As an user, I look at the search results to evaluate the quality of an app store. Microsoft needs to change this problem. Many trash and scam apps are on Microsoft Store for years. User and even developer do not want to download and push their apps in a place like this.
App stores should just have sections curated by humans with reason (and also the wilderness - as a separate section).
Case in point: the complaints here are about Firefox ranking badly for a very specific search term that it should dominate. Remove any attempt to assess relevancy will lead to that happening for every search. So what everyone is complaining about will become the norm. How is that supposed to be an improvement?
The strictly-worse option appears better because people are judging intention (as they perceive it), not outcome.
But just giving up on trying to return good search result isn’t the morally unassailable solution people here tend to think it is: randomness is fair in that it treats everyone the same. But the results will be highly unfair. Knowing as much when you set up the process means you’re still culpable for shitty results, even if you didn’t know or intent the specific shittyness of the results.
If there’s rampant fraud in the store you operate, that falls back on you. Throwing up your hands and stopping all efforts to combat fraud doesn’t get you out of this: there was never any doubt that you had the ability to remove items from your store in the first place, nor is there any reason why an attempt to mitigate at least some of the harms would create an expectation to be perfect at it and create liabilities that supposedly didn’t exist before.