The current state of the Windows Store is a holdover from the early 2010's where "number of apps in our app store" became a huge KPI and something for the CEO to tout to the board of directors. Apple and Google kept bragging about these numbers at their respective developer conferences/yearly refresh unveilings and therefore Microsoft was all too happy to accept any and all apps into the Windows Store at the time in an attempt to appear relevant.
Times have changed, though, and you could argue that now many people would like less app clutter and easier discoverability of the apps they actually want. What end user is benefitting from all these carpetbagger apps squatting on Firefox's brand? I don't know what the policy or action looks like to clean this up without instituting heavy hand moderation of the Windows Store but I feel like something has to be done. The way it is now is unsustainable if you want the store to have any value at all.
Not just bragging about it, Microsoft was paying people to submit software to pump that number up:
> In a new US marketing effort, Microsoft is offering developers $100 per app for newly published applications submitted to the Windows Phone Store or the Windows Store by June 30th. Developers can net $2,000 in total by submitting up to 10 apps to each store.
Back in the Windows Phone days, they'd send you a phone for developing an app. I wrote a crappy calculator app during a CS class and got a free phone out of it.
I spent more time doing the app submission than I did writing the app. They didn't care what it was. Similarly Blackberry had a similar program a little while later where I just ported the same app and got a Playbook tablet.
It was fun as a poor college kid, but look where it got both of them.
I remember this period. I remember a few dozen devs I knew just submitted dumb/garbage apps and grabbed the bounty.
Don't think it helped the Windows Phone ecosystem at all because instead of a few decent apps, you now had to wade through hundreds of terrible apps and sometimes you'd get lucky and find a decent one.
Counterpoint: I got a free Amazon Echo (gen 1 echo, echo dot, echo show) for free by writing a few voice apps. Amazon has so ce cleaned up the lowest effort ones I made.
I could feel the submission process get tighter as time passed. I think the idea was to see what apps people come up with and what gains traction? Kind of like the story where the management lets people on the grass and paves a walkway on the most walked path?
Customers paid money for it, Apple wasn't instructing people on how to build a soundboard and handing them a check or an iPhone for submitting it. Quite the opposite, all of those developers paid Apple $100 to join the developer program.
At a developer conference around that time they showed us step-by-step how to build several simple apps and then encouraged us to make our own variations of those apps to submit to the Windows Store. I remember thinking it was doomed to look as sad as the Blackberry app store.
Seriously. I knew of a few people in college who got that entire $2000 and paid off a few months of rent through that promotion by submitting quick one-off apps like calculators and snake games, and they did it with the encouragement of Microsoft reps on campus.
I was given a pretty decent free Windows phone after a hackathon by a Microsoft rep with basically no strings attached other than a verbal promise that if I ever finished the game I was working on during the Hackathon, I would put it on Windows store alongside any other platform.
> Times have changed, though, and you could argue that now many people would like less app clutter and easier discoverability of the apps they actually want.
Time and time again people & markets need to relearn this.
The "video game crash" in the early 80s that collapsed Atari was because of so much shovelware that came out (with the infamous E.T. game being seen as the "pinnacle" of that era). Nintendo emerged from that rubble by being more selective about the games they allowed [1] on their platform, something which Atari fought them on tooth and nail [2]. (The amount of shovelware games on mobile platforms is a tragic repeat of that era.)
One of the more memorable aspects of classic management classes like the case study of the Challenger Disaster is that you don't want more information, you want better information.
Google's mission statement remains to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." How are they doing on that these days? How's the Play Store compared to the Apple App Store or Microsoft's Windows Store?
There were many things I liked about the Windows Phone OS. The alphabetical listing UI is far better than what Android/iOS have. (in iOS you can jump to a specific letter with a precise tap along the side. In WP, you could tap on a letter to bring up a pop-over list of letters.. much easier!). Its keyboard was excellent. The navigation bar in the apps would be icons, but could be expanded to show labels for each of the icons. The home screen theming was excellent. The phones had a physical button for using the camera (until that restriction was lifted).
But, yeah, WP didn't have the apps people wanted to use.
I don't like that Apple's iOS is so locked down. Apparently even the App Store isn't free of clutter. -- It's concerning that the opposite (a complete lack of curation, and an encouragement to write apps) doesn't end up as a competitive phone OS.
