Apple has altered the search algorithm for the iOS app store. They make changes in the algorithms that their own apps do not dominate the search results in the iOS store.
They make these change in following the antitrust Scrutiny in Europe and the United States.
Times published an article related to this issue. According to times, Apple’s own apps ranked higher as compared to the other developer apps in their app stores since 2016. They analyze the total 13 keywords and more than 1800 apps, resulted in apple dominates search results.
After the software update in July, executives told that “Now a fewer number of Apple’s own apps appeared at the top of search results”. But according to the Wall Street Journal, apples own apps ranking higher than the other in that month.
In Apple devices, we can’t download apps from other app stores. Apple app store is the sole way to download or install any app into the device.
That’s why Apple’s these practices of altering the search results, are under the antitrust scrutiny in Europe. The Regulators are investigating that company is favoring their own apps or not. There is also Lawsuit against the copany’s these policy allowed to proceed by the US Supreme court.
The company told the time magazine that they make this algorithm only to give the user what they are looking for. They have no intention to favor their own apps or others.
Tech giants Apple, Google and Facebook have all recently faced DOJ antitrust investigations. Here’s what they can learn from Microsoft’s 1998 antitrust case. https://t.co/PLLmR9HYNf pic.twitter.com/vkgwTyyMEs
— CNBC (@CNBC) September 7, 2019
“There’s nothing about the way we run a search in the App Store that’s designed or intended to drive Apple’s downloads of our own apps,” Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president to the Time.
This is not the first company under antitrust scrutiny in Europe. Before this, Europe regulators fined Google for preferring their products in the search results.