Google closes Android developer complaint forums | Hacker News Reader

Google closes Android developer complaint forums

theregister.co.uk

86 pointsjen_h35 comments

If this means that developer issues are going to be reviewed, responded to, and addressed by a real human being, and real public communication (maybe through the Dev Console, eh?) will be exchanged between Google and developers when issues arise, this is a very good thing - for both developers and Google. Reading these long, terrible, ranty threads that rarely contain any comment from Google is demoralizing and depressing for everyone involved.

If this means the Marketplace forums are closed and nothing else changes, this is terrible. Though maybe there's some silver lining there...one less place to post a "Hey, Google, PLEASE look at this! Please, please, pretty please!! Hey, guys! Hey, guys!" would probably save us all at least a few minutes of time. ;)

I didn't see anything in that forum post from Google about improving or adding anything. I just saw a link to the already awful contact form and a message basically telling me to stay out.

I went to this forum every day to gauge whether I was the only one experiencing a problem or not.

Was I the only one seeing the "Just In" category missing?

Was the Market not loading for everyone else?

Did anyone else not get their full payout this month?

Is anyone else unable to upload to the Dev console?

Is everyone seeing the "authorization" failures again?

Is the sales report missing for everyone else for July?

At least seeing others with the same problem there meant that they were telling Google, or Google was seeing the problem in the forums, and I could chime in with a "me too" post so they knew it was wide spread.

Emailing using those forms is hopeless. Canned responses come back. I don't know if anyone ever read my question.

This is one sad and frustrating move by Google.

TO GOOGLE: Just open a private developers-only thread accessible from our Developer Consoles. That would be nice.

I used it in exactly the same way.. when I saw an issue I would check for forums to see if others were experiencing the same issue. I'm not sure I would have noticed payouts being lower than they should have been without the forum, and I'm not 100% convinced Google would have either. The "known issues" page only lists a small subset of the real issues with the market. Also more often than not when they fix something, something else breaks.

That forum was the only way I found out I wasn't getting paid in full as well..... I have so many orders, checking them 1 by 1 wouldn't be possible. Developers need another location to communicate, and fast, because if this payout thing happens again, I'm worried Google won't find out. Based on the canned responses I get from the email forms, I honestly can't tell if they read my emails or not.

The "known issues" page is where issues go to die in my opinion. When I see an issue added there I just GROAN because I know that's it. It's probably not going to ever be fixed.

+1. Market support hates me. I just keep writing them, and writing them, and encouraging users to do the same. It always feels like tilting against windmills and I've never had Market Support solve a single issue or respond with any details that showed they even understood the issue, but I do it anyway with fingers crossed.

You're right about the forums - I've had a few issues that Market Support was useless on, but was solved by other posts on the forums (non-alphanumeric character in a company name causing you to never be able to respond to a customer request, anyone? Argh.).

And add my vote for developers-only forums - but not just accessible from the Developer Console...since you can't associate more than a single Gmail account with a developer account (talk about enterprise-unfriendly...), the principal developer account should be able to invite others to the forums.

That's just the thing.

Have you ever talked to ANYONE who's received a response back from those Google support contact forms that wasn't just a canned response with no indication that anyone has read anything?

Who are they trying to fool with that post asking us to go to the contact forms?

I just do not understand what kind of show they are trying to run over there. It's baffling.

Why not provide awesome support? Why not?

I know what sort of show: a very cheap one.

Customer support is tremendously expensive. Sophisticated support for developers costs even more.

Actually we've received good responses. In one case, we had a user app comment that was simply lots of Russian profanity. Google removed it within a few days.

It explicitly says " we feel that one-on-one support is best for the types of threads that have historically been posted to this forum by app developers." So yes it does imply they are going to do more to improve support but yes its more of an announcement to their intentions and not an actual plan yet.

I see nothing implying that real humans will indeed answer. Current market support (not forums), apparently manned by real people, is absolutely terrible at helping. Any inquiry about Market problems for developers is met either with an automated "thanks, we're looking into it" or a "we've sent this to engineers" reply, and never with a followup.

If Google wants to do this right, they need to have a developer-only forum or a support system with valid ticket numbers for followup.

FWIW, based on previous experience with Google's Market support for devs, I have little hope. I think this is a 'no bad PR' move, instead of a 'developer love' move.

If you want to see the future of Google support, look no further than AdWords "support". This is Google's money maker, and most customers are largely ignored.

Google's "support" is basically a series of weak decision support systems that yield nothing of value, unless you're a complete noob. Email support is a guy in India that does a look up in the public knowledge base and sends you the result.

If you can get your hands on the unpublished support phone number and call it, you'll have to enter your account number. Then the system tells you nicely that you're not important enough to talk to a live person. Fine, for me I understand, I was only spending $400 a month, but there were people on forums that were spending $10K a month and getting the same treatment.

