Note: Google has long since updated the Android Market, but we’re letting this article stand as the apps discussed are still pretty kewl. While we appreciate the continued traffic from anti-Android sites, this is old info, and the Market no longer sucks.

Much as Android owners might wish this sad fact weren’t a fact, it is: the Android Market sucks. It’s an embarrassment. You can’t possibly let your friend with an iPhone in there if she wants to check out your Android phone – you’d never hear the end of it. And she’d be perfectly justified in mocking you.

The search…there is no search – you only find things by typing in their names exactly. (Really, Google made this?) Credit card processing bails a lot (that’s gotten much better lately, I should say), and the combination of no deals to pay via phone bills and Google Checkout being the only means of payment means the bulk of Android users around the world still can’t buy paid apps. There’s no bookmarking, no way to save searches, no way to share apps you’ve found, etc. etc. etc. It’s bad.

The Android Market ought to be a jewel of the system, something to show off to people like you do Sky Map, and instead it’s the downstairs john you got halfway through tiling three years ago and then stopped, and the toilet ain’t set right since.

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Android 1.6 is supposed to hit Real Soon Now, and with it the lovely new market we’ve all seen on YouTube in the last week or so:

In the meantime, the Market still blows. I have a whole screen on my phone that’s just about making the Android Market Experience hurt a whole lot less. Bookmarking apps, keeping track of favorite developers, watching which apps have betas in the Market right now, sharing lists of apps, even alternative markets to the Market: you really can do anything with these phones, anything anybody wants to make them do.

1. aTrackDog, 2. Internal Memory Widget, 3, Market Stalls 4. My Market, 5. Android Stats, 6. appSharers, 7. App to QR, 8. SlideMe Application Managers, 9. AndroLib.com, 10. Cyrket. (And yes, I have Bettercut, but I’m too lazy to make custom icons for my web shortcuts.)

None of this costs a dime, and as promised above, it doesn’t require you to root your phone or do anything that might blow up the Interwebs or void your carrier service agreement or warranty.

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1. aTrackDog

The first time you run aTrackDog its utility may escape you – it certainly did me. I thought it was a piece of crap that returned a lot of false positives – half the apps it said had an upgrade in the market just didn’t.

So anyway, somebody hipper tipped me off when I complained about it: aTrackDog finds every upgrade in the Market, including closed betas. So if you’re obsessive enough about app shopping that you really must know that an upgrade is due on a favorite at some indeterminate time – and clearly you are, or you wouldn’t be reading this – this is the free app for you. It won’t tell you when it’s coming, it won’t tell you squat except the beta’s in there, but you can drool and tweet and feel all squirmy like you’re ten and Christmas is coming.

Or, you know, that’s what I do.

2.  Internal Memory Widget

Crucial. It’s easy to get app-happy, especially when you first get your Android phone, and suddenly wonder why your phone has slowed to a crawl. Apps all have to live in system memory, and you can’t upgrade that the way you can your micro SD card, so it can get crowded fast, if you like to app shop.

Internal Memory Widget is super light and just does one thing, exactly what the title suggests. You need never be surprised by filling system memory again.

3. Market Stalls

Market Stalls is a beautiful, simple app whose functionality really should be part of the official Android Market. It keeps lists of developers you want to watch. You open it, there’s your list, you push, it opens all their apps in the Market.

That’s all it does, and you know you want it.

4. My Market

I have to confess, My Market isn’t part of my usual kit. I threw it in to be inclusive. A lot of people like it, I didn’t much.

Tagging what you’re interested in but don’t want to buy or download at the moment is frustratingly obvious function the Market lacks. My Market tries to ameliorate that, and almost gets there, but…exactly the way Market Stalls doesn’t assert itself in speeding you to your dev-filtered apps, My Market does. UI designer me talking, here: there are just too many extra choices and screen pushes involved in tagging apps via My Market to make the benefit worth getting. Also, you’re basically just throwing another piece of software on top of the browser, so it slows way down.

This is such obvious and vendor-friendly functionality that Google must incorporate it in an easier manner in the future, and then you’ve just built up this database of laboriously-gained bookmarks that are now useless.

I say pass, but…again, check the market. Lots of people like it, you might, too.

5. Android Stats

Daily reports on which apps and games are most popular, what’s climbing and falling, what apps have raised or lowered their prices. Absolutely fascinating, if you like gazing into market chaos.

6. appSharers

Pretty obvious stuff you ought to be able to do in the Market: appSharers lets you pick installed apps you like and send Market links via Gmail only. It publishes a canned email template that looks a lot like spam you can edit if you want to take the trouble, but hey, maybe “I find some interesting Android apps and want to share with you” will become the new “All your base are belong to us” or something. So I just keep sending it to people.

7. App to QR

It doesn’t save screen shots, which is lame, but this is really meant, I guess, for you to hold up to a friend and he or she can scan your phone. I get the feeling that kind of Cronenberg-esque sexual congress between phones happens a lot more often in Asia than it does here in the States.

(Related apps, BTW: shareQR and Share by QRCode. Neither of these are apps, proper – they add QR options to your “Share” list, and you can put URLs or text or what have you in QR codes using those, in much the same way you share anything via Twidroid or Gmail or Evernote. They both do the same thing as App to QR, though: just display the code on screen.)

Even though I have other means of doing so, I generated all the QR codes and Market Links for this article by running App to QR and taking screen shots, just as a proof of concept. You don’t have to know anything about anything to share apps via QR codes on your Android phone – there are several apps for that.

8. SlideMe Application Manager

SlideMe, Android’s only so-real-it’s-got-its-own-app alternative marketplace, doesn’t have a lot to offer, at the moment. Most of what’s for sale is also available in the Android Market, you can just have the experience of buying an app and not paying Google, if that floats your boat.

What is available at SlideMe, however, and unique to that market is pretty choice, although running many of said choice apps will require rooting your phone. Not all of them, though. (And if it’s tethering you want and don’t mind a physical connection, there’s always PDANet for everything, but it does cost thirty bucks.)

9. AndroLib.com

10. Cryket

Both of these sites do one thing, primarily: provide a web-accessible interface to the Android Market. Yeah, Google forgot to do that, too. The second or third dumb thing new users find out about the Market is there is no equivalent to the iTunes App Store in Android Land. AndroLib and Cyrket both mirror the Market’s contents in open online space, AndroLib adds stuff like stats and wallpaper and generally displays more evidence of human involvement, so I tend to use that one.

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So there’s a big handful of apps and aids I’ve discovered that can ease the pain of Android Market shopping until such time as our new ant overlords give us a new one. You may have your own solutions or stuff I haven’t discovered – feel free to share those in comments.

^RNL