Agree on all points. As a registered Windows Insider, I had Windows Phone 10 installed at beta, and as much as I liked the UI and behavior of the original Windows Phone, Windows Phone 10 was even better. I held onto that phone until the bitter end, then flopped over to Android. The Nokia Maps app was sufficient, I don't use much more than that. If Microsoft rebooted Windows Phone with support for the Android app store, I would be back on that in a heartbeat.
People that never used it will never understand, and people that did, will never forget.
I didn't like how locked down the Windows Phone OS was, even for the time, and I didn't like some of the limitations that popped up around app capabilities. But otherwise, agreed, they had some good UX ideas, I liked their interface a lot, there are concepts there that would still hold up really well today on a mobile OS. And it was certainly (imo) a lot nicer to develop on than Android.
Can confirm, it's the top result - followed by Firefox the movie, and 3 "guide" results for using Firefox the browser; both on the preview results and after submitting the search.
As an user, I look at the search results to evaluate the quality of an app store.
Microsoft needs to change this problem. Many trash and scam apps are on Microsoft Store for years. User and even developer do not want to download and push their apps in a place like this.
It's seriously embarrassing and terrible. Anybody who uploads a $4.99 "Firefox user guide" to the Microsoft Store should be banned for life before the app even hits prod. Microsoft should require a sufficient barrier to entry so these "developers" can be proactively identified and expelled before they have an opportunity to clog the Store with their detritus.
App store cruft like this is one of the most mind-numbingly frustrating things and I tend to avoid mainstream app stores altogether because of it. There's just too many people in one place, and too many parasitic bad actors sucking the lifeblood out of everybody they can reach.
The worst part is that an app store has the potential to be such a boon for a platform. But these people ruin it. Tragedy of the commons at work, even though it's a company's walled garden and isn't the commons at all! How could they let this happen?!
"Guides" aren't even the worst of it. The Microsoft Store has some apps which are outright squatting on the names and logos of real applications, like "Reader for Reading Kindle Ebooks" [1] or "Meeting using Google Meet" [2]. While I haven't investigated, I'm pretty sure they're literally just frames for web apps.
It's fucking sad. This is exactly how the MS Store looked 10 years ago when Windows 8 came out. How has it not changed at all? These assholes don't seem to have a clue why nobody wants to use their store. Maybe someone at Microsoft should actually try using their products. The poor employees have buggy shit dogfooded to them all the time, while I bet all the C-levels and other execs have Apple shit for work and home.
It's kinda good too. It makes the store unviable and thus makes local installations still a very legit requirement. Which leads to less Microsoft control over what you do with your PC, and more user freedom. It also means using your computer without a Microsoft account is still a thing.
If it had really taken off they could be free to block installers like iOS does. Or at least make it difficult to do so like macOS.
It’s bad in that the app confusion happens on malicious websites that try to game search results. The consequences of installing a sketchy sandboxed app from the Windows Store can be significantly less severe than the consequences of installing a sketchy traditional app.
My controversial take (as someone who ran a very popular software market for a decade myself, which notably didn't do what I am saying, though was effectively handicapped in its search for other reasons): they simply shouldn't have search or discovery of their own, as it is going to be some opportunity for the moral equivalent of a TOCTUO "parser differential" security issue that leads to malware.
If a user goes to Firefox's website and thinks they want to install Firefox, they shouldn't then go to an App Store to search for it and hope they find the same product: it should be essentially forced by the flow that users use direct links--which the user could get from any process, including offline mechanisms--to specific and individual products to install software, rather than assuming the store's search is of high enough quality to help the user not get phished.
But at least only having the somewhat-manually-browsed sections with highly-curated content (to be clear, in the UI as lists from the store developer, not the ability to install things on the device at all or even potentially from the store: you can have content that people can install that isn't in your curated lists) makes it very difficult to use the store itself to phish people.
I never use app store discovery or search, and I don't think anyone who understands the app market does. I think it is mainly used by folks who don't know search engines work better, who are exactly the sort of folks who fall for fake apps and scams, because their flawed assumption that the platform gives a shit about it hasn't yet been corrected.
The other problem, though, is that not having discovery is not really an option. Corporate incentives are such that they basically have to be built. ("Why are you leaving money on the table and control for someone else to grab?")
Is "app store" discovery a viable option on moderated community platforms like Flathub or F-Droid, or "non-platforms" (primarily software distribution methods built around command-line installation, rather than UI-focused ecosystems with reviews and such) like Linux distribution packages?
