Yesterday Apple announced Updates for apps in the European Union, because the EU determined that Apple's previous app developer policies were not in compliance with the Digital Markets Act. The new policies represent Apple's proposal for compliance; the EU still needs to solicit feedback on the policies from third-party developers as an essential part of the DMA compliance process.
As an App Store developer myself, I find the new App Store terms to be convoluted. I don't fully understand them, and I'm far from the only one who feels this way. I'm also far from the first to suggest, cynically, that confusion was Apple's intention, to pull a fast one on developers, the news media, the public, and perhaps most importantly, on EU administrators. However, my intention in this blog post is not to engage in a detailed, extensive analysis of the new policies but rather to highlight one aspect of the changes that I found striking: searching for apps in the App Store.
Apple's new policies divide App Store developer services into two tiers:
By default, apps on the App Store are provided Store Services Tier 2, the complete suite of all capabilities designed to maximize visibility, engagement, growth, and operational efficiency. Developers with apps on the App Store in the EU that communicate and promote offers for digital goods and services can choose to move their apps to only use Store Services Tier 1 and pay a reduced store services fee.
App Store developers in Tier 1 pay a 5% commission on transactions, whereas developers in Tier 2 pay a 13% commission, or 10% for members of the Small Business Program. There's an additional "initial acquisition fee" of 2% (0% for Small Business Program members), as well as a "Core Technology Fee" of €0.50 for apps that exceed 1 million first annual installs per year.
The list of store services excluded from Tier 1 is, uh, interesting. It's just incredibly petty that Tier 1 developers cannot generate App Store promo codes. But what I want to discuss here is App Store search. Tier 1 includes "Search - Exact match" and "Language translation in search". Tier 1 excludes the following: "Search - Broad match", "Search suggestions", "Natural language search", and "Search hints".
At this point, it's unclear what exactly is meant by "Exact match". For example, my main app is named StopTheMadness Pro. So what would happen if an App Store user searched for "StopTheMadness" without the "Pro"? Would the App Store show my app, or would it show no results (or worse, show other apps)? Would correct capitalization matter, i.e., "StopTheMadness Pro" vs. "stopthemadness pro" or "Stopthemadness Pro"? How exactly would exact match have to match? And what about "Stop The Madness Pro", with spaces that don't appear in the official app name? My App Store keywords include "stop the madness", by the way, though it sounds like keywords would not be utilized in Tier 1.
What I found striking about the search differences between Tier 1 and Tier 2 is that in creating this distinction, Apple clearly considers App Store search to be a developer feature rather than a user feature. In other words, the user's interest in finding an app via search is disregarded, and Apple is willing to be less helpful to users to the extent that app developers pay a lesser commission to Apple. A common talking point in defense of Apple's App Store lockdown on iOS is that the App Store is supposed to be for the benefit of users rather than developers. Apple's new policies give the lie to that notion.
From my own perspective, it's been obvious for a long time that the App Store is intended primarily for Apple's own financial benefit rather than the benefit of Apple users. Here's an App Store exact match search for my app:
The top search result is not my app. It's an advertisement for an unrelated app with a completely different name, Blip Delivery. App Store Search Ads were introduced in 2016, and it's difficult to argue that Search Ads benefit App Store users or App Store developers. Apple's financial benefit is clear: developers have to pay Apple for top placement in search results, and in this way Apple can monetize even free apps in the App Store who don't pay a commission to Apple. Other the other hand, App Store users receive irrelevant search results, and App Store developers lose downloads and sales to advertisers.
The App Store is often compared to physical retail stores. In reality, the App Store is not only fundamentally different than retail stores—how many retails stores allow you to walk out with most of its products without paying anything?—but also much worse than retail stores in a number of ways. Retail stores are typically more helpful to customers than the App Store. If you ask a retail store clerk for a specific product by name, the clerk will almost always attempt to find that very product for you. If the retail store attempts to steer you toward a different product instead, that would be considered a bait and switch scheme. Yet bait and switch, via Search Ads, appears to be the everyday practice of the App Store! In my opinion, Search Ads are business fraud normalized.
Many people argue that Apple has a legal right to monetize the App Store. This may or may not actually be true in the European Union, and the ongoing litigation between Epic Games and Apple raises doubts about the United States too, but I Am Not A Lawyer, and I don't wish to argue over legalities. What I do wish is that these people would just admit that the App Store is all about making a profit for Apple and has little to do with protecting Apple users, which has been the nominal defense of App Store lockdown from the beginning. If users can't even rely on App Store search, what can they rely on?