It actually was more blatant before - my app had two reviews, one from "Michal", one from "Mi", both giving my app a 1 star rating (it has a 4.4 star rating average otherwise), and both suggesting users download a competing app. The username of the person that publishes that competing app is Michal.
In the comments suggestion of that competitor's app, someone complains how they spammed bad reviews for their competitors, so apparently we weren't the only target.
It's more amusing than annoying for us. We have over 500 reviews for that app, so their one or two bad reviews don't do much damage. Our file manager is a minor app for us, and we have over 250,000 downloads of it. Despite their efforts, their file manager has less than 50,000 downloads. Their time would probably be better served by listening to their customers and improving their app, as opposed to trying to run down the apps of their competitors.
From my informal analysis, a bad one-star review is most dangerous in the initial days after an app has been deployed. Once you have hundreds (or thousands) of reviews up already, people get diminishing returns in trashing competitors apps. I also think Google watches the install/uninstall ratio more closely than reviews, since it's easier to game the system with in-store reviews.
http://bit.ly/129W8u2
It actually was more blatant before - my app had two reviews, one from "Michal", one from "Mi", both giving my app a 1 star rating (it has a 4.4 star rating average otherwise), and both suggesting users download a competing app. The username of the person that publishes that competing app is Michal.
In the comments suggestion of that competitor's app, someone complains how they spammed bad reviews for their competitors, so apparently we weren't the only target.
It's more amusing than annoying for us. We have over 500 reviews for that app, so their one or two bad reviews don't do much damage. Our file manager is a minor app for us, and we have over 250,000 downloads of it. Despite their efforts, their file manager has less than 50,000 downloads. Their time would probably be better served by listening to their customers and improving their app, as opposed to trying to run down the apps of their competitors.
From my informal analysis, a bad one-star review is most dangerous in the initial days after an app has been deployed. Once you have hundreds (or thousands) of reviews up already, people get diminishing returns in trashing competitors apps. I also think Google watches the install/uninstall ratio more closely than reviews, since it's easier to game the system with in-store reviews.