google would have at least the
basics of search split out into re-useable modules that they could snap into
new applications. I guess not though.

~~~
martingordon
It's even worse than that: a search for "doc" does not return results that
contain "document".

Gmail is great, but it's search is appalling, and it's even worse that it's
coming from Google.

------
Kylekramer
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 than search. Throw a (Shopping List)
at the end of your name since that seems to be the main factor in search.

My bigger question is how is a $5 app that #2 in its category for paid apps
struggling to be profitable (especially since I believe the top paid list are
counted by installs)? All of your complaints seem to be about competing with
other apps, but you seem to be mostly winning that competition. Are Android
app sales so low that #2 in its category app is unprofitable?

~~~
juliano_q
Yeah, it is probably only a SEO issue. Study why other apps are showing first.
Adding shopping list in the end of the name and in the description of the app
will probably fix it.

~~~
there
it's ridiculous that the SEO crap has been brought to these app markets and
that developers have to worry about this, especially in system that is
completely controlled by google. "shopping list" is in the app's description
and it's a highly reviewed application with lots of downloads.

google has access to more valuable data here than they do with web searches.
if the majority of users search for "shopping list" and end up installing 5
different apps, which do they usually keep installed? rank that one higher for
future searches. you can't fake the number of app installs like spammers can
gain junk inbound links for pagerank.

------
gte910h
Swap to iOS. People pay for things there and there are developer support
people you can talk to.

Swap to Win7Phone. You may be the only person in your category still. The
developer outreach is hilariously good (Shout out to Atlanta's Glenn Gordon
[Microsoft] for treating the community right).

~~~
onwardly
Second the shout out to Glenn Gordon, he's great and put Win7Phone on the
(road)map for us.

~~~
gte910h
I give the man an incredibly difficult time for some of MS's missteps with the
platform, but he handles it all with aplomb. But he himself: Good stuff.

It actually looks like I've mispelled his name:

<https://twitter.com/#!/glengordon>

Glen Gordon.

------
alohahacker
I'm also an android developer and have experienced all these problems in the
recent weeks. Here is my take on the following points:

#3 seems like its in the new market and hopefully google will fix this problem
soon because it makes no sense at all. Its def a new bug in this transition to
the new market that goog is probably aware of.

#4 google support has always been horrible. try calling the android market
reps in support. the more devs call and express bugs they can usually foward
issues to the dev team. Also stalk people on the android team on
quora/twitter/google+. this works too! tried and tested ;)

#1 stats have always been bad. they go up and down and don't work for large
periods at a time. our stats froze for about 2 weeks. hopefully this doesnt
effect our ranking but with the secret algorithm we will never know. luckily
we use google analytics and other tracking methods to account for this.

#2 market search is prob the most stressfull thing we had to deal with. for
the past two weeks nobody could find out app in the market. it simply just
dissapeared. we had 1000's of downloads a day that went to under 100. this def
hurt our revenue and app usage decreased due to the lack of new users. prob
end up costing a couple thousand in revenue. luckily it seems like they are
making an effort to fix this as today we started appearing again and the
search results seem to be improving by the hour.

Is the market perfect? hell no! the android market is def bipolar and has alot
of problems. For us we cant live with it cant live without it. the past couple
of weeks have been crazy due to the all the problems our app was having with
the search bugs, etc.

Hopefully as developers we can continue to help each other find ways to
overcome the bugs and help google build a quality market. Having a market that
works is def a win win situation that I'm hoping to be a part of.

On the flipside these bugs have caused me to develop IOS versions of my app
which I probably woudlnt have done if these bugs didnt exist. So looking
foward to try that new venue ;)

------
bond
Google made significant changes to the search algorithm around July 1st. They
have fixed most of the complaints from developers a day ago, still some things
need to get fixed but it's near the level it was before. Check this thread:
[http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Android+Market/thread?...](http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Android+Market/thread?tid=1e575cf9e437736c&hl=en)

------
hpaavola
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>

~~~
CCapigami
[https://market.android.com/search?q=shopping+list&c=apps...](https://market.android.com/search?q=shopping+list&c=apps&start=264&num=24)

(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.

~~~
dgrant
Great news!!! You're on page 11 now:
[https://market.android.com/search?q=shopping+list&c=apps...](https://market.android.com/search?q=shopping+list&c=apps&start=240&num=24)

~~~
rivvin
I don't see it on page 11... that just makes it even worse if people are
seeing different search results!

~~~
dmbass
Maybe they filter apps by devices connected to your account that can install
it?

------
athst
I think this is why there is such a huge opportunity for Amazon - they are the
best in the world at selling stuff, and if they can leverage that experience
with apps (reviews, search, recommendations, etc), the whole interaction of
buying and selling apps will be a lot better.

~~~
Gobiner
I think it's true that there is a huge opportunity for someone like Amazon
here.

However, I rather disagree that Amazon will ever provide a panacea. The Amazon
market currently poses its own problems to app sellers. Once your app is on
their market, you do not control it. Amazon sets the price, Amazon sets the
description and classification. If Amazon hires some marketing copy-writer to
write your app's description and that person doesn't know anything about your
app, guess who gets to deal with angry customers who didn't get what they were
expecting? It won't be Amazon.

