[pk97]

I noticed this banner on one of my own apps while installing it for my mom on a new phone. The banner said "This app has fewer users than others...", almost as if they are discouraging users from installing it without even informing me. I looked it up online and it seems like many people have begun seeing this. I am linking a thread. If anyone from Google is reading this, such opaque policies are not appreciated!

[ncr100]

It does seem like an Anti-Pattern.

Presumably (some faction inside) Google wants to warn users about scam apps. However this seems like blatant shaming and ostracization of smaller developers who did not spend $$$$$ on Marketing through Google's Ad Network.

Seems Monopolistic of Google to me.

[jjani]

> Presumably (some faction inside) Google wants to warn users about scam apps

Or (the ads faction that effectively runs the company) wants to warn users about apps that don't spend much on AdWords and Play Store ads.

[gs17]

That feels more like it, I opened the Play Store to check it out, there was an ad for some waifu-gacha 3 star app with 1k downloads, 19 reviews, released last week, reviews imply it's something that was taken off the store before reuploaded under a new name. No banner saying it's questionable.

Although, I spent a while trying to find an app that did have the banner, and nothing seems to get it on my account.

[pk97]

exactly. Imagine the audacity of this company. I have a paid app and they are already charging me a percentage of the revenue. And behind my back they have begun running this banner.

[robertlagrant]

I doubt they're aware of you enough to do it behind your back. They're more wanting to flag this "Bank of 4merica" app you're about to install has 8 other users.

[pk97]

I am obviously a very small player doing things as a hobby, I don't matter to Google. But what I am pointing out is that they already take a cut of whatever few dollars I earn (beyond the initial $25 I paid years ago just to get on the play store). If you see the thread, the OP asked their customer support and they said: "Especially, since the response from customer service seems to suggest that the best way to get it removed is to run Google AdWords (which I am already running, btw)"

If the angle here is running ads and if they are already taking a cut, why are they doing this? If the angle is security, why not test the apps and have them removed! And in either case, why keep the developer in the dark? And why is there no way for small time insignificant devs like me to know how to get rid of the banner!

[csomar]

I think "Bank of 4merica" shouldn't have been there in the first place. Especially for a store that is running billions of $$ worth of transactions. This is Google, again, pushing a cost that it has to pay to external actors.

[izacus]

So they should just outright ban the apps of the developer in the article? :P

[immibis]

They should ban - and file criminal charges against - the developer who uploads a Bank of America app but isn't Bank of America. They should not do that against developers who upload their own non-fraudulent apps. Why is this concept difficult to understand?

Asking seriously. I don't get why these types of questions even come up. Google already claims to manually review all apps, so they know the Bank of America app isn't Bank of America, so why is it even allowed on the store? Why would anyone think it's hard for them to draw a line that would exclude fake Bank of America apps, but wouldn't exclude normal apps? I could understand the concern if it was a completely unmoderated store, or if the only tools available were some kind of keyword filtering. But that is not the case.

[GuinansEyebrows]

Why would they allow this hypothetical app in the first place?

[izacus]

Because the people up in this very thread demand it?

[GuinansEyebrows]

Regardless of what people in this thread demand (which I think is unlikely given the example), why would it be in anybody's interest (besides the developer) for Google to allow an app that commits trademark infringement at best (and, as implied, is probably some vehicle to steal confidential information like online banking credentials)?

[thayne]

It also disadvantages any apps that compete with Google's own apps.

[register]

Calling it an anti-pattern is a euphemism. Let's call it what it is: a completely stupid idea.

[zerd]

"Are you sure you want to install OSM? Don't you know Google Maps is better? You should try Google Maps"

[p_ing]

On the other hand....

https://chromewebstore.google.com/search/ublock

As a user who suddenly knows nothing about uBlock the ad blocker, are you going to trust an addin with 2k installs and 4.3 stars, or an addin with 30m installs and 4.7 stars?

Install base can be informative when choosing.... anything, really. In many people's minds something that is used more is better in some metric, be it performance, reliability, price, et. al.