The "store" is in some sense a package manager and installation queue application; it still can provide value even without discovery... if nothing else, for paid products, it provides a convenient way for users to purchase the product with stored credentials and then an account mechanism to do license transfer to new devices (which is the reason why most developers used my payment system and most users wanted them to, even though I didn't force anyone to do so: I solved these problems well, which added value, particularly for the smaller development efforts that don't have the resources to pull that work in house to decrease their fee).
I’m not sure how “the Wilderness” compares to the status quo, but you’d always need a search option, wouldn’t you? And since search results have to be in some order, you will need to come up with at least one indicator to sort them. Pure randomness is perfectly “neutral” but also entirely useless.
Case in point: the complaints here are about Firefox ranking badly for a very specific search term that it should dominate. Remove any attempt to assess relevancy will lead to that happening for every search. So what everyone is complaining about will become the norm. How is that supposed to be an improvement?
The strictly-worse option appears better because people are judging intention (as they perceive it), not outcome.
But just giving up on trying to return good search result isn’t the morally unassailable solution people here tend to think it is: randomness is fair in that it treats everyone the same. But the results will be highly unfair. Knowing as much when you set up the process means you’re still culpable for shitty results, even if you didn’t know or intent the specific shittyness of the results.
If there’s rampant fraud in the store you operate, that falls back on you. Throwing up your hands and stopping all efforts to combat fraud doesn’t get you out of this: there was never any doubt that you had the ability to remove items from your store in the first place, nor is there any reason why an attempt to mitigate at least some of the harms would create an expectation to be perfect at it and create liabilities that supposedly didn’t exist before.
I'm not sure that Microsoft did anything. According to the Reddit comments, Firefox was just added to the store a day ago. Sounds like it quickly rose to the top as people started downloading it.
All those Guides for Firefox 'Pro', don't really inspire confidence in the Windows Store...
I'd had hoped that Microsoft had higher standards, especially for paid apps. None of those have screenshots, link to a developer website or provide a support mail, because they are obviously scams.
Firefox is the first result for me on Windows 11.
Seems like store search isn't solved properly anywhere because a query for 'macos' on the App Store shows macOS Monterey as 15th under loads of spammy stuff. Even 'Kaka' is above it! :) https://twitter.com/iBoostUp/status/1457728087525789699
Or is it? For me, it's the first result. And that's how app stores are supposed to work: once enough users install the app, it skyrockets. AFAIK, Firefox on Windows Store is still pretty new, going from zero to first place shouldn't be instantaneous if rules are fair.
This is what happens if you use Edge on Windows to search for "Firefox" with Bing[1]:
> I recently spun up a Windows VM and used Edge to search Bing for "Firefox" and this is result I got: https://i.imgur.com/blHGMgX.png
> It's a giant banner that says, "You're already browsing in Microsoft Edge. Keep using to get world class performance with more privacy, more productivity, and more value."
> That banner is followed by another giant banner image telling me to get "Get Robux using Microsoft Edge. Join Microsoft Rewards and use Microsoft Edge. Get a 100 Robux eGift Card on us when you search with Microsoft Bing on Microsoft Edge for 5 days after you join."
> I had to scroll to even see the relevant search results for my search term. I'm assuming most non-power users won't scroll because they were just assured that they were "already browsing in Microsoft Edge", which is apparently more private, productive and valuable than what they intended to search for.
The current state of every app store search is atrocious. IOS, Android, and Windows store. Even if you search for exact terms on IOS you have to slog through large amounts of BS. This is not a new thing.
I remember something similar happening to me on Android about 8 years ago. At the time the Firefox Android app just came out but I just couldn't google it. Like absolutely no results at all on the store or Google. I had to use DDG.
On the other hand, iOS App Store shows and ad for Chrome, then the Firefox app, then every other browser. Not much related to your actual search term "Firefox" related other than Firefox Focus and Firefox Lockwise mixed in further down the results
It's an organic result that will change as soon as firefox has more users/reviews than the products that where way earlier on the store. I don't get it you all scream fowl on other stores for manipulating results and now you are screaming fowl because Microsoft doesn't?
Times have changed, though, and you could argue that now many people would like less app clutter and easier discoverability of the apps they actually want. What end user is benefitting from all these carpetbagger apps squatting on Firefox's brand? I don't know what the policy or action looks like to clean this up without instituting heavy hand moderation of the Windows Store but I feel like something has to be done. The way it is now is unsustainable if you want the store to have any value at all.