Why should Apple or Google be responsible for promoting your app? If I walk into a supermarket and I don't see the item I wanted on their front feature displays (meaning I need to walk down the isle to find it), does that mean the supermarket is monopolistic? Does that mean the item vendor should stop selling their product in that supermarket?
The "aisle" on the app store goes on for miles. Sure the product may be there, but if it's a 5-10 minute walk down the aisle to get to it, I don't think may people would look that far. The item is technically there, but it's not exactly accessible.
In this example there's also only one supermarket, the Apple app store. With grocery stores your product may not be in an advantageous place at Store A, but it could be right at eye level in Store B, C, or D. With the Apple store, if you're not featured there, you're not featured anywhere.
I agree the developer should not be surprised by this. I don't think Apple is acting badly. These are just consequences of having many apps and only one app store.
My argument was simply about who is responsible for promoting the app. But your point is correct.
My response to this: Would having multiple app stores available on iOS really solve the issue that OP is experiencing?
If iOS suddenly allowed a user to download apps from multiple different stores, would the number of app downloads for OP increase? How will I know which app store to find OP's app in? From a pure promotional aspect, I would have to know to look for OP's app, which does not sound like it would help OP in this case.
Unless this is thoroughly explained somewhere in the dev documentation, then developers are being lied to also.
People threw a fit when Google changed the search result UI so that it became impossible to tell paid results from organic results. This is similar but worse. Google just put the paid results above the organic ones. Apple completely removes the organic results at their whim.
The author should have been promoting the app thru multiple channels and not relying on the app store search exclusively, this was an obvious mistake. This doesn't justify what Apple did though. It's their app store, and they can do what they want, but this, although legal, is pretty sleazy IMO.
But there is other apps stores. There is Googles, Amazons, even Samsung have one.
No one is saying they are responsible for promoting your app. What we're saying is that if they're going to lock down their platform so that you can't install apps without going through their store, then they shouldn't arbitrarily, with no explanation, destroy years of good will thats been built up by genuinely building and delivering a high quality app people love.
I think you're suffering from the "just world bias", honestly. Look it up if you haven't heard of it. TL;DR is that as much as you want to believe they don't, shitty, unfair things happen everyday. Pretending they don't doesn't help the situation.
And how did they do that? By changing where it appears in one search. wow.
> If you're relying on Apple (or Google) to feature you in their search results, you're already at their whim with no recourse.
But your response is:
> No one is saying they are responsible for promoting your app.
Does higher search placement not equate to promotion, in this case?
Also, I looked it up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis
I'm not sure how it relates to my questions.
