The screenshot, posted by khriskooper on the second page of that thread, shows just how ridiculous the issue became. Developers were reporting anywhere from 50-90% of payments being declined, with the most significantly affected sellers being outside of the United States with the purchasers in the United States. It is possible that a problem was unintentionally published to the Android Market when Google added the similar/related tab.

It appears that the issue has been fixed, but Google still has not given a good explanation to the developers nor really apologized for the problem. This was the initial response from Google:

Hi. We saw a disproportionately large number of declines over the weekend, but have addressed this now.

Please let us know if you're still seeing this.

When one user showed surprise at the lack an apology or explanation, Google offered this:

Apologies for seeming brusque on the earlier post.

We deeply regret the inconvenience and pain caused to all of you, and take our responsibility to our merchants very seriously. I certainly didn't mean to be dismissive.

Re: the reasons. We're still digging into some of the underlying reasons with our integration partners, and will try to share more soon.

The real problem here is not just the lack of sympathy or a legitimate explanation - it's the time it took Google to even respond to the issue for the first time, let alone acknowledge it. A 3 day response turnaround for a serious problem that was causing developers to lose large amounts of money is simply not acceptable for a company that single handedly controls the faith of the original Android Market. And it's not an isolated incident either - it's notoriously hard to get a timely response for Android issues that can only be fixed by the big G.

Google, you can do better. The frustration was brought to not just developers, but also your customers, who, I'm sure, didn't enjoy getting declined multiple times while trying to purchase new apps. As some of the commenters rightfully mentioned, can a huge company like Google hire at least 1 person to monitor the issues during the weekend? Android is not an infant anymore - it's a giant machine, working its way to being the world's largest mobile OS, and it can't afford to hit snags like these and piss off its developers. Google, you know how loyal your developers are to you, so why don't you return the favor and improve on the customer service front?

Source: Android Market Support Forum via tip from Paul D.