Trouble in Android Marketplace heaven

Now you see ‘em and now you see somebody else’s app. Developers complain that for reasons still unexplained, their apps are being all but delisted while others say their ratings have been spontaneously adjusted to near irrelevance — imagine that.

AndroidGuys report that folks on the Android Market forums have their knickers in a collective twist. It seems that some apps have become all but unfindable (no longer show up in search results) and others have seen their ratings adjusted to irrelevance, from top of the pops to also ran.

“Sometimes their engineers do reply but that seems to be random and far between,” says Bo Stone, AndroidGuys. “In any event, it places no obligation on Google personnel to follow up, much less to fix the problem.”

The cause? Developers themselves are clueless and had no forewarning.

See also: iPhone developers aim barbs at Google

What does Google have to say? They’ve got top men working on the issue — that’s it.

And, doesn’t all of this sound very, very familiar? The interesting thing here, however, is that, although there are plenty of problems with Android OS, their marketplace and the scores of un-upgradeable, one-off handsets, you almost never hear about them.

Why is that?

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