Google not happy with number of paid app purchases in Android Market

Google is “not happy” with current app sales in the Android marketplace according to Android platform manager Eric Chu speaking at the Inside Social Apps conference in San Francisco yesterday.
In the Q&A portion of his keynote, Chu said that while he was pleased Android was seeing ever growing uptake, he was disappointed with the numbers of paid purchases being made inside the Market and said the firm was going to be focusing on improving the experience.
Emulating Apple, Google was supposed to have released an in-app payment system before Christmas, but Chu said his team “couldn’t get enough feedback to be comfortable launching.” It’s thought the system will finally roll out at some point this quarter, with Chu noting a big announcement would be coming “very soon.”
Carrier billing is also thought to be coming down the pipeline for the Android Market, though it’s unclear when that might happen.
Chu said his team was also committed to facilitating merchandising and discovery for developers and improvement of Android’s ranking algorithms.
“we really don’t want people to be able to game the system,” he said adding, “we are trying to fine-tune to make sure that great apps do well.”
Android, said Chu, remained a “strategic investment for Google,” and the team, he emphasized was “100 percent focused on the success of the developers.”
To that end, Google has added a team to its Android staff with the express purpose of providing quality control within the Android Market as “a way to improve our catalog and the consumer experience.”
“You can expect to see more investment into merchandising, payments, discovery, downloading, those are absolutely top areas for us,” Chu concluded.