[omouse]

Regulated meaning a tightly controlled and closed "market"?

Number of plugins isn't the greatest metric but it's a good leading indicator. It's kinda hard to estimate how many merchants and customers and volume of transactions have been processed when they aren't being tracked by a central entity ;)

[Miss_Vee22]

What was meant was moderation. Shopify works with developers to ensure the plugin's code will be compatible/quality more similar to how Apple does moderation.

[wc91]

If only Shopify was some sort of publicly traded company that publicly reported these numbers. If only...

[asaph]

It is publicly traded on the NYSE. Ticker symbol: SHOP.

[skinnymuch]

The OP was being sarcastic.