Google's Android Market is crippling small development teams
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.".
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.
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.