It does seem as though Android is an incredibly difficult platform to make money on though. This site has been littered with complaints (& plenty of iOS-vs-Android posts) about the dev process and lack of buyer activity.
I've actually found myself buying more than I otherwise would have, as a result of this sentiment. I want to support Android dev, and my credit card seems like the most logical way to do that.
Funnily enough, I've never even considered the Amazon market. I wonder what type of people do...
Google's Market is pretty good, and there's always the option of self-distributing (Swype does this and it is still very popular).
I wouldn't use Amazon's App Store after reading things like this. It's less usable for customers and it takes a lot out of the developer's control. However, I've seen developers handling this very badly. For example, they get shocked by the way the Free App promotion works (starting with the fact that it's FREE) and then try to remove the app from the store and deny those customers all further access to updates and the ability to reinstall (which may be wanted reasonably often if you use custom firmware). I don't care if you sold it for $0 or if you got burned by Amazon, that's still a bit of a bait-and-switch.
I've not had any difficulty justifying paying more for an app/game, thanks mainly to the 15 minute refund window.
Bad handling on the developer's part is a valid complaint alright. I'm sure it's frustrating and painful to have to support potentially large numbers of users (note: not customers) for no gain whatsoever. That, along with the obviously lacking editorial control to respond to troubled users is a glaring red flag to steer clear of the system.
The one piece of legitimate news here is that app of the day developers aren't being compensated at all, but that comes no where near justifying "rotten to the core", especially as they're all well aware of the terms when they agree to them.
He seems overly concerned with people who download the app just because they think it will trigger some micropayment to the developer, but that can't be a large number of people (developers paying attention to the launch terms of the market) and in any case are very unlikely to make up much of his support burden.
In the Apple store, if you got that many downloads and that kind of placement, the traffic from the various lists and high placement for 7 days would convert to many many paid sales over the following days.
It also seems to me that what the developer is getting for this is a free day of advertising. So if someone tries your app who normally wouldn't have because it's prominently displayed on the top of the screen and they like it they might buy the next version or other apps from you.
