
How Apple's Apps Topped Rivals in the App Store It Controls - mswift42
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/09/technology/apple-app-store-competition.html
======
Wowfunhappy
I'm not saying this isn't a problem, but it seems pretty minor compared to the
fact that:

1) Apple's apps come preinstalled on every iPhone.

2) Apple's apps have permission to do things that 3rd party apps cannot.

If I search for "Web Browser" on the App Store... well, _technically_ I'll get
results from third parties, but every single one is just a UI skin around
Apple's own browser. That strikes me as a much larger problem.

~~~
frogpelt
I see it differently.

Since Apple makes the hardware and the software I don't have a problem with
them preinstalling their own products.

However, when a user is clearly searching for alternatives on the app store,
it matters how far down you have to scroll to find a 3rd party app.

Spotify being the 23rd result for a "music" search is absurd.

~~~
benologist
I see it differently. Way back when Microsoft shipped Internet Explorer with
Windows it ruined companies. We see companies being arbitrarily ruined by
Apple's actions every month. This platform abuse triggered massive antitrust
actions in the US and EU that Microsoft lost quite spectacularly, costing them
a fortune and forcing many changes to their software.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_wars)

~~~
snowwrestler
Microsoft shipping IE in Windows did not ruin companies.

What ruined companies (and what MS was actually prosecuted for) was Microsoft
telling PC manufacturers "we will only sell you Windows OS if you agree to NOT
install any other browsers on your computers." Those agreements were how MS
abused their OS monopoly to wrongfully exclude other browsers from the market.
Up to that point, Netscape was selling their browser direct to Dell, HP,
Gateway, etc. to be preloaded on machines they sold.

Microsoft was a _supplier_ to PC companies and the market they distorted was
the software supplier market. Apple themselves are the device manufacturer and
have under 50% share in that market; it's not a comparable situation.

~~~
benologist
The similarity is ruining companies via abuse of their platform position,
which doesn't depend on market share or monopoly or replicating Microsoft's
particular malfeasance.

------
michaelt

      The algorithm examines 42 
      different signals, they said, 
      including an app’s relevance
      to a given search, its
      ratings, and its popularity
      based on downloads and user
      clicks.
      [...]
      If you searched for “podcast”
      in May 2018, you would have
      had to scroll through as many
      as 14 Apple apps before
      finding one made by another
      publisher. 
      [...]
      “We make mistakes all the 
      time,” Mr. Cue said.
      “We’re happy to admit when we
      do,” Mr. Schiller said. “This
      wasn’t a mistake.” 
    

I have to say, it stretches credulity to claim any non-faulty algorithm would
put Apple's "compass" app as the second result in a search for "podcast"

It's difficult to make any sense at all of such a result.

~~~
OJFord
Ranking by count the all apps installed by users who have previously searched
for <term> might do it.

Not saying that's a good algorithm, but one _might_ be tempted to think that
with enough users it should be fine. The 'bug' being that all Apple's users
are Apple users, so Apple apps would get pushed high for any search.

I'm certainly not suggesting that's what happeened (or even that it would be
something so simplistic), but it gives me an idea at least how something that,
when presented only with the symptoms, seems so unbelievable.

~~~
HelloMcFly
Agreed, but the end result is that their algorithm pre-fix was clearly faulty
and should be considered a mistake. Their gymnastics to the contrary just come
across as either a bad-faith argument or self-delusion.

~~~
Bud
What comes across as cherry-picking to me is pointing out a single random
inconsequential web search and the result it _used to have_ in a previous
year.

~~~
yyyk
Not a single search, but many searches done repeatedly over time, proving the
result is highly unlikely to be happenstance. Oh, and the results only
happened to changed after Spotify launched an official complaint. The WSJ
article the NYT links to is even more detailed.

