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Comment by bjonathan | Hacker News Reader

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!!

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While the localization issues are embarrassing, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the store; it's extremely fast, easy to navigate and feels quite polished.

The '~' has exited in Android for a while (before it would just list it in whatever foreign currency the developer accepts). Given that the currency conversion is passed on to the customer (whether that's a good idea is another story), the '~' is important to signal that currency conversion is occurring.

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."

But where can I get the initial English version? I can only see menus and no apps in the country I'm currently in.

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.

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).

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.

It's worth noting that they announced a new pricing system too - developers will be able to specify different prices for different currencies, like with the App Store.

I get the feeling Google is using the same strategy Microsoft used against Apple in the late 1980's. They seem to want to create a market of shovelware in an effort to simply damage Apple's marketshare rather than creating truly unique products.

In the 1980's, Apple's technology was pretty bad. It's arguable if Microsofts was much better, but they hardly created any shovelware. Note also, that Apple's 1980s strategy of locking down devices, software, and hardware was a leading cause of their failure, even aside from their poor operating system offering. They almost went out of business, until the return of Jobs and the Next assets.

The same strategy may fail them again. I certainly would never have even looked at a mac laptop if it were as locked down as iOS is. Although people often argue that mobile products are different, I disagree. They are simply small form factor computers and you need look no farther than Android to see that an operating system as flexible as a desktop OS works just fine in this area.

It is a stretch to say that Android is as flexible as a desktop OS.

I don't mean in terms of usability. Clearly a small screen and touch input changes things. By flexible, I meant that you can install what you want and from whatever source you want. You can modify the system files (with a little bit of work) and replace core components easily.

In this sense, it is every bit as open as desktop operating systems traditionally are.

It is a pain, whether the restrictions are carrier-induced or not, to do this. I had a truly open and flexible desktop-like operating system when I was running Maemo OS2008.. I could install and compile my own software, it was common to have desktop software ported to the device, there was tons of interest in hacking on different supports (I had Wiimotes on a NES emulator, a regular sized USB port, etc.). I have an Android-powered device.. and it is definitely not at that level, despite having a custom rom and the whole nine yards.

Not quite as bad as from a market-unsupported country: http://i.min.us/iemx0U.png

It looks like they've come up with a good compromise for the currency problem. Those who wish to will be able to set exact prices in the buyer's currency, while the '~' approximations will still be used for those who don't. From the email I just received from them:

We are introducing a new feature called Buyer’s Currency that lets you set prices for your apps separately in each of the currencies on Android Market. We are deploying this feature country-by-country over the next few months, starting with developers in the U.S. When the feature is available to you, we will notify you by email.

Yeah, I actually had to check that I wasn't on a spoof website. The site looks cheap and ugly. Not like a typical Google site. Just compare to the recent ebooks and art project sites. Glad I'm not the only one thinking the site needs solid polishing.

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