[KNOWN ISSUE #K12] "Ghost App Bug" - Recently approved apps work intermittently

[Bruno Oliveira ("btco")]

Issue:

An application that was recently approved will sometimes appear in the Application Directory and can be added by some users, but will not work reliably. Some users will be able to use it, while others will get errors saying "this gadget has not completed the review process". Other users may be redirected back to the App Info page in an infinite loop and won't be able to add the application. So the app is in a state between "under review" and "approved", hence the name "Ghost App Bug".

The issue disappears once the approval update reaches all backends and caches and the app's approval state is consistent across the whole system (usually within 12-24h of the app being approved). After this, the issue never occurs again for the application. Again, to emphasize: this issue only affects recently approved applications in between it being approved and its approval state rolling out to all systems that access that information.

Workaround:

Please wait 72 hours after approval before starting to promote your application. This will probably ensure that its approval state is properly reflected in all databases and that your app is no longer a "ghost".

Status:

We will fix this as soon as we can!

[Tiago Silveira (Google)]

UPDATE: the next orkut release has a small improvement to this issue: users in the old UI are affected by this bug as much as users in the old UI (as opposed to the currently live implementation which penalizes old UI users). That means users who come to the AppInfo page from the apps directory will be able to install any app (or so I believe).