Hasta La Gadget!

If there’s one thing you can be sure of it is that you can’t always trust the reviews you read on apps on the Google Play store. There a number of reasons why people would post inaccurate reviews from jealousy to downright stupidity. I’d wager that a lot of the negative reviews you see on some applications are people who simply don’t know how to use them. Google has announced via the Android Developers Blog that all Google Play developers can now reply to user reviews.

Clearly that means the flame wars are about to begin. You can bet that when a developer sees someone leaving a idiotic negative review about their application, they will reply. Now the trolls can be trolled. The ability to comment on user reviews for developers also opens the door for developers to respond to good reviews and feature suggestions.

I wonder if the fact that a developer can now reply to a negative review might prevent some people from posting negative reviews. One of the reasons so many trolls troll online is because there is typically no way for people to know who they are so the poster doesn’t have to face anything uncomfortable because of their review.

I think this is a good thing, developers should be able to respond to reviews good and bad. What do you think? Is this nothing but a loss of anonymity for users or a good way to help cut down on bogus reviews?