Bgd: Made a few apps. Tried them out on the store. Found that the stats looked "suspicious." People do not even accidentally find my apps. Back in 2021, humans apparently download 111.3 billion mobile apps. Not mine. At least based on the stats Google shows me. Google says I had ~10 downloads over the last 3 years, and ~100 looks ever (mostly spike on release and then no looks ever again).
Honestly, maybe the app store situation is just horrible, and with 3500 apps a day, there's no reason to ever waste months making anything unless you've got deep advertising pockets or an already known brand. I have already mostly gotten out because of the "Update Your Target API" issue.
However, had a similar issue with YouTube. Made videos in recent news topics with limited obvious competition (searched to see if there are many others). Nothing. Not even accidental hits.
So how do people who are not major publishers actually figure out whether Google is unfairly hiding your app? Or in the really dystopian version, how do you verify Google is not just totally falsifying ad clicks? Or if you're a small musician/content creator, how do you verify there's actually any "competition" and its not just Google/Spotify/iTunes picking winners?
Since if I really just wanted to cheat and milk people for money, I would charge ads, make a botnet to click the ads I want to have pay me, and then charge everybody a bunch of money. And now the WWW is apparently >50% bots...
And with the ease at which to produce an app, especially with ChatGPT (if the hype is to be believed), are people just competing against the app stores own developers, to rinse them of their very last drop of income?
Its not like anyone can check each and ever app in the appstore is it?
>So how do people who are not major publishers actually figure out whether Google is unfairly hiding your app?
I used to spend money on adwords when it first came out and I couldnt verify any of the people who clicked the links, and nothing was converting to enquiries let a sale, so I pulled the plug.
Here in the UK we have/had something called the Thomson local directory, its a variation of the old yellow pages, pre internet times.
So I used to spend money advertising in both Thomson and Yellow pages, and before the next Thomson directory was due to be released, I started to get lots of enquiries pertaining to the advert I had in the Thomson. They were phone enquiries, couldnt be specific about the IT hardware they were having problems with and wouldnt even let me come out to them for free to take a look, and even offering stupidly cheap rates, like £10 an hour, they never would commit. I would also ask them where they got my number and they would all tell me the Thomson local directory.
Fast forward 6 weeks, get a call from Thomson telling me its time to renew my advert with them, I called them out, and never heard from them again.
They relied on the suckers like me, not being able to verify whether the caller was genuine or not.
There are lots of businesses, some big names, carrying out crimes. The Law protects these criminals, partly because its an offence to hack them!
And they have big budgets for big law firms who can employ the services of companies like Lexis Nexis for their case law research.
The law and legal profession, including judges are just white collar criminals.
Not one of them have got the public to sign a contract stating an individual would adhere to the laws of the land.
So if it doesnt feel right, dont do it and dont be talked into doing it.
Nonetheless, there are success stories so if you believe in what you’re building keep at it and keep talking to folks about it.