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.
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)
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.
https://www.businessinsider.com/ballmer-snatches-microsoft-e...
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.