Google’s mismanagement of the Android Market

Jon Lech Johansen's blog ^ | 27 June 2010 | Jon Lech Johansen

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

Google’s mismanagement of the Android Market

Earlier this week, CNET ran an article critical of the permission model of the Android Market. Google’s response to the criticism was that “each Android app must get users’ permission to access sensitive information”. While this is technically true, one should not need a PhD in Computer Science to use a smartphone. How is a consumer supposed to know exactly what the permission “act as an account authenticator” means? The CNET opinion piece “Is Google far too much in love with engineering?” is quite relevant here.

Google does far too little curation of the Android Market, and it shows. Unlike Apple’s App Store, the Android Market has few high quality apps. A study by Larva Labs (the developers of the excellent Slidescreen app) estimates that Google has paid out 50x less money to developers than Apple has. While the Android Market is available in 46 countries, developers can only offer paid apps in 13 countries (for instance, Canada has only had access to paid apps since March 2010). In addition, the price for foreign apps is not displayed in the user’s local currency and developers do not have the option of customizing pricing by country. To make matters worse, you can’t pay for foreign apps using your Amex card or carrier billing. There’s also no support for in-app payments and changelogs (to communicate app changes).

Below are just a few examples of what’s wrong with the Android Market. Those 144 spam ringtone apps (which are clearly infringing copyright) are currently cluttering the top ranks of the Multimedia category. I was not surprised to find that they were being monetized through Google Ads.

Trademark and copyright infringement is widespread in the Android Market:

The music downloading app “Tunee” (one of many such apps) is one of the Top Free apps in the Multimedia category with more than 250k downloads. While some would dishonestly try to pretend that such apps are meant for downloading public domain classical music, the developers of Tunee are very clear about their intent. Their screenshot shows copyrighted music by the band Muse (Warner Music Group) being illegally downloaded.

These apps are damaging to companies that are building legitimate Android music apps (e.g Rdio, Spotify and MOG), not to mention Amazon whose MP3 store comes bundled with most Android phones in the U.S. Is Google’s strategy to turn a blind eye to illegal music downloading until they launch their own music store?

Developers and users are getting fed up and it’s time for Google to clean up the house.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

This should be fun.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

Ping, and bring all your friends! heh heh heh heh...

[RachelFaith]

WOW... That is a awful.

But of course, the MacHater crazies soon to follow will swear that there is NO DIFFERENCE between the Apple Apps Store and Droid.

That’s just a mess... gonna take a while to even get it all in my head before I really can post more details.

Thanks for the heads up... Poor Droid... that’s gonna be a mess plus plus.

[gogeo]

A study by Larva Labs (the developers of the excellent Slidescreen app) estimates that Google has paid out 50x less money to developers than Apple has...

Stopped reading there...

[Swordmaker]

I don’t think I will post this to the iPhone/Mac/Apple Ping list, Right... It will be just red meat to the hater group. I have to be careful how I handle the list and right now the members do not need more flame wars. This one would be vicious... and serve little value to the members.

Swordmaker

[RayChuang88]

Interesting you mention that because Google recently announced that they're going to start strictly enforcing interface standards for devices running Android 2.2 (FroYo). As such, that means by the time all the new Android-based cellphones out there arrive by the end of this year that use this phone OS, they'll all use the same consistent interface.