EDIT: My numbers were way off :-)

[pk97]

I agree with what you have said. It's what you mentioned at the end about people judging based on metrics - it should be up to people to judge for themselves, not the platform! The platform should present data, not try to sway opinions. Besides the message itself is so hand wavy if I am using the phrase correctly, what is Google trying to convey through the message? If something is a legit scam, they should either not be publishing such apps or be testing and removing them.

I am increasingly convinced they are trying to direct traffic to apps that use their Ads network under the guise of such vaguely-about-security messages.

[p_ing]

> it should be up to people to judge for themselves, not the platform!

If you download an App using MSFT Edge on Windows, it will warn you (MoTW). If you download an App using any browser on macOS, it will warn you (also MoTW). But if you grab apps via the App Store, there's no warning.

Is that also unfair?

While it's been many years since I did hands on end user support, or even worse, support for family friends back in the 9x days, people still have little clue about what they're doing without a big flashing warning sitting in front of them..., which even that sometimes does not work.

Even I'll often choose an extension for Firefox that has more installs. If I'm going to get a SAML decoder, I want the least phishy SAML decoder available.

[fluidcruft]

You get warnings when you install apps from Microsoft Store?

Play Store isn't a web browser.

[areyourllySorry]

edge exe/msi downloads, not store. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_of_the_Web

[fluidcruft]

That's my point. The apples to apples comparisons are Microsoft Store vs Play Store vs App Store... or Chrome vs Edge vs Safari. NOT Play Store vs Edge and Safari.

Play Store is NOT a web browser. It downloads from one place and one place only.

[saghm]

It sounds like showing those numbers already conveys the information you find useful; the question isn't whether the number of users is informative, but whether it's reasonable for Google to bucket apps into groups of competitors and then choose a threshold of minimum number of users to avoid actively discouraging additional users. I'm not opposed to the idea of owners of app marketplaces taking a more active step in curating things to try to help users, but this way of doing it seems pretty dubious.

[p_ing]

You're going off the premise that I'm an average user who would otherwise stare blankly at a zsh terminal.

Those warnings in the Store aren't meant for you or I.

[saghm]

That's exactly the problem in my opinion; most people will see the warnings and immediately just backtrack without investigating further, and in their shoes, that's not necessarily the wrong decision. I honestly think that having a warning like this isn't a bad idea, but that the heuristic being chosen for when to show it isn't a very good one, and as others have pointed out, it's a metric that benefits larger entrenched players at the expense of smaller competitors. It's hard for me to imagine that this isn't intentional, and that makes it even harder for me to trust that this is actually the correct heuristic to use given the obvious incentives they have for picking it.

[VWWHFSfQ]

There's a weird nuance to this just because algorithmically PageRank itself was even somewhat anti-competitive.

"This page has fewer links to it than others, therefore it will be buried in search results"

I think most people appreciated Google's early search algos that prioritized "well-traffic'd" sites and sources over others. Obviously that was a long time ago before SEO (and Google themselves) destroyed everything. Back then there were actually still competitors in the search market so it didn't matter. Not the case now.

[kedean]

I always thought the idea there was that a website needed to grow organically before google would rank it highly, which makes sense to me. Prove yourself first by building a network, they aren't obligated to help out.

The difference here is that the play store is the one and only way to get apps for a regular user. By putting that banner up, they're discouraging anyone from trying it even if they found out about it through other channels.

The analog in 2000 or so would be if Microsoft added a warning banner to any website you visited in Internet Explorer with a low link count.

[crazygringo]

I don't really see the difference.

The entire point is that you can find the app through other channels -- articles, posts, social media.

They just link to the Play store, but that's how you find them. The banner shouldn't be discouraging if you've come from a post that explains it's brand-new!

[luckylion]

Freshbot was a well-known effect back then (arguably still is, at least I see effects that look very similar where some new content section will rank quickly and amazingly well for a week or two and then slowly sink to the level you'd expect from such new content).

But in the end, it's network effects, only that this banner seems to enforce it manually and explicitly. The old way would've been to not show apps with few users in the top spots.