Google's Message To Developers: Fix Your App's Performance Issues Else See Them Demoted On Play Store (techcrunch.com)

Google today announced it's rolling out a change to its Play Store so that better-performing apps -- meaning those that experience fewer crashes and those that don't drain your smartphone battery -- will be ranked higher than apps with bugs and other performance issues. From a report: The goal with this new ranking algorithm is to ensure that the best apps are being promoted, which in turn leads to increased app usage and engagement, the company says. The impetus for this change came after Google realized that around half of the 1-star reviews on the Google Play Store were about app stability problems. Apps that don't work well frustrate users, who often turn to the reviews to leave a complaint. Over time, a number of bad reviews and low star ratings can impact the app's place in the charts and search results. But if an app is popular enough, a large number of installs can still, to some extent, override its negative reviews and push the app back up into a higher position than it rightly deserves.

Comments

Start with the bloated, slow, battery draining...

[Anonymous Coward]

facebook app

Developers message to google:

[Mandrake]

stop "other search engines" nonsense automatically adding every website search form I use to your collection of things you try to do on my behalf. Til you stop doing stupid shit in your apps, you have no business telling anyone else what to do.

Re: Developers message to google:

[arglebargle_xiv]

My first thought too. Some of the most insanely bloated resource hogs on Android are the ones from Google, but of course they won't get downranked by Google's new system.

Manipulation

[sexconker]

Why not let the review system speak for itself?
Let people rate the app on a scale of 1-5 or whatever, and just let that rating do its job.
Why fucking manipulate search ranking up or down beyond those ratings?

Re:Manipulation

[freeze128]

Because shills for the app developers can skew the results. Now what?

Re:Manipulation

[sexconker]

That's no different than shills for the competition bombing with with 1* ratings. Or dumb users hitting it with 1* without even trying it, because they don't like the company's policy on who can use what bathroom, etc.

If Google's stance is that the rankings have to be manipulated because the reviews can't be trusted, then the whole system is worthless to start with. It's like trying to patch a leak in the roof when the house is on fire.

Re:Manipulation

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not let the review system speak for itself?
Let people rate the app on a scale of 1-5 or whatever, and just let that rating do its job.

Did you ever see a rating system that actually works? The 5-star system is fail. When it was invented, the idea was that 3-star would be average/good, and 5 star excellent. In practice we see that anything not 5-star is seen as a complaint, both by reviewers and developers. Removing any headroom for stuff that actually exceeds expectations.

Also, a single person `trolling` a one-star might take a rating on a less-popular app down severely. But several people complaining with 2-3 stars will not effect a zillion shills.

What does work (imho) is text-based reviews: people sincerely telling what they think. But that takes time and effort from those reviewers.

While at it, google-and others- should please forbid those in-app begging for reviews. That nagging alone is enough to unleash the 1-star troll in me, though usually i suppress that and just uninstall.

Re:Manipulation

[Anonymous Coward]

Because reviews are mostly worthless.
5* - actually satisfied customer, but for every 1 who reviews another 100 don't.
5* - paid or unpaid shill
4* - "the app works fine I guess, but it doesn't have this one random feature that I - and only I - want"
3* - someone who thinks they are nuanced because they can think of 3 good things and 3 bad things to say about any topic
2* - "This app sucks, but the alternative actually made me sterile"
1* - "I wanted an app to solve all my problems and make me a millionaire. This one merely did what it said!"
1* - "This app doesn't work on the phone that I've had since 2009 and keep telling people I don't need to upgrade because everything still works"
1* - "i not no wat do app? pls halp"

Using quantitative data is always better than using fuzzy, corruptible user-submitted data. You want to know the temperature you watch the weather or buy a thermometer; you don't ask 100 people what they think the temperature is like today.

Re:Manipulation

[0100010001010011]

It would be trivial to add a continuous integration step to the PlayStore data.

Forget app size in MB, I want to know how long it takes to launch. How much RAM it uses after launch. How much RAM it uses after 1 hour open.

Re:Manipulation

[farble1670]

You ought to make up your mind. Should be rely on user ratings, or throw our user ratings? Is it

Why not let the review system speak for itself?

or

the whole system is worthless to start with. It's like trying to patch a leak in the roof when the house is on fire.

And obviously, there can be nothing in between those two. Either every user review is worthless, or they are all perfect.

Re: Manipulation

[invalid_user]

It will because searches return apps that do the same thing... see, your app only has to beat other apps that do the same thing.

Unless you believe that your app absolutely has to get a 5 because it's badass... otherwise, just be satisfied that you can beat your competitors, right?

Re:Manipulation

[Anonymous Coward]

Because five reviews that say "Great!" outweight a one star review that says "This program attempted to download a five gigabyte file without my knowledge, filled up my internal storage, and ran me up a massive data bill"

A review's weight should be tied directly to its uniqueness and length, and a review that is an exact duplicate of another should set off red flags.

Re:Manipulation

[Shadow of Eternity]

Because a lot of apps were ok for a while and then turned to shit with invasive spyware laden adds, massive size bloat, and performance issues and no matter how many people return to give it a 1star they'll never be able to pull down the rating too much because of all the early top ratings.

What google REALLY needs to do is give ratings a halflife so they stop counting after a certain amount of time or versions.

Obligatory XKCD comics

[ClickOnThis]

https://xkcd.com/937/
https://xkcd.com/1098/

Re: Obligatory XKCD comics

[MobyDisk]

How so? Both demonstrate that star ratings are not useful. 937 shows an example of how averaging them is useless, and 1098 shows that 80% of the scale is meaningless.

Google+ will replace Facebook

[jfdavis668]

The Facebook app is an overbloated piece of crap. Will Google+ finally take over?

Re:Google+ will replace Facebook

[geekymachoman]

In another dimension maybe.

Re: Google+ will replace Facebook

[toonces33]

127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com

Re:Google+ will replace Facebook

[LordWabbit2]

So is the Uber app, well it's not crap, but it's gotten so big I can't fit it on my phone anymore, if I want to Uber anywhere I have to cart my tablet around. Fucking annoying.

Isn't this kinda vague?

[mfh]

While I'm all for a system that rewards excellence, I think that unless Google is totally transparent about their methodology, this is going to be really easy for them to become further corrupted as a corporation and uprank loyal advertisers and downrank apps from the unwashed masses.

I would hope they would publish their testing methods and benchmark constraints.

Re:Isn't this kinda vague?

[sad_]

haven't checked the official android dev guides from google in a very long time, but there used to be a section in there on the do's and don'ts for your application, specifically targetting performance & battery life. they are probably just checking if these methods are used.

Google: If you value app performance, fix your own

[rhadc]

Google Voice for IOS crashes on me daily. Wish you'd take some of your own medicine.

Hey Google

[Khyber]

Half of the performance issue is 100% your fucking fault for being incompetent at enforcing updates, so you work on that first before you go pointing the blame elsewhere, assholes.

Signed,
Your Customers

Skype

[geekymachoman]

Seeing how all the latest reviews for skype are 1, there was even a news article about it .. can it be buried ?
MS don't listen to its users, but maybe they might if they don't appear in search results anymore.

Wishful thinking, i know

Reduce number of ads??

[toonces33]

Just a thought. Performance would improve, that's for sure.

Need uninstall count also...

[Anonymous Coward]

The app store shows install count, but an uninstall count should be also be reflected.

Re:Start with the bloated, slow, battery draining.

[Big Hairy Ian]

Can they also rank them on the size of the payload because most apps are chronically bloated.