------
gcatalfamo
Can I go a little off-topic and comment how really well done this webpage is?
Very mobile optimized and nice the “scroll to discover” kind of behavior.
Haven’t noticed how long NYT has been doing this kind of stuff but very well
done.

~~~
gumby
Interesting: I feel precisely the opposite: reading text is incredibly
efficient and having to mess around to uncover the content is distracting and
annoying.

I'm not trying to say "you're right, I'm wrong", or the opposite: different
strokes and all that. I found your excitement about the design quite
interesting.

~~~
gothroach
I'm in the same boat as you, but in addition I was having trouble with
scrolling up and down messing up their presentation.

------
rchaud
Jobs' "On Flash" letter seems like aeons ago, (~10 years) but even then people
were commenting on the obvious implications. It pointed to Adobe Flash apps as
battery-intensive and riddled with security bugs (both correct), and proposed
that native apps were the solution.

But it went one step further by providing the casus belli against the
distribution of software outside of Apple's walled garden. Create something
Apple didn't approve of, and you get booted. A clear break from its desktop
programs, which could be freely installed from wherever.

Now the full picture is beginning to emerge. It was good going for app
developers when Apple was largely a devices company, but as it moves into
software and content creation/delivery, its position as marketplace gatekeeper
means that everyone else will have to start paying tributes (in the form of
ads, which appear above organic search results) if you don't want to end up
relegated to the bottom of its search algorithm.

------
antoniuschan99
For anyone who isn't old enough to remember the movie Antitrust.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3TwIJjyjPM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3TwIJjyjPM)

------
cromwellian
Leaving aside the obvious problems with this, it also is just a shitty user
experience. A search for “podcast” should not return a compass app. For a
company that is supposed to be at the pinnacle of user experience and
usability, the App Store buitin search is pretty unusable.

------
pier25
It's fine, it's their App Store and they can do whatever they want IMO.

What's not fine is not being able to install a third party App Store with
different policies so that users can choose whatever they prefer.

~~~
esmi
Just out of curiosity, how do you imagine that would work in the real world?

Apple's main thing is security, and one important aspect of how they achieve
it is by only allowing signed code, which Apple also does some basic tests on,
to be installed on the device. Many think this is a valuable service.

In the third party App Store scenario, does the developer still submit an app
to Apple for approval? How does Apple then make the approved app available to
the third party? How is this different from a website that gives App
recommendations?

~~~
mwnivek
Apple seems to balance security and freedom in MacOS, by asking if you are
sure you want to uninstall unidentified software, outside of the Mac App Store
[1]. Why can't they offer that same balance in iOS? Imagine how different the
MacOS experience would be (particularly for small developers) if every piece
of software had to be installed through the Mac App Store.

[1] [https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/open-a-mac-app-
from...](https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/open-a-mac-app-from-an-
unidentified-developer-mh40616/mac)

~~~
esmi
I think the security expectations for those two platforms are very different,
and that's why Apple balances them differently.

MacOS gives up a lot of security for those extra abilities, and on MacOS I
don't feel like I ever really had security. For example, I begrudgingly run
shell injection attacks on myself every time I download some large codebase,
which I am never going to review all of, or run brew, etc. It has been that
way since the very beginning. Not so with iOS.

~~~
pier25
> _I think the security expectations for those two platforms are very
> different, and that 's why Apple balances them differently._

Can you elaborate?

Are you arguing that macOS users need less security than iOS users?

> _It has been that way since the very beginning. Not so with iOS._

I have to say that "it's this way because it has always been this way" is a
very poor argument.

------
gimmeThaBeet
I wouldn't say I have trouble considering this issue, I know what my opinion
is. The ramifications feel uncomfortable because Apple is the Goliath, it
feels bizarre their behavior should need defending.

The idea I get hung up on is Apple doesn't control the market, they control
access to the customers companies want. And those customers made a free choice
to enter apple's ecosystem. They could get an Android, they could get none of
the above. The game consoles have had an incredibly locked down marketplace.
nintendo had to basically build their brand on it in the wake of atari in the
80s. Why do mobile marketplaces get such additional scrutiny? The orders of
magnitude more money? The pervasiveness of mobile devices? The utility of the
devices?

