> app stores are market-places. search engine are market-places. app stores are search engines.
I suspect that sucky discovery is somehow beneficial to Apple. This also makes me think that good discovery in app stores might be the key to Google competing with Apple.
Apple did purchase Chomp [1] to help with their app store search, since that (relatively recent) purchase they've changed their search and ranking algorithm at least twice [2] to generally positive response.
Citation needed. How on earth is bad discovery beneficial to Apple? With the size and profitability of their app store, they have the most to gain from good discoverability. That's why they acquired Chomp. Smart money says that the acquisition is going to lead to much-improved discoverability on the iOS App Store.
> Citation needed. How on earth is bad discovery beneficial to Apple?
Relax. The question was put out there genuinely, not as FUD. If Apple has so much to benefit from app discovery, why has it taken so long?
I suspect that a lot of people at Apple benefit personally by having the power to decide which apps are featured, and which are not. I know devs for which this makes a difference as big as a good middle class salary or more. I am agreed that it's to Apple's benefit to have better discovery, but as well governed as it is, Apple is not a monolithic entity.
Smart money says that the acquisition is going to lead to much-improved discoverability on the iOS App Store.
I would love for this to happen. I'm not so sure this is in an area of core competency for Apple, though. Acquiring Chomp was the right move, but acquisitions don't always pan out.
"If Apple has so much to benefit from app discovery, why has it taken so long?"
Because it's a hard problem to solve? Because app vendors are excellent at gaming any system for competitive advantage?
Curating apps is tough, whether it's delivered via an app store, or whether it's a publicly available app.
There's a reason it was easier to find apps in the PC era; there weren't that many quality apps. There were 1-2 word processors worth a damn, a few spreadsheets, and a few databases. Development costs were high because the apps were difficult to create, and distribution costs prevented developers from monetizing them easily.
Compare that with today's apps; small, easier coding, far easier distribution. You end up with millions of apps for Android and iOS. And there's no hallowed authority like BYTE or PC Magazine to bless your app;
Somewhere out there, someone is thinking along the lines of Page and Brin, thinking out of the box about how to make app discovery work; and when they do, we'll all slap our heads and think "why didn't we think of that?" And then the SEO guys will slowly adapt and app discovery will end up like web discovery.
I agree with this theory. People tend to buy more apps because they don't know "which tool" will solve their problem. I have done this at least 15 times this year, bought multiple apps to solve a particular task and then realized that there was another app that probably would have been better.
Chalk that up to the era of disposable apps -- Spending a few bucks during discovery doesn't seem like such a bad thing to a user, I guess, but in aggregate, is pretty unsatisfying.
I suspect that sucky discovery is somehow beneficial to Apple. This also makes me think that good discovery in app stores might be the key to Google competing with Apple.