Firefox is the 45th result when searching for “Firefox” on Windows Store
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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.
> 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.
https://www.theverge.com/2013/3/19/4124548/microsoft-paying-...
I expect some of its current shovelware still dates back to those efforts.
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.
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.
Sounds like a perfect copy of Google Play.
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?
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.
They really wanted those numbers to go up.
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?
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.
People that never used it will never understand, and people that did, will never forget.
But... yeah, the app ecosystem.
And using the Store app on Windows 11, Firefox is prominently featured as the number 1 result when searching: https://imgur.com/a/vyoWQZd
Edit: Seems like Firefox has only been available in the store for a day or two, so I guess this was just the search algorithm catching up and re-ranking. https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-the-fir...
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.
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?")
How else would Apple and Google tax the entire mobile software market? Getting a cut of all sales in the mobile market is a dream come true.
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.
https://www.businessinsider.com/ballmer-snatches-microsoft-e...
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.
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?!
[1]: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/reader-for-reading-kindle-...
[2]: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/meeting-using-google-meet/...
https://www.qbittorrent.org/news.php (ctrl-f: 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.
Is this because today is the first day Firefox has been available on the Windows Store and it took some time to build reputation?
> 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.
All the M$ folks here in HN will cry malice.
I think incompetence or indifference.