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A technical gremlin has caused thousands of developers to be short-changed on payments they are due for applications they sell through Google Inc.’s online Android Market. The glitch, which developed some time in July, has created a mismatch between customers’ orders on Google Checkout, the Mountain View, Calif.-based Web search giant’s online payments system, and actual payouts to developers.
Contacted by Digital Transactions News, Google said it is aware of the problem and is working on a fix. It said it has contacted all affected developers by e-mail and will make good all shortfalls in a Sept. 1 disbursement. The company, which introduced the Checkout payment system to considerable fanfare in 2006 and recently launched an effort to spur mobile payments on Android smart phones, wouldn’t give details of the glitch beyond calling it a complex technical issue and saying it has caused orders for which customers have been charged to be improperly accounted for for payout purposes.
The glitch could be a black eye for Checkout, which at its launch was hailed by many analysts as a potential rival for PayPal because of its backing by Google. But Checkout, which features a wallet in which consumers can store credit card details for use on participating Web sites, has not caught on as expected. Checkout has suffered in recent years since abandoning a policy that offered free processing to users of Google’s AdWords marketing service. Google does not release merchant or user numbers for the payment service.
When the payout issue on the Android Market first surfaced is hard to pinpoint. The first post complaining of the problem appeared July 28 on a help forum serving developers who use the market. The developer who posted the complaint said he had noticed over the previous two days that he wasn’t being paid on apps at the rate of about “100 orders a day.” The post triggered a long string of responses from other developers who also complained of payment shortfalls.
Complaints were still appearing on the forum as of Thursday morning, when one developer posted: “Same issue—50% of my orders, and not paid out. When will this be fixed?” And, despite Google’s outreach over the issue, frustration had started to bubble over by Thursday. Another developer posted: “If you ever get fired for ignoring your customers, you can always work for Google.”
The Android Market, whose products work with smart phones using Google’s popular Android operating system, features some 250,000 apps on behalf of independent software developers and has processed about 6 billion downloads. Android phones compete with the iPhone from Apple Inc. and Research in Motion’s BlackBerry handsets.
