from Hacker News

Apple manually boosted its 'Files' app ahead of 'Dropbox' in organic search [pdf]

by marco1 on 8/22/21, 7:03 PM with 5 comments

• by criticaltinker on 8/23/21, 3:30 AM

  If you don't support what Apple did here, lobby your government representatives to pass the proposed "Open App Markets Act" [1].

  It explicitly outlaws companies with App Stores that have more than 50 million users in the United States (eg Apple, Google) from self-preferencing in App Store search, among other similar restrictions [2][3].

  [1] https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/8.11.21%20-%...

  [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28144867

  [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28147697

• by batiudrami on 8/23/21, 3:43 AM

  As an aside it is ridiculous that a search for an exact app name gives the top result to a sponsored competitor. Searching “tiktok” the first result is Twitter! Does anyone decide to install Twitter because they see that? Is the revenue really worth over half of the above the fold results page?

  Fair enough let companies pay for the first result for generic terms but it just seems silly.

• by hexa22 on 8/23/21, 1:24 AM

  Alright but the files app is not a competitor to Dropbox. It supports all cloud storage and external storage setups.

  It’s also a preinstalled app.

• by fomine3 on 8/23/21, 4:38 AM

  Very interesting docs like this are discovered here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28247196