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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 the

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.

GeekyBear 5y ago
> A market place and a search engine with ads are a little different. There is a difference here. Google has a very definite profit motive in selling ads on searches for a given companies product name that ranks higher in their monopoly search engine. I can't see how ranking Files higher than Dropbox has any such profit motive. It's a free system utility that isn't even ad supported.
- bostonsre 5y ago
  They are steering users away from non Apple apps. If a user installs Dropbox, it seems more likely that they wouldn't want to install and pay for icloud storage. If Apple wasn't benefiting from surfacing their app in front of a non Apple app, why would someone at Apple go through the trouble of setting it up that way?
  - GeekyBear 5y ago
    They are steering users to install a system utility that integrates with Dropbox (and every other major cloud service). Apple does not make any profit off of that system utility. Google, on the other hand, makes the vast majority of their profit from selling ads that do indeed steer users away from the product they searched for.
    - bostonsre 5y ago
      I'm making an assumption here since it's been a while since I've looked at SEO, but I'd assume that page rank in this case matters. Any friction at all leads to fewer conversions, which means fewer sales for Dropbox. If a less knowledgeable user downloads the Apple app instead of Dropbox in this case, there will be some portion that don't end up installing Dropbox and they may instead find their way to icloud when recommended to install it after installing files. There is no way to tell the actual impact, but I don't see how it could possibly have caused no impact. They control the market, they have a responsibility to maintain a non-amazon like image. Hopefully it was a mistake.
      - GeekyBear 5y ago
        Files is the iOS equivalent of Windows Explorer in Windows. They both allow you to view and transfer files within the filesystem. Dropbox provides it's functionality by integrating into Files on iOS and Windows Explorer in Windows. Installing Files does absolutely nothing to disadvantage a Dropbox install, so your entire premise is false.

GeekyBear 5y ago

> A market place and a search engine with ads are a little different. There is a difference here. Google has a very definite profit motive in selling ads on searches for a given companies product name that ranks higher in their monopoly search engine. I can't see how ranking Files higher than Dropbox has any such profit motive. It's a free system utility that isn't even ad supported.

bostonsre 5y ago
They are steering users away from non Apple apps. If a user installs Dropbox, it seems more likely that they wouldn't want to install and pay for icloud storage. If Apple wasn't benefiting from surfacing their app in front of a non Apple app, why would someone at Apple go through the trouble of setting it up that way?
- GeekyBear 5y ago
  They are steering users to install a system utility that integrates with Dropbox (and every other major cloud service). Apple does not make any profit off of that system utility. Google, on the other hand, makes the vast majority of their profit from selling ads that do indeed steer users away from the product they searched for.
  - bostonsre 5y ago
    I'm making an assumption here since it's been a while since I've looked at SEO, but I'd assume that page rank in this case matters. Any friction at all leads to fewer conversions, which means fewer sales for Dropbox. If a less knowledgeable user downloads the Apple app instead of Dropbox in this case, there will be some portion that don't end up installing Dropbox and they may instead find their way to icloud when recommended to install it after installing files. There is no way to tell the actual impact, but I don't see how it could possibly have caused no impact. They control the market, they have a responsibility to maintain a non-amazon like image. Hopefully it was a mistake.
    - GeekyBear 5y ago
      Files is the iOS equivalent of Windows Explorer in Windows. They both allow you to view and transfer files within the filesystem. Dropbox provides it's functionality by integrating into Files on iOS and Windows Explorer in Windows. Installing Files does absolutely nothing to disadvantage a Dropbox install, so your entire premise is false.