Last week, the Android Market opened for priced applications. Immediately thereafter, the problem reports started rolling in to the developer support group:
Nobody quite knew who was supposed to be able to see what in the Market when, since the phased rollout was inadequately documented as to how long the process would take and when people would likely get the Market updates. In fact, as of this morning, at least some people in the UK are still unable to see priced items in the Market.
Some users are having problems obtaining application updates or purchasing more-powerful editions of existing free applications, with applications hanging or crashing after the purchase.
Developers who purchased the “ADP1” (unbranded T-Mobile G1 designed for developer testing) have had difficulty seeing applications in the Market, particularly those flagged as “Copy Protected”.
The copy protection itself was apparently broken within 12 hours of the Market making such applications available.
The mechanisms and terms for refunds, that customers are demanding due to the aforementioned problems or just in general, were buried in typical corporate mind-numbing legalese, leaving developers confused over what was going to happen and what they needed to do about it.
None of this is shocking, other than perhaps that Google, Android’s lead sponsor, tends not to have quite so many problems with updated services.
What is demoralizing, though, is not the fact that the Android Market apparently has problems, or that it may take some time to fix them, but that official communications have been non-existent to date. I am not expecting the core Android team itself to necessarily have answers – it is unclear how much they are even involved in the Android Market itself. However, somebody at Google should have both the authority to know what is going on and the mandate to keep the ecosystem informed.
We can look back almost exactly two years ago to see a fine case study in crisis communications: JetBlue’s “Valentine’s Day Massacre” of 2007. Seven flights were kept on the tarmac, away from gates and away from takeoff, for up to 10+ hours. Over 1,000 flights were canceled over six days, causing havoc for untold tens of thousands of passengers. While the trigger for the crisis was icy weather at JFK (JetBlue’s hub in New York City), the crisis was exacerbated by the lack of crisis communications, both internally (to reroute flight crews to where they were needed) and externally (with answers ranging from “no comment” to premature proclamations of crisis resolution). In the end, the calamity cost JetBlue tens of millions of dollars directly, let alone the loss of their formerly-sterling reputation.
The effects of the Android Market launch will undoubtedly be less traumatic to fewer people than were the effects of the JetBlue problems in February 2007. However, in its own way, the Market problems could have a similar effect upon Android itself, as some Android development shops have stated plans to abandon Android development in the wake of last week’s issues. This is not how you assemble an army of Android developers – it is how you disassemble such an army.
The Android project’s modus operandi, in times of stress, is to clam up. We saw this last summer, we saw it again in and around the various launch dates in the fall, and we see it again now. The core Android developers do not appear to be at fault — there is a clear intimation that their ability to speak on issues like these is being blocked by somebody. Whoever that somebody is should be taking a lesson from JetBlue as to what happens when you have inadequate communications when experiencing significant cascading problems.
After all, the person ultimately responsible for the JetBlue communications fiasco — David Neeleman, CEO — lost his title less than three months later.