The area where I do struggle is the apple tax, they don't pay it while
everyone else has to. My reflexive feeling, is that if you can't provide 20%
value over what apple can provide, there might be intrinsic issues; your
product might be a commodity. But for something like spotify, where the
service exists way beyond the iOS platform, it seems wild that apple get 20%
of anything that goes through its platform.

~~~
xenadu02
How is that any different than Nintendo's first-party games? They don't pay a
license fee to themselves (and such an action would be a pointless accounting
fiction if they did).

When you buy a Switch it means you can only play games Nintendo has approved.
Unlike the app store, the policies are much more restrictive there. Random Joe
can't put a game on the Switch. When you develop for the Switch it means if
you have a game similar to a Nintendo game _they won't sell you a license and
your product is dead in the water_.

People love to forget: The App Store was the first major distribution
mechanism where anyone can join the program, no pre-vetting required, and so
long as you obey the rules you can sell any app you want. Prior to that every
distribution mechanism (sans selling it yourself on the web) was far more
discriminatory, restricted, and took a bigger cut of your sales.

~~~
gimmeThaBeet
That's the point, the behavior doesn't seem different, but the levels of
scrutiny aren't even comparable, that's the question. Does the behavior matter
as much as the size of the market in which the actor is in. Do people care
because, apple is large, because the addressable app market is large, because
politicians have iphones but don't give a toss about a mario game?

------
yyyk
Note that the article links to a previous WSJ expose, which was posted here in
the past[0] (without comments). The WSJ story has more detail, and is IMHO
pretty damning when it comes to the podcast app.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20535129](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20535129)

------
prashnts
Quick observation from the data presented in article (very well done, by the
way): Beginning iOS 11, if I remember correctly, Apple finally added the
ability to delete stock apps. Deleted apps could be downloaded from App Store
later. Perhaps the « boost » in search rankings for the stock apps was related
to that ? If the dates match, I assume they would have wanted these to be
found easily and screwed up in scoring. This is assuming good faith, of
course.

Edit: I did not remember correctly! This feature was added in iOS 10, released
in September 2016.

------
tempodox
I don't mind that at all. What bugs me much more is the complete lack of
useful search and filter options in the AppStore and the resulting nonexistent
discoverability. You basically only find those apps you know exist beforehand
or that pop up by happenstance (if you're lucky). What point is there in
boasting about how many million apps you have in your store when 99.99% are
invisible for all practical purposes?

------
lotsofpulp
I appreciate Apple offering its own apps, as I don't trust anyone else with my
data.

~~~
helpPeople
You should not be trusting anyone, including Apple with your data.

The same company that won't admit hardware flaws won't admit they use your
Data.

~~~
lotsofpulp
If there was an easier way for me that didn't involve a third party, I would.
Unfortunately, it's the best option I have given my circumstances.

------
sebastianconcpt
_The executives said the company did not manually alter search results to
benefit itself. Instead, they said, Apple apps generally rank higher than
competitors because of their popularity and because their generic names are
often a close match to broad search terms._

No need to if the algorithm includes to artificially normalize having some of
their apps syroketing their raning value.

------
sebringj
Does this feel like a scramble to make up for lack of innovation lately? Apple
is taking away from the community that builds them up which seems like a play
to make quick profits. It would be too much to hope for an open platform that
was curated by some decentralized voting mechanism via community /
contributors.

------
thorwasdfasdf
the app store is such a mess. Even finding something as simple as a good
running app that stores and shows your weekly mileage is a huge challenge. All
the top apps are terrible or missing the crucial weekly mileage feature or
aren't free. Google search is equally terrible because they only show reviews
from sites with super high "domain authority", or whatever, all i know is i
get the same damn site results over and over and just gets worse after 3
pages, and I can never find the reviews I'm really looking for.

