[AJ007]

If an Apple employee connected to a competing app was able to remove the search result then that is suspicious.

This doesn’t sound particularly different than people who thought they were entitled to whatever search result position on Google due to their SEO effort and built their entire business around non-retaining users. I recall stories of companies getting sales to their e-commerce site, for free, from Google listings, and taking on long term liabilities and leases for warehouses or fulfillment locations only to end up bankrupt.

Who knows what is really going on here, but you certainly aren’t entitled to any search result listing save for your actual app or company name, presuming it isn’t generic.

[munk-a]

The thing, though, is that Apple has chosen to fully control the market place and search engine. They are fully culpable for any disruptions because they refuse to let their system be audited externally.

There's an argument to be made that if the market is free or allows competing indexes then Apple is less on the hook, but Apple has a stranglehold on how the AppStore works, they've made their bed in this case.