The only way I've found of getting anything resolved is to forward issues to a friend inside the company, or hope that you can write a blog post which gets enough attention.
I get that filtering and testing millions of random bug reports from all corners of the Internet is hard - but it's a problem which Google desperately needs to solve if it wants to retain the trust of its users.
> It's a pity there's no way to report bugs like this to Google.
This is a popular myth.
General instructions are here: https://www.google.com/tools/feedback/intl/en/
In this particular case, it's an android app, so what you do is tap on the hamburger menu, hit "help and feedback", then "send feedback".
Looking at Android (OS) issues - https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/list?can=2&q=&sort=... - it's clear that the majority of bugs are ignored. Even when they're well described and affect multiple users / devices.
> Looking at Android (OS) issues - https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/list?can=2&q=&sort=.... - it's clear that the majority of bugs are ignored.
A quick glance at that page appears to disprove this claim. If you flip it to display "all issues", there are 206689 bugs in that tracker at the moment, of which 44583 are open. That tells you that 79% of all bugs filed have been closed - so, at least 79% of bugs were not ignored.
Note that this tracker is for the operating system only, and does not include any of the Google apps that the feedback system covers.
Which goes back to my original point about customer trust. If you know I've reported a bug, why would you deliberately not tell me that it has been fixed?
> so, at least 79% of bugs were not ignored
Well, take a look at some of the ones which have been closed - https://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/2on1fe/google_c... and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8803118
I know a good many people who work in Google - they're all smart and dedicated. But there's something about the corporate culture which imposes a "don't listen to external feedback" mindset.
It's your OS and they're your apps - you can do what you like with them. But don't be surprised when users stop trusting you to listen to their concerns.
Sounds like a typical fallacy of end-users looking at software. Assuming that the developer deliberately is denying you a feature, rather than having simply not spent the engineering time to make it possible.
In this case, for instance, it could be that the pipeline to get from external feedback channels to Google's internal bug-trackers very one-way and its hard to go back. Or, there's a disconnect between when the fix ships and when the ticket is closed, and keeping track of the entire chain of data requires some work. Or, there's no easy distinguishing features on bugs that came externally to make them easily identifiable once fixed. Or, there's no process yet for an automated response that says the bug is fixed (should it provide more detail). Etc.
> I get that filtering and testing millions of random bug reports from all corners of the Internet is hard - but it's a problem which Google desperately needs to solve if it wants to retain the trust of its users.
> Which goes back to my original point about customer trust. If you know I've reported a bug, why would you deliberately not tell me that it has been fixed?
Another example of http://danluu.com/wat/ (discussion:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10811822).