Google Closing Android Market Developer Support Forums
If developers weren’t already peeved enough, we have some more bad news for them – Google’s shutting down the developer support forums where the coders of the market convene to discuss issues with the Android market or application development. The site has been home to huge discussions and complaints from market developers with massive threads usually spawning when developers are seeing diminished returns due to Android market bugs, errors or what have you.
Now, Google’s going to focus on supporting developers one-on-one, handling issues only when developers directly contact them. We like to think they’re getting a bit annoyed when a big ****storm brews over market issues and seeing the entire tech community immediately alerted to it.
But what’s the alternative? Developers can continue to contact Google independently for each issue as they always have. The problem with that is, more often than not, developers are met with canned responses. And in some rare instances, they are met with no response at all.
If you do get that canned response, you probably won’t get a status update on whatever fix you’re concerned with. I imagine a lot of isolated issues are handled in a timely manner, but the widespread issues that have popped up in recent months have taken Google forever to fix, with some not even having a resolution in sight.
Many would say that Google’s taking the easy way out (or being a “cop out”) by shutting the developer support forums down. I’m not so sure I’d disagree. As one Reddit user put it, their customer service and support were already rock bottom with the forums, and to take away the avenue developers use to discuss issues in hopes to fix problems Google drags their feet with is doing nothing at all to help. [Google]
From August 22 on, this Android Market forum will be dedicated to user issues and discussion. Because of the nature of developer issues, 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.Moving forward, threads regarding developer-facing issues will be closed, and we ask that developers report Android Market issues here so we can address your concerns in a timely manner:In addition to addressing concerns sent in via these “Contact us” fields, we’ll maintain the developer known issues page with up-to-date information on widespread issues:Thanks for your understanding and cooperation in helping us get your issues and concerns resolved in the most efficient way.