Apple Responds To ‘Unfair’ App Store Ranking Claims

Apple has recently been accused of alleged “unfair” App Store rankings. Apparently, the Cupertino giant has always rated its own apps as the best and pushed them to the top of search results. In response to these allegations, Apple has released an explanation and proof of no foul play on their end.

Apple is reportedly keeping its own apps at higher ranking than those of its competitors on the App Store, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. When App Store users search for apps, the search results are reportedly programmed to immediately provide apps coming from Apple instead of showing the best and most popular ones first.

The tech giant has responded that it has figured out the stats and done its research on this which prove that these apps deserve the top spot. The App Store bases its top apps based from customer use. As long as the app has many users, it’ll appear at the top searches most of the time.

Moreover, Apple confirms that it relies on a machine learning system to sort the whole list for them. Regardless if it’s an app coming from the company itself or outside of it, the system ranks it as it sees fit.

While Apple confirms the processes behind the App Store searches, the company is currently under fire for anti-trust violations according to Bloomberg. In the Netherlands, Apple is under scrutiny after the country’s Authority for Consumers & Markets looked into the company’s position when it comes to music apps. In the App Store, Apple Music seems to have an unfair advantage toward other apps like Spotify.

The Dutch ACM notes that Apple is in a position to bottleneck most apps on the App Store. Aside from their potential bottlenecking complaint, Spotify has also noted that it still had to pay subscription commissions to Apple which could potentially distort the competition.

On the other end, the US House Judiciary comittee requested major tech companies such as Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Google to testify in court. These companies are called to check on how these companies affect the competition.

For now, Apple has to sort these lawsuits first to prevent a massive issue coming from these legal problems in the future.