The Apple App Store is one of the largest services in the world for downloading and installing applications, and also the most profitable. Through its internal search engine, every day millions of people find and discover new applications to install on their Apple devices: being among the first in the search results is a great opportunity to get noticed and be successful, but according to several application developers and according to various journalistic surveys published in recent months, it seems that Apple has exploited its position as service manager to its advantage, giving more prominence to its applications than those developed by third parties.
The accusation against Apple is not new and is part of the wide range of suspicions, and legal initiatives, on the conduct of large technology companies that offer online services and at the same time make the services of other subjects accessible. The classic example that is made in these cases is that of Alphabet, the holding of Google, a now gigantic company that through the results pages of its search engine promotes and offers its products based on the keywords used by users. Over the years, Google has received billions of fines from the European Commission, precisely on the accusation of having organized the contents on its results pages to favor its services over similar ones offered by other companies. The suspicion raised by many is that Apple has recently done something similar with the search system of its App Store.
Studying data from analytics company Sensor Tower, the New York Times noted that Apple's applications came first in the App Store's list of results in 700 different cases, with as many search keywords; the analysis concerned data collected in the last six years. In several cases, multiple Apple apps appeared in the hit list, up to 14, before other apps from other developers were listed.
As for the other search engines, even in the case of the App Store the hierarchy of applications is decided by algorithms whose behavior is never made completely public. The justification provided by those who manage them is that, if the algorithm were transparent, many would try to take advantage of it, to make their content more visible regardless of its quality or relevance to a particular keyword used to search for it. While it is certainly true that opaque algorithms reduce the risk of having too many people taking advantage of them, on the other hand they make the choices of those who administer it less clear and controllable.
Initially, Apple's applications weren't all in the App Store, because most were pre-installed on iPhones and iPads and couldn't be deleted. Since the spring of 2016, things have changed and, according to data from Sensor Tower, for years Apple's apps have almost always remained at the top of the results without the possibility for the competition to undermine them, even if they had better reviews and therefore theoretically would have had to be placed at the top for their popularity.
The New York Times gives the example of Spotify, one of the most used apps in the world for streaming music. Before there was Apple Music, a similar product offered by Apple, Spotify was in first place in the App Store results for the keyword “music” (it sometimes had another application in front, but this is because on the App Store the very first position is a sponsored space that can be bought, a bit like the first link on the Google results page). After the arrival of Apple Music in June 2016, Spotify finished in fourth place, a year and a half later even lower, ousted not only by Apple Music, but also by five other apps produced by Apple and related to music (GarageBand , Music Memos, iTunes Remote, Logic Remote and iTunes Store).
For Spotify, things got even worse towards the end of 2018, when it even finished in 26th place in the results, while the top eight (excluding the sponsored position) were all occupied by Apple products, including the Clips app which is used to edit short videos and that doesn't have much to do with music. In March of this year, Spotify formally accused Apple of unfair competition, for various policies applied within the App Store: a month later it climbed a large part of the list of results for the keyword “music”, although still two Apple's apps continued to rank first and second.
The New York Times analysis concerns the US version of the App Store and Apple said it could not confirm the data, because the company does not keep a log that allows it to reconstruct the positions of the apps in searches. Philip Schiller and Eddy Cue, two of Apple's top and historical executives, admitted that for more than a year the results of searches based on the most common keywords showed references to the company's applications, sometimes even when these were less relevant than for other popular and competitive apps. They then explained that Apple has corrected the algorithms, in order to reduce the presence of their apps.
Both Schiller and Cue, however, ruled out that the algorithms had been compiled with the aim of favoring Apple's apps, through which the company sells subscription services (as in the case of Apple Music). According to their insider information, the company's apps tend to be in the top spot often because they get above-average positive reviews and because they use rather generic names, matching search keywords: Music for Music, Podcasts for Podcasts, Maps for maps and so on.
However, this only partially explains why some search keywords resulted in lists with a handful of Apple apps in first place before those of the competition. The company confirmed that a now changed feature of the App Store required apps to be put together in groups, according to particular criteria, including that of having been produced by the same developer. The algorithm has been changed this year and should no longer lead to such results.
However, during their interviews with reporters from the New York Times, Schiller and Cue never said that there was a problem to be solved: “It was not to be corrected,” said the first, “It has been improved,” said the second.
Experts and analysis companies that study the functioning of the App Store, to advise their customers on the best strategies to enhance their applications, have long believed that the success of Apple's apps in the results pages is at least suspected. It is true that algorithms work automatically, they say, but in any case they are always programmed by human beings, who decide when and how to modify them on the basis of arbitrary choices.
The New York Times also consulted with Apple programmers who worked on the algorithms for the App Store search engine. They are a small workgroup and they said they hadn't noticed for months that their company's apps were so featured on the results pages. When they realized this, one of them took it upon themselves to modify the algorithm. None of them have provided much more information on how the system works, mostly to avoid anyone taking advantage of it to highlight their apps. However, they explained that the algorithms take into account 42 variables to establish hierarchies in the results pages.
In 2018 alone, the Apple App Store generated revenues of $ 50 billion. It is the only service that can be used to download and purchase applications for iPhones and iPads and is closely supervised by Apple, making it more secure on average than its Google Play Store counterpart for Android devices. In its more than ten years of existence, the App Store has undoubtedly contributed to the success of some of the largest Internet companies such as Facebook, Amazon and Google itself, and has allowed companies unrelated to Silicon Valley to expand considerably, as in the case of of the Swedish Spotify. Also for this reason the competition to reach the top of the results pages is very high, and it is an extremely sensitive issue for companies that develop applications and who would like some more guarantees.
The request for greater transparency also derives from fairly recent cases, as the New York Times always explains. Last March, for example, Apple introduced its own credit card that can be used through its Wallet app. The day after the presentation, the application ranked first in the US App Store when searching for the keywords “money”, “credit” or “debit”. Before that, Wallet had never landed on the results pages for those search keywords.
Apple explained that those words had probably been added to the Wallet description in conjunction with the launch of the credit card, which would have resulted in adding a new feature to the app. The searches with those keywords, more recurring than usual due to the novelty, would then have led more people to choose Wallet among the results, recording an increase in popularity by the algorithms, which consequently made it more evident.
Apple executives and technicians have provided explanations to show how bona fide the company is, and in recent months they have been working to make things better. Following the addition of some algorithm changes, Apple's apps have become less intrusive in search results since mid-July. Schiller and Cue explained that the system has now been changed with the addition of some handicaps for the company's apps to help other developers get noticed: “We are happy to admit a mistake when we do, but this was not a error”.
Apple's demonstration of goodwill may not be enough, considering that in recent years several institutions, starting with the European Commission, have shown a growing interest in large US tech companies and strategies to remain dominant in the market. In the case of Apple, the European Union has launched an investigation into the policies imposed on developers in the App Store. The initiative started with a complaint from Spotify and Apple offered its collaboration, but this may not be enough to avoid a fine of hundreds of millions of euros.
