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Comment by dpcan | Hacker News Reader

I get my payouts from Google.

The reason there is so much frustration among Android developers is merely due to the lack of communication from the Google Android Team about anything.

We feel like we are on our own, in the dark, and not important. Every problem feels like a HUGE problem because there is no open line of communication. We scream for help into the Market forum which might as well be a black hole.

Why not talk to us?

How hard would it be to post often to a popular thread on the Market forum? How hard would that be? What's the hang-up? Just a little bit more of a human touch and Android devs would all get to breathe easier and we'd love developing on Android even more.

It's so simple. Talk to us.

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To be fair, it seems that it's only the Market team (or, if you use AdMob, the advertising team as well) that is so silent.

There are a number of Google Android developers who post to the various lists on a regular basis, answering tons of questions and quickly promising to fix bugs when they're identified.

There's a going theory that, because the Market involves money (like AdMob), the developers are under gag order from Google to not say anything, and all communications that do come out are filtered through legal.

I'm not justifying that as a practice, but just putting it out there that it might NOT be the fault of a reticent (or incompetent) Market team.

Though given the number of Friday-night releases that break things over the weekend (like a recent "oops! lost half your reviews!" bug), the incompetence theory has a lot of advocates.

How can providing the most basic level of support be under a gag order? Especially when their support pages recommend using the forums?

Again, I'm not DEFENDING this position, but...

Assume you've got a a super-successful app making $100k/month. Then a bug in the market messes up its ratings (like it did last Friday) and as a result they lose ranking and several hundreds of thousands of dollars over the next few months. They complain about it in a forum, and a helpful engineer says, "Oh, yes, that's a mistake we pushed to the Market. Sorry our testing procedures aren't better. I'll fix it right away!"

Bang, they've just publicly admitted negligence, and that developer could sue them for the lost $$$.

Again, I have seen NO proof of this. It's a going theory primarily because the money-oriented arms of Google (Market, AdMob, AdSense) are also the three that are the most tight-lipped over support issues.

I don't see how they could be sued, even over such a comment, since I'm sure they don't make any guarantees regarding the availability of the market, much less for the ranking/search functionality. You would have to prove malice or gross negligence but I think for the latter you would need good lawyers to have a chance.

You can be sued (in the US) over anything. They could certainly be sued for screwing things up without even any public evidence, but as you point out it's difficult to prove gross negligence, so most people won't bother.

But certainly it becomes much easier if you have evidence from someone inside the company.

YOU don't really need to see how they could be sued, or how an engineer's comments could put them at risk, in any event. If Google's legal counsel believes it to be a risk, then that COULD be what's going on behind the scenes.

And this is exactly the kind of thing that a lawyer would advise, which is really my only point.

Costs them money. When it makes them money, only then will you hear from them. Do no evil, as beautiful a plan as that was, is not what is in the new peoples hearts. A shame isn't it?

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