4 ms·

Yeah, I think essentially Google used to be the only (or at least most popular) means to discoverability of something on the web. App stores have replaced that

• ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  Of course, Google's secret is that it owns a monopoly app store on the dominant mobile platform too. ;)
  • azinman2 10y ago
    But app usage isn't reflected in search trends...
• marcus_holmes 10y ago
  I don't think this is even vaguely true. App stores have terrible search features, and return thousands of scams before the real thing for anything except a small class of very well-known apps. If it is true, I wonder what class of user it's true for, and why they got this way?
  • xorxornop 10y ago
    Because many users have no idea on how to find out what things are available and what's popular, and/or even that there might be aggregators of this info, or the concept of such. Observe how many people do not even do a search for very simple things. The concept that they might be able to know or discover certain things doesn't seem to actually occur. Of course, this needs to be distinguished from their just being lazy, but even this is problematic, since it's almost always the case that finding it themselves is much faster than asking someone else (who will often essentially just do what the asker didn't...). It's almost a kind of learned helplessness, but with the "learned" part often being very short or implicit.