14 DAY TRIAL // Lech Johansen, the programmer behind doubleTwist, has criticized Google’s Android Market over the management of its store. His blog post shows just a few examples of what’s wrong with the Android Market, mostly emphasizing the lack of quality content.
Although Apple gets its share of criticism when it comes to the iTunes App Store, Google is doing far worse at the management of its Android Market, or so says Lech Johansen in a blog post on Sunday (June 27). "Google does far too little curation of the Android Market, and it shows," Johansen declared. "Unlike Apple's App Store, the Android Market has few high quality apps", he claims.
“A study by Larva Labs [...] estimates that Apple has paid out 50 times more money to developers than Google has”, Johansen continues. “While the Android Market is available in 46 countries, developers can only offer paid apps in 13 countries (for instance, Canada has only had access to paid apps since March 2010). In addition, the price for foreign apps is not displayed in the user’s local currency and developers do not have the option of customizing pricing by country. To make matters worse, you can’t pay for foreign apps using your Amex card or carrier billing. There’s also no support for in-app payments and changelogs (to communicate app changes)”, he explains.
Johansen is one of three programmers who cracked the CSS algorithm that protected DVDs from being copied over a decade ago, according to a report by InformationWeek. The developer is also known to have reverse-engineered Apple's FairPlay DRM technology, these being just two of his numerous hacking feats, the report suggests. He is a co-founder of doubleTwist, the company that distributes an iTunes-like software application that recognizes various devices, not just iPods, when connected to a computer. Johansen claims he and his colleagues started doubleTwist because they were disappointed by the quality of software applications offered by the major device manufacturers.