Am I the only one having these sorts of problems over and over again? or I am
i just an outlier?

~~~
clintonb
> All the top apps are terrible or missing the crucial weekly mileage feature
> or aren't free.

Have you looked for a non-free option?

------
jasonhansel
Remember when the EU banned MS from shipping a _web browser_ with their OS?
Why is iOS allowed to do the same sorts of things?

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Supposedly there are other smart phones than the iPhone that have significant
market share (even more than the iPhone sometimes) in Europe.

The same wasn’t true for desktop OSes (at the time), Microsoft Windows had an
overwhelming chunk of Europe’s market share.

------
fermenflo
Ok? I feel like Apple is free to promote whatever they damn please on their
_own_ platform. Are we seriously criticizing a company for promoting their
products ahead of 3rd party products on their own platform? and I mean, how
much money do you think Apple is making from someone having their compass app
downloaded? Seems like an inflammatory and in-genuine story.

~~~
Causality1
The EU fined Microsoft six hundred million dollars just for including Internet
Explorer and Windows Media Player in Windows by default. Apple's behavior is
much worse than that.

~~~
coldtea
How many times this old wives tale will have to be repeated till people
understand what went on then, and how it's nothing like it's now?

Microsoft then had a monopoly on desktop OSes at the time, at 95+ (close to
97%, in fact).

Apple has a paltry sub-50% share of mobile OSes.

The "But they have 100% share on their own products" is not an argument, as
far as the law is concerned, as monopolies are not judged this way. That's the
same reason why you can't legally force McDonalds to also sell Burger King
burgers, or GAP to sell Banana Republic clothes...

And even MS monopoly position wasn't the issue (having a monopoly naturally is
not illegal). The issue was it used its monopoly position to threaten and
bribe OEMs to not work with competitors.

~~~
m_ke
iOS revenue is 2x larger than android. There might be more cheap android
phones out there but Apple has the majority of high income individuals.

~~~
coldtea
Which is not relevant. Monopoly is defined on a market, not on income segments
(and even if it mattered, still on the high income individuals iOS is hardly
above say 70%).

Someone could sell cars for $5K and have 99% of the car market in a small city
of 1000 people, while another one sells a single car for 100M and has 20 times
the other's revenue. It's still the cheap car guy that has the monopoly.

~~~
m_ke
Revenue based market share is more relevant than unit market share for most
businesses. Apple pulls in 2/3 of the revenue in the mobile app ecosystem and
gets to act as a gatekeeper between most consumer startups and their potential
customers.

~~~
coldtea
> _Revenue based market share is more relevant than unit market share for most
> businesses._

It's not relevant for monopoly law and whether it's a monopoly, which is
what's discussed here...

------
falcolas
I just tried to replicate this; I got very different results:

1) Ad (for Audible)

2) Apple Podcasts (So far so good)

3) A story (?) about podcasts (still odd)

4) The Podcast App

5) DLC for The Podcast App

6) Himalaya: Podcast Radio Player

So, I'm not sure how the NY Times got that particular listing, but it's not
exactly what I'd call a smoking gun against Apple.

~~~
jasonlotito
> If you opened the App Store on an iPhone in May 2018 and typed “podcast” in
> the search box, you would have seen something like this.

"in May 2018"

> I just tried to replicate this

Unfortunately, you don't have a time machine.

~~~
falcolas
So, we're happily crucifying Apple on a hill based on an unreproducable search
done half a year ago? Sounds... less than ideal.

~~~
jasonlotito
No. Just because something was done in the past doesn't mean it doesn't have
repercussions to this day. For example, the search result issue might have
helped Apple get it's products into the hands of more users who settled for
their apps rather than using a competitors apps that would have been found
instead.

If you are going to continue this discussion, please do so in good faith and
don't continue to misrepresent what is being said.

------
jjtheblunt
Is it not ironic that the NYT, of all companies, cites a different company for
prioritizing its own agenda at the expense of being unbiased?

