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Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

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Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#121

Post by bostonsre »

GeekyBear wrote: post #107
nexuist wrote: post #84

Does anyone else just…not care? Files is a system app like Windows Explorer. It’s not meant to “compete” with anything. Does anyone think Control Panel competes with Android’s Settings app? iCloud Drive is a cloud storage competitor that Files works well with, but Files also supports Dropbox and Google Drive and many other storage competitors (anyone who wants to implement the API gets to be in Files). Also, the argu…

It's particularly weird to target Apple in such a nebulous case when Selling ads that show up higher in the search results than the product you searched for is literally Google's business model in their only really profitable segment.

A market place and a search engine with ads are a little different. Apple is the market and also the vendor of the competing product in this case. They used their control of the market to benefit themselves. This type of vertical integration that is used to squash and out compete smaller competitors definitely smells like what anti trust laws were originally put in place to fight. Big tech lawyers should be terrified. The general sentiment of the public is beginning to shift against them and I'm not sure them spending millions more on lobbying will be able to prevent the legislation that will come.

Also, just because Google does shifty things doesn't make it ok for Apple to do shifty things too.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#122

Post by canada2us »

Does Google do the same?

From my experience, Google products almost rank top in the search results without Google in the keywords.

Search "News", "Drive", "Calendar", et al.

In Google chrome, all bookmarks are under auto-completed keywords in the address bar.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#123

Post by judge2020 »

heavyset_go wrote: post #54
Railsify wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would that extend to grocery stores, where would you force walmart to put their own brands?

I can go across the street to a dozen different stores. If I travel a little further, I can go to even more stores. No matter where I go, with Apple and Google, I'm have to use their payment systems and give each of them a 30% cut of my apps' revenue. They both have a duopoly in the mobile operating systems market and the mobile app distribution market, and Apple has the majority of the market share in both markets i…

The difference is that Walmart didn't build the street or the city and doesn't have a right to take a cut of sales on other people's property. A more apt comparison would be the third-party hotels that, if they want to use some of Disney's 25,000 acres in Florida[0], literally have to lease the land from Disney and Disney can impose terms like a cut of sales (or a forced Disney merchandise store within the hotel). iOS is like the consumer choosing to live exclusively within the confines of Disney's property (with the difference being that, once you 'leave' iOS, you can't bring stuff back into the city - honestly this is the digital equivalent of what Walt Disney wanted with E.P.C.O.T.[1]).

0: https://dpep.disney.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/fact_sheet...

1: https://youtu.be/tKYEXjMlKKQ

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#124

Post by yyyk »

ummonk wrote: post #114
stefan_ wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you read the article. Apple boosted their generic Files app above Dropbox for the query Dropbox . That is the controversy.

Yeah but even before reading the article I figured this was an algorithmic mistake, and apparently it is: "While Apple didn’t challenge the idea that Files was unfairly ranked over Dropbox, the company says the reality was a simple mistake: the Files app had a Dropbox integration, so Apple put “Dropbox” into the app’s metadata, and it was automatically ranked higher for “Dropbox” searches as a result."

The emails themselves say it was a "manual boost" rather than the PR explanation you provided.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#126

Post by swiley »

codesternews wrote: post #28

Apple has made life of small developers hard. Mac software and app industry has died. Even after notarising apps they show malicious popup to users. Same practices has adapted by apple like search ad etc etc. They make competing services and steal ideas of developers and those app dies. For eg screen time for Moments app. They have unfair advantage and small developers could not complete. Only handful of indie develo…

Apple is to app developers what uber is to taxis and carpoolers.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#127

Post by ericd »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #118
uo21tp5hoyg wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you're thinking of Dropbox as the company and product rather than just a word, if someone searches "games" they should be shown results for games instead of an app or apps literally named "games", so it's important to rank metadata highly even if above actual app names.

But Dropbox is also a trademarked name. And 'games' is a more general term, such as for a whole category.

Iirc Apple was using Drop Box before Dropbox existed, as a place for other users on the network to drop files onto your hard drive.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#128

Post by graeme »

yyyk wrote: post #110
nexuist wrote: post #84

Does anyone else just…not care? Files is a system app like Windows Explorer. It’s not meant to “compete” with anything. Does anyone think Control Panel competes with Android’s Settings app? iCloud Drive is a cloud storage competitor that Files works well with, but Files also supports Dropbox and Google Drive and many other storage competitors (anyone who wants to implement the API gets to be in Files). Also, the argu…

>Files is a system app like Windows Explorer. It’s not meant to “compete” with anything. That defence helped Internet Explorer a lot. Nope. At the very least searching for 'dropbox' should return 'dropbox' and not be overriden by Apple. >but for some reason its position in the App Store is a controversial topic? How many people even delete Files and search for it again? This makes Apple's defence for manually placing…

A filesystem and an internet browser are two very different things! Files = Windows explorer, the filesystem. Which is not internet explorer, the browser.

Dropbox and Files indeed aren’t really competitors. I often use Files to browser my Dropbox files!

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#129

Post by dawnerd »

rchaud wrote: post #120
musicale wrote: post #51

I tend to think of Files as less like Dropbox and more like the macOS Finder. You can actually browse Dropbox in Files, much as you can in the Finder, although there are some limitations. https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/mobile/ios-fi...

I never had to go to the Mac App Store to download Finder though.

Oddly I had to on my new iPad Pro. Wasn’t there.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#130

Post by evv »

etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #112
mercer wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much as I tend to be in favor of language evolving, I react almost viscerally to 'compute' as a noun. It is a major irk.

Wait a minute, did you just "noun" irk? I'm irked.

Wait a minute, did you just "verb" noun? I'm adjectived
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