Amazon has had some technical hangups that be explained by 'early product
bugs'. While I expect such problems to be eventually ironed out by better QA
and development processes, my understanding is that they have not yet been
ironed out.

Finally, the Amazon market is tiny compared to Google's. If I told you that
putting your software on Amazon's market would net you 5% of the sales you get
on Google's, but you'd spend just as much time fighting through problems in
the market itself, would you jump on that opportunity? I probably would not.

~~~
mmmarvin
You hit the nail in the head with Amazon Appstore app description issue. Our
app has had (and still has) that problem. Our content has been written by
Amazon, but we have no control over it. In the meantime, our app (and even our
business model) has evolved but the description is still the old description.
As a result we get emails from confused users.

------
medius
Google is already trying to increase the share of paid apps in Android market
place as it still does not come close to Apple's app store. If they don't
concentrate on quality developers, they will find it even more difficult to do
so.

~~~
mmmarvin
One thing I've noticed is that paid apps are ranking higher than free apps in
searches. That's all great, but sometimes the paid apps are really the
crappiest. They really need to find a balance between paid apps, quality and
the free apps. It looks bad on the Android Market when someone searches for
something and what they get are crappy/ugly apps (which there's quite a lot of
on the Android Market).

------
andylei
it seems like none of the things you mention are unique to "small development
teams"

~~~
pagekalisedown
Not only that, the whole thing reads like "hey, would-be-Android developers,
please stay away from Android as I can't take the competition".

------
mbarr
Regarding #1, it's a pain when the stats break, and I agree it needs to be
more robust and accurate, but it has no effect on your rankings what so ever.

------
Hisoka
About #2: Isn't this similar to complaining your website isn't ranked in the
first page for a keyword in Google? Yes, it's unfair, but if you're basing
your entire business on whether Google is giving you exposure, isn't that a
flaw in your business? Perhaps you need to find other venues to market your
product. Again, I'm just addressing #2. The other points are valid...

------
Hisoka
I think you need to seriously reconsider your business model. If you're trying
to earn revenue thru 1-time app sales, then I'm afraid you're in a losing game
if you're content with building just 1 app. When it comes to to-do lists, no
matter how great it is, the market is flooded with those, and a lot of them
are cheap.

"Google is the guy driving this bus" <\-- yes, it is, it's sorta like owning a
website who's only source of visitors is SEO. It's just waiting and hoping
Google doesn't mess up in anyway. When you're so reliant on 1 company for your
revenue, something's wrong. You shouldn't put all your eggs in 1 basket.

Maybe it's time to branch out. Explore other money making opportunities..
Maybe, just maybe building a very very good app isn't enough to build a
sustainable business. Yes, it makes you proud as a developer to build an app.
But we're talking about building a business.

There won't be a lack of developers developing for Android, trust me... when
the audience is so huge, it doesn't matter how much friction there is. Huge
companies will pay ppl tons of money to deal with the BS. They're 10+
abstraction levels away from the bullshit. They'll just tell the developer
team: DEAL with it, develop this in 1 month or you're all FIRED.

~~~
CCapigami
I don't know if your post is directed at me or not, but to you and all the
other people in this thread assuming Out of Milk on the Google Android Market
is the only source of advertising and revenue that we have and will
explore...well all of you are making a giant assumption.

Everyone, please understand the following:

We understand that putting all of your eggs in one basket is dumb. There is no
success there. But when the largest portion of your market all of a sudden
starts screwing with you in ways you can't figure out, that is a problem and
it is something worth discussing.

------
angryasian
Everything you've pointed out are sort of known issues with the google market.
Instead of complaining switch to Apple store and see if you do any better. To
me this is almost a trolling rant, to ignite the Apple vs Android debate and
possibly a marketing ploy. Theres been plenty of posts about successes in the
Android market. I actually think you've done quite well on the Android Market.

Release your game on the Apple market and let us know how well you do trying
to get traction or downloads there.

>We looked at the apps currently available on Google's Market and realized
that there is a lack of quality applications with dedicated developers.

This is completely untrue, and stop spreading this FUD. Most developers
support both platforms and there are plenty of high quality applications.

*edited to address rant of high quality apps.

~~~
Gobiner
You clearly did not read the posting you're commenting on. Nowhere does he say
he made a game. Nowhere does he say he's never tried to find his own
solutions. Nowhere does he say he hasn't done well. In fact he stated the
opposite. He is no longer doing well because Google broke their own shit and
don't seem to be in any particular hurry to address it. In case you missed it:
_Out of Milk went from doing extremely well to dead in the water almost
overnight. We are working as hard we can to try and figure out solutions from
our own end, but Google is the guy driving this bus and we can only do so much
on our own._

Google's market problems aren't app developers responsibility to overcome just
because they are 'sort of known'.

~~~
angryasian
"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,
etc.

~~~
bond
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...

~~~
angryasian
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.

~~~
bond
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.

~~~
angryasian
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

~~~
bond
_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...