Not that it's right for either case, just ironic.

------
evancox100
Seems like one of the fixes might be to provide a way to search for one's
already installed apps without going to the app store.

~~~
apricot13
swipe down on any homescreen page and type into the search box and iphone will
do this.

~~~
evancox100
Thank you, I'm a new iPhone user and did not know that. (Not exactly
discoverable)

------
gjsman-1000
Have you noticed the NYT bashing Silicon Valley more lately?

Someone did an article on how it’s a strategy to save their ad money. Really.

~~~
robwilliams
Tech companies are some of the largest and most influential companies in the
world, and people are just now starting to understand what it means to have
their lives influenced by wide-reaching algorithms. Sounds like a great topic
for journalism to me.

Regardless of the motivation, NYT's recent algorithm-centric investigations
(like the YouTube one a month or two back) are really interested and well-
researched.

------
013a
Whole Foods stacks their stores with their 365 brand products. In some cases,
competitors to certain products aren't even sold.

Of course, there are other grocery stores you can shop at. Just like how there
are other mobile platforms you can use. (well: there's _another_ mobile
platform, singular. that's a problem).

I don't understand the argument for the App Store being a monopoly. Apple can
do whatever they want in their store, just like Whole Foods can sell whatever
they want in theirs, or Walmart, or Target, or whoever. If an argument can be
made that they're actively trying to destroy the competition in the market of
mobile platforms, then we should be much more concerned.

Beyond that: there's a very unique argument that the "platform" (iOS) and the
"store" (App Store) are separate entities in a capitalistic market sense. If
this is the case: the onus is NOT on the App Store being more open, but rather
on iOS for supporting multiple different storefronts. And, again, I think
that's not a very interesting argument unless iOS itself is being anti-
competitive in the market of all mobile platforms, which doesn't seem to be
the case.

~~~
gamblor956
It's hard to explain from a mobile, but in a nutshell generally retail stores
buy the goods they are selling, whether store brand or third party, so they
can differentiate the products in store how they like.

Suppliers can and do use leverage like withholding popular brands from stores
that go too far in favoring the house brand.

Apps however have no such leverage, and due to the way the store is set up,
the retail defense doesn't apply.

~~~
013a
I'm not convinced that its so different, at least from a "we should be
concerned about it" angle.

Yes, retail stores have inventory that they, generally, have to purchase and
hold before the sale. This is a natural limitation on the amount and variety
of goods they can offer.

By comparison, app stores don't have inventory. But they do have natural
limitations. There's a cost to each sale, represented by the 15-30% fees the
App Store charges, which is a translation of underlying fees that Apple pays
to host and distribute applications, whether paid to credit card networks,
engineers, cloud infrastructure providers, supporting services such as iCloud,
etc. There _is_ a per-unit cost to app store downloads; its just that most of
it is paid on the purchase, download, and use of the application, not hosting.

Additionally, App Store search result rankings are absolutely a limited
resource which very closely resembles aisle space in a retail store.

When thinking about this specific issue (which dates back over 16 months ago?
and has been fixed? why are we talking about this?): I don't see a
philosophical or legal problem with Apple doing this. I see a usability
problem. Its just bad results that aren't delivering what customers expect or
want.

~~~
gamblor956
_. There 's a cost to each sale, represented by the 15-30% fees the App Store
charges, which is a translation of underlying fees that Apple pays to host and
distribute applications, whether paid to credit card networks, engineers,
cloud infrastructure providers, supporting services such as iCloud, etc. There
is a per-unit cost to app store downloads; its just that most of it is paid on
the purchase, download, and use of the application, not hosting._

This is false. Payment transactions cost under 1%, especially at Apple's
scale. In the case of many of the competing apps like Netflix and Spotify,
only a de minimis value is provided by iCloud hosting (i.e., the mandated iOS
app) because the majority of the content is hosted by the third party on
external (non-Apple) platforms. If we're using Apple's costs as justification
for the 30% cut, they definitely aren't providing services worth 15-30%
they're charging for the vast majority of App Store transactions.

