A first grader could dream up a better way to do this

5 points by stefanve ↗ HN
While most thing are getting better with Android in general and the Play store specifically. The latest change to the Play store app not only sucks but it is beyond apprehension they ever released it like this.

The first page you used to see was a nice spotlight page. While more often than not it didn't displayed anything of interest to me I did buy some apps advertised on this page (It is still there but not as the landing page).

Enter the new recommended system. I think the only thing they do is to look at what you installed at one point in time on your device and randomly show apps that other people installed. This is completely useless and utterly lazy implementation of a recommendation system.

as an example: Out of curiosity I installed a launcher called Dodol. I played with it for 5 minutes, removed it from my device, removed it from the "My apps" section. I did this weeks ago and my recommendation page is still littered with Dolo themes, even after explicitly telling Google Play that I am not interested I still get the same recommendations.

I get recommendations for apps actually installed on my device because it is popular with people that are using application X, and application X is something I removed from my device and from the "My app" list!

A first grader could dream up a better way to do this. I'm really amazed that Google is willing to release something so unbelievable sup par.

In the end it is bad for the developers and Google, because I'm not discovering any new apps.

Just a small frustration :)

2 comments

[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 8.2 ms ] thread
A similar situation happened with the Apple App Store. Many developers were(/are?) unhappy. Many users were unhappy. Within a few months, no one really cared anymore and they adapted. I can't even remember what the old App Store used to look like.
I like the idea of recommendations but the way they did it is useless. If they make it better I would be happy.