[auganov]

This is not done by just one giant company. Many majors like Amazon and Facebook have been reported to have similar strategies.

This is competition. All the giants want to grow. That's the name of the game. Google is now said to be going against Amazon (and a ton of small e commerce startups) with their product search offering.

Yes, when it comes to booting rival apps off app stores and so forth, I agree, it's a problem. It should be looked at.

But developing copy cat products is unavoidable[0]. Let's say we ban big corps from doing this. Then you'll just see them funding it. This has been going on forever. Most of the time it's just knocking out an undercapitalized startup and actually bringing the product to a much bigger audience at a better price point. The consumer wins.

[0] where IP issues don't apply

[thomk]

I feel like the problem has more to do with big players owning the app stores. They have access to all of the data that allows them to know which apps are popular and profitable. It's easier for them to know which apps to knock off; the own the data that tells them that.

[auganov]

I don't know, I feel like they just have access to this data so they're using it.

There are many 3rd party app store intelligence products out there. And you can buy incredible datasets from some tracking companies. There are only as many popular things out there, have a hard time believing that they fundamentally wouldn't be able to do it without the more privileged access.

Wouldn't be surprised if they are actually using a ton of 3rd party data too, but only this kind of usage makes headlines as it seems "wrong".