 _Additionally, App Store search result rankings are absolutely a limited
resource which very closely resembles aisle space in a retail store._

I don't know what sort of weird grocery aisles you shop in, but in the real
world grocery aisles are two-sided, with multiple levels, and every product
fronts the aisle so that customers can see all products at the same time
(though some products are easier to see than others). This isn't even remotely
the same as the ordered, multi-page list that the app store provides, in which
many competing products _can 't even be seen_ until you take further action.

 _When thinking about this specific issue (which dates back over 16 months
ago? and has been fixed? why are we talking about this?): I don 't see a
philosophical or legal problem with Apple doing this. I see a usability
problem. Its just bad results that aren't delivering what customers expect or
want._

It's the same issue that Microsoft had with bundling IE. They're abusing their
market position in one market to interfere with another.

------
yoz-y
If anything it seems to have gotten better since they started doing their
study. Also I suppose Apple puts their apps on top to make it easy to re-
install. Imagine if you removed the Music app and then were unable to find it
again...

~~~
fortran77
That's not what I got from the article though.

Maybe I misread it, but I see that it's talking about how if you say "Podcast"
in the search box, you'll see pages and pages of Apple's own apps, unrelated
to podcasts, before you start seeing podcast apps.

~~~
yoz-y
> "in May 2018"

If you search for podcast now you see an ad, then apple podcasts, then a story
about creating podcasts, then apps. In my case I have Spotify on 3rd place
after 2 popular local radio apps. The article conveniently omits a history
chart for 'podcast' search to push their agenda.

~~~
fortran77
Thanks. I was going with what the NY Times told me! :-)

~~~
esmi
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20852880](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20852880)

:)

------
tracer4201
Merits (and anti trust possibilities) of Apple doing this aside, just a shout
out that it’s another anti tech article on the NYT. They have a daily piece
against one of the FAANGs. It’s at the point where I could start plotting this
data over time and plastering it in its own thread.

Just remember folks - NYT directly competes with many of the FAANGs. Its
awfully convenient to do reporting questioning your directly rivals,
especially when you never preface your articles mentioning the conflict of
interest.

~~~
rchaud
> NYT directly competes with many of the FAANGs.

In what business segment? Does the NYT offer streaming TV/movies? An online
retail presence? Cloud infrastructure? Computers and phones?

As reported in the article, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to allow an anti-trust
case to move forward on this issue. That's newsworthy, and IMO the article
does a good job in showing the general consumer what anti-competitiveness
looks like in practice, while getting comments from both Apple and companies
who've been affected by these policies.

------
BuckRogers
It’s a privately held platform. The apps created by Apple should be on top if
they want them to be. There’s no right to equal access such as with Net
Neutrality, it’s not a publicly owned or subsidized platform. The only way
this could possibly be wrong is if we nationalize Apple. I’m definitely left
of center economically and I have no problem with Apple placing their apps on
top. It would completely align with current rules, regulations and economic
expectations. At 40% market share in the US, they’re not even a monopoly, not
that it would matter anyway. That’s without mentioning that on a personal
level I would prefer to do business with Apple rather than giving my
information to many of the third parties. They’ve earned a reputation of being
trustworthy and deserving of our money.

~~~
kemayo
Yes, but the article isn't objecting to Apple listing its own Podcasts app at
the top of a search for "podcast". It's objecting to it then listing Compass,
Find Friends, Tips, and 12 more Apple apps that aren't related to the search
query before any non-Apple app is listed. (Which issue they have since fixed.)

The article is about "Apple made a mistake in its search algorithm", not about
competition per-se.

~~~
sambe
The article uses the term "stacked". It refers to a complaint to the EU about
the abuse of their position as owner of the App Store. It refers to a Supreme
Court anti-trust case. It repeatedly frames the discussion in terms of what
Apple gained vs competitors.

