Google acknowledges a 2.5 years old Networking bug in Android, plans to fix it in next update

Way back in 2010, a networking bug in Google’s Android 2.1 Eclair was logged with Google by an HTC Desire user. Dubbed as Issue 8030, the bug didn’t allow the OS to resolve host names on certain WiFi networks without appending the full local domain name. The issue wasn’t really considered a high-priority bug, as the number of affected users were far too few in number at the time.

Now after almost two and half years, Google has finally acknowledged the problem and is working in including a fix for it in the next Android version. The networking bug created problems to users who operated on an open wireless network. Open Wireless networks, as you may already know, are commonly found in businesses and universities.

While bugs get reported all the time, what is interesting about this one is that it has existed for so long. Sure, the number of users who got affected by it may have been negligible, but then considering Google does release so many minor maintenance updates all the time, fixing bugs tinier than this one, it’s still a mystery why they waited so long to acknowledge and release a fix.

Google’s reasoning for the delay was one that cited a combination of prioritization and resources. And it’s perfectly understandable that not all bugs that are reported can be sorted out in the order they were logged. Some would have to be addressed faster than others, depending on the criticality of the issue, as well as whether it affected a very large user base. But 2.5 years is stretching it a bit too long, don’t you think? The HTC Desire owner who originally reported this bug would certainly seem to think so.