Sometimes I wonder if Google will ever be more than a text box and a button. People knock Apple and MS but these are real software companies who understand much of their business is customer support.

"If you can get your hands on the unpublished support phone number and call it, you'll have to enter your account number. Then the system tells you nicely that you're not important enough to talk to a live person."

I believe AdWords now has phone support for all AdWords customers? I did the Google search [adwords support] and the #2 link has a title of "How do I contact Google AdWords?" and that page has the toll-free phone number. Here's the blog post from April: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/free-phone-support-fo...

Given Google's excellent track record on direct contact customer support, I trust this will be an great step forward for the entire community!

I do hope you're being ironic because Google Docs has been poor in support for indies.

I have published apps, and I would gladly pay an annual fee for increased publisher support.

The developer documents and engineering engagement is already pretty good from an actual app development perspective... but when things with the android market goes sideways, the support and communication is really pretty bad. To make matters worse, it is usually completely out of the app developers control to fix it.

When it was an issue that I knew others were facing, I felt pretty confident that it would eventually be fixed, because enough noise would be made.

I know several Android developers, and they all feel frustrated and befuddled by the lack of developer support - and we are all willing to pay extra for it. This is, with at least what we know now, another step backwards.

The problem with this argument is that many of us are making significant money in the Market, and we feel pretty strongly that for that 30% cut Google gets of our sales, we should be getting way better support. Hell, GREAT support. Then turning us away from a public forum is like spit in our face.

Over the last year, I ALONE have given up enough in that 30% to pay the salary of at least a part-time employee just to handle support.

People claim to THINK they know where this 30% is going - maybe to a carrier, or maybe to Google, but Google hasn't officially explained what that 30% is for - at least not anywhere that I've seen.

Hmm. I am not saying they shouldn't be doing better, with just their 30% cut. I am saying I would be willing to pay an annual fee for better support, and the other developers I know personally would as well.

It is not mutually exclusive position - I am being pragmatic, and if $X/year gave me good support, then sign me up... even if I think they should be doing better with their 30%. I just ultimately want the problem solved; I am definitely willing to pay, because I don't want my revenue stream jeopardized for the lack of market support should a problem arise. But yes, they could be doing better right now.

I have seen articles claiming that Google gets nothing from sales, though it's not really clear. See [1] for example that says that the entire 30% goes to the carriers and billing settlement fees.

[1] http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/02/google-takes-he/

heck i would pay hundreds if i could have live support and perhaps a rep/agent that I could ask questions too

In contrast, Apple TELEPHONE support for developer is worldwide (http://developer.apple.com/contact/phone.php). I feel comfortable to pay them $99 per year.

Being a dev myself this is def going to hurt us developers because it seemed we could all come together in the forums and compare/contrast problems with each other.

The best thing would us to migrate to another forum where developers can brainstorm together. Is there any forum that all devs are moving too?

Since it sounds like Google didn't participate in the forum in any meaningful way, users will just migrate somewhere else. Personally, I find it more frustrating to be given a proprietary 'help' forum manned by users as clueless as myself. If it's not getting me professional help, I'd rather use a Newsgroup or similar.

Another "open" move for Android.

Did you read the article? My understanding from devs that I follow is that the current feedback system is pretty awful. If they're going to focus on better ways of fostering dev/Market support, that seems like a good thing.

(I'm downvoted for saying the same thing the top comment did, before that comment existed? OK? Cool story guys, it's not like the article implies a change in how Google handles these issues in an attempt to handle them better.)

Of course I read the article. The point is that Google seems to love throwing around the "open" and "closed" buzzwords, irrespective of how much hypocrisy they engage in on a regular basis.

There was nothing in the forum post from Google about "improving" anything. They directed us to contact forms that always existed. Just TRY using those contact forms.

I haven't tried today, but when I used them in the past, the first thing I received was a canned response that had nothing to do with the problem.

I would reply saying that this canned response didn't help and to please actually read my question.

About a week later, and this has happened to me over and over again, I would get another response saying they recently changed things in the Android Market that should have solved my problem.

Uhm, changed what? Did you read my question? Are you a robot?

It's infuriating. If this is all we have now, I won't email either. I already have copies of the responses they send back.

crickets Keeping hitting that arrow!

From the Hacker News guidelines: "Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."

Some people will downvote just for violating that.

I would honestly appreciate any sort of explanation as to the just massive amount of downvotes I received for this post. Obviously, pointing out the silence wasn't received well earlier and I fear it won't be better now.

My reply was relevant and accurate in the context of the article. Further, it's in the exact same vein as the highly popular now-top comment which didn't exist when I wrote this post. The only reply only points out that his email experience was poor in the past. It's obvious that Google wants to shift to one-on-one email support both in the article and the forum post.

So why did I get crapped on so badly?

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