The App Store Problem
An article out there was calling Microsoft out on the scam software in their store. And it is a valid argument. Before breaking into this though... I'd like to add that the same problems exist on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Pretending that they don't is ludicrous, and each content owner has the ability to remove those scams. Apple and Microsoft both have processes which should be catching and stopping these before they ever hit the stores.
So why not stop them? Because app stores are a numbers race. And the most important race is the total number of apps. At least that is the perception.
I argued a long time ago that if an app store had just 1000 apps, but they were the "right" 1000 apps it wouldn't matter to the average user. That is of course just a randomly selected number. But, if I'm wrong, I doubt I'm off by more than 1 order of magnitude.
And Microsoft is really just proving that point. The same problem exists on Windows Phone to a degree. Apps use trademarked logo's and go out of their way with app names and sometimes even company names to convince browsers of the store to download or even pay for a fraudulent app. And worse still, is that these apps often spends days or even weeks at the top of lists like the "new + rising" section.
Then there are the apps where publishers spam hundreds of near identical apps into the store. Travel apps and language apps are the worst. Instead of localizing or using dynamic content, they will publish separate apps for separate regions.
Both of these types of apps were supposed to be caught and stopped by the app submission process. But, it seems they are now favouring quantity over quality in the app store.
Personally, I think Microsoft needs to start considering another approach here that would allow them to get quantity while still weeding out the garbage. My solution in the past was an open app store and a curated app store.
The open app store would, over time, carry a larger selection of apps, but the quality would degrade over time and it would just be used to get.
Whereas the "main" certified/curated app store would get just those 1-10k apps (or whatever the number is) that represents what people really want to find when they go looking for apps on their phone either because they are the 1st party apps people want or just really fantastic quality, legit applications or games. It would be the place people would go to when they want to discover a new app. It would be the first place people go when loading up software on their phones.
The "open" app store could still do some basic validation. Require a developer account, enforce which API's can be used and run the app certification toolkit to validate, but otherwise bypass all of the other crap. This would streamline app development. And only apps which Microsoft certifies or chooses would be "promoted" or allowed or whatever into the curated app store.
So why not stop them? Because app stores are a numbers race. And the most important race is the total number of apps. At least that is the perception.
I argued a long time ago that if an app store had just 1000 apps, but they were the "right" 1000 apps it wouldn't matter to the average user. That is of course just a randomly selected number. But, if I'm wrong, I doubt I'm off by more than 1 order of magnitude.
And Microsoft is really just proving that point. The same problem exists on Windows Phone to a degree. Apps use trademarked logo's and go out of their way with app names and sometimes even company names to convince browsers of the store to download or even pay for a fraudulent app. And worse still, is that these apps often spends days or even weeks at the top of lists like the "new + rising" section.
Then there are the apps where publishers spam hundreds of near identical apps into the store. Travel apps and language apps are the worst. Instead of localizing or using dynamic content, they will publish separate apps for separate regions.
Both of these types of apps were supposed to be caught and stopped by the app submission process. But, it seems they are now favouring quantity over quality in the app store.
Personally, I think Microsoft needs to start considering another approach here that would allow them to get quantity while still weeding out the garbage. My solution in the past was an open app store and a curated app store.
The open app store would, over time, carry a larger selection of apps, but the quality would degrade over time and it would just be used to get.
Whereas the "main" certified/curated app store would get just those 1-10k apps (or whatever the number is) that represents what people really want to find when they go looking for apps on their phone either because they are the 1st party apps people want or just really fantastic quality, legit applications or games. It would be the place people would go to when they want to discover a new app. It would be the first place people go when loading up software on their phones.
The "open" app store could still do some basic validation. Require a developer account, enforce which API's can be used and run the app certification toolkit to validate, but otherwise bypass all of the other crap. This would streamline app development. And only apps which Microsoft certifies or chooses would be "promoted" or allowed or whatever into the curated app store.
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