They do the same thing on the Play Store, for example I just searched for Firefox and the first result is a sponsored spot for Opera. Does Apple do that on the App Store?

A funnier example: searching for Amazon gives Temu as the first result. Searching for Temu gives Shein as the first result. Searching for Shein gives Shein as the first result! ...but only because they outbid everyone else for the ad spot on their own name, resulting in Double Shein: https://i.imgur.com/0buR8Hq.png

As a user, I'm still baffled that the interface to view and manage the apps I have installed on the system - which is 90 out of 100 times why I'm opening the play store - is tucked away in some obscure corner of the app.

The other 10 times, it's because I want to install some specific app that I already know and I just want to get to the page of that exact app - either through a direct link or through the store's search.

There were exactly zero times where I opened the store with the motivation "gee, I really feel like installing a new app, but I have no idea what it should be... Let's check out the recommendations!"

Yet this seems to be what the entire UI is optimized for.

Just opened the App Store to check. There’s an ad for chrome on the home screen. I click search and before I start typing search suggestions pop up. The first one is for chrome. I type Firefox and click search. The first result is chrome.

This is also true on Apple's app stores, to be fair. I didn't know this until I got a MacBook Pro recently and my assumption that Apple's controls would be tighter than Google's was proven quite wrong when I opened the Mac App Store for the first rime.

> Does Apple do that on the App Store?

Yes they do. Their search already sucks in normal circumstances—I remember searching for “Pinboard” (the bookmarking service) and had to scroll by thirteen pinball (the game) apps before starting to see Pinboard apps—but you can type in the exact name of the app you want had have an ad for a competitor above it. Not only is it allowed, it’s encouraged.

Learned that App Store does this too during a recent MFA rollout.

What really surprised me was that when instructed to install Google Authenticator, a significant portion of people (I'd estimate close to 50%) would search the exact name and then proceed to reach to install the sponsored top result with a completely different name until I stopped them.

I usually use the app store in Fedora and am used to finding what I want and having it installed within secounds.

Occasionally, I help people with their Mac's, and it can easily take half an hour to get something installed (finding their password etc), and on iOS, there are ads that buries the real results.

Then I am reminded how spoiled I am in the Linux world! No ads and quick access to a large selection of open source and commercial programs, no accounts or logins!

Same thing happened to me. I wanted to get "Fit Notes" - a free and ad-free app. I searched for it and the first result is some adware/subscription-based crap. I skip over. I scroll down part the "Sponsored: Related to your search" section with a whole bunch of others. I am still seeing more paid/in-app-purchase/subscription-based apps.

At this point I thought that the app didn't exist for newer versions of Android.

It turned out that it was the second result, just above the "sponsored" one. It looked so much like a part of the first result that I just skipped over it.

I wonder how much this can end up contributing to the Kleenex-ification of a brand or a term. You search for firefox and random other browsers come up. Now browsers in general are associated with the firefox term. Of course, when it comes down to it, there isn't much difference between browsers anyway, the UI is different but they all need to work with the same websites, and people have been using specific application names in place of the type of data/work ("Excel file" being used to refer to a CSV).

> Does Apple do that on the App Store?

Yes. In fact, I often get sponsored stuff before Apple’s own apps, when I’m searching for the Apple app. I’ll also get things like games, when I’m looking for development or productivity apps. It’s crazy.

One of the things that I do, each morning, is take a long walk, listening to music.

I’m an Apple One subscriber, so there’s no limit to the music from the catalog. I don’t buy individual songs. It’s already been paid, so they aren’t selling me anything.

I use the “Discovery Station” playlist, which gives you random songs, based on your preferences.

It used to be quite good, but lately, it’s been stuffing weird pop songs into the playlist. These are ones that I’d never listen to, otherwise. I will tell Siri that I don’t like the songs, but they keep coming, anyway. I often dislike up to five songs in a row; at which time, the phone gives up on the station, and starts feeding me random songs from my library.

This renders the “Discovery Station” pretty much worthless.

It’s fairly obvious that the playlist has been corrupted by paid results.

Pandora has always done the best job of selecting relevant unknown music for me, but the limit on skips (even for paid accounts), makes it worthless. Undiscovered music is frequently obscure for a reason, so I can sometimes skip a majority of the selections. I’ve always been puzzled about why Pandora never got borged by Apple or Microsoft. They were excellent, a decade before the AI hype bubble was even a broken rubber on the drug store shelf.

I just searched "Firefox" in the app store. The top result is Google Chrome with an Ad indicator (Google paid for higher placement). Second is Firefox.

Sometimes it's not even close, I went to download the PAX Australia app and the top result was Revolut. I'd love to know the set of circumstances that the algorithm picked them to sponsor there.

Results may vary:

Searches for Amazon, Temu, Shein - result in each being listed in the promotional panel and then as the first result.

For Firefox: Chrome is listed in the promotional panel and Firefox as the first result (below it).

The promotional panel has a different background colour and “Ad” badge, but is otherwise identical to other listings.

Two results fit on the screen: the promotional panel and the first listing. Diverging from Google is that the ad result is obvious and doesn’t push the search result out of view.

I’ve stopped using either the play/app store to search for apps. I search kagi and then click-through to the appropriate app store.

So they are actually Ad Search engines.

As a curiosity, this is a common strategy for advertising! But people still disagree whether it is the best investment. You can generally win on your own name with comparatively low bids, because it is obviously the most relevant search term, and relevance is often factored into the price you pay for ad placement. So you may choose to bid defensively, to stop competitors from advertising on your name. Even so, the obvious counter-argument is that the person searched for you _explicitly_ by name, so how likely are they to click on your competitor's ads? I don't have a ton of experience, so perhaps some orgs make the decision in a data-driven way, but I suspect most make the decision in a mostly faith-based way.

Try searching for chrome using ma edge.

It basically intercepted said search and gave me an ad saying to keep using edge.

Thinking back it seems unbeleivable so I searched.

https://www.theverge.com/23935029/microsoft-edge-forced-wind...

> Does Apple do that on the App Store?

I believe so - and it seems the devs know it happens, bevause I often see a paid ad for "Chrome" if I search "Chrome"

Apple is even worse. Try searching for Grok in the app store and it will be almost impossible to find due to some deal they have with OpenAI.

Testing this with Aurora Store and the search terms actually give me the correct results. Another reason to use that over Google Play Store

The Santander bank does the same when you enter the address of a broker while doing a transfer. They show an ad for one of their investment funds

It is same on PlayStore and AppStore.

You would be surprised to know Apple started this in AppStore before Google on PlayStore. I assume it is because Google wanted to be safe from Antitrust lawsuits (Follow Apple rather than going there first).

> Amazon

Speaking of amazon... By god amazon search is horrid for this.

If you search for HP laptop you get a whole bunch of sponsored Lenovo's at the top of the page.

Same on maps as well. That has actual annoying consequences where you end up at the wrong place.

On play and app stores if you search for Microsoft Authenticator, which I imagine most people working at a company would be doing, there's an Ad first, which is rather annoying for a security application