I agree with the idealistic sentiment, but disagree with most of the points made in this post and if I had a product or business I wanted people to use, I'd abs

I agree with the idealistic sentiment, but disagree with most of the points made in this post and if I had a product or business I wanted people to use, I'd absolutely have it on a store (disclaimer, I now work for Google Play, but base this on my previous experience at a retail startup). 1. Organic app store traffic is non-zero, particularly in markets with less tech-savvy users. People do search app stores for apps to solve problems they have. Also it's a marketing channel (like any other performance marketing channel) that you can bid on and spread marketing across, more channels typically means lower business risk. 2. Yes there are horror stories, but apart from the HEY story (which comes with a dose of DHH caveats), many policies are things like needing a privacy policy, or needing account deletion functionality. If you can't meet these sorts of requirements for an app store I think there's often a deeper problem for users (although I recognise this is not always the case, legitimate issues do slip through cracks in my non-Google experience). 3. This is web idealism. I agree in principle, but the world doesn't work this way. 4. I don't think the sort of modern, good PWA is what Apple envisioned when they said "don't repackage your website". If an average user can't tell the difference, Apple won't care. And that statement from the MS open source project does not appear to be from a user with any actual association with MS or the project, it's a random GitHub comment. 5. App stores are more convenient, anyone making this claim is either being dishonest, or has no idea of the average level of technical ability of a mobile user. 6. This is a legitimate point and a blog post structured around this as the main point would be a much stronger argument. 7. Cool. But why not both? 8. Sure it's more work but like anything, it needs trading-off with the business opportunity of being on an app store. 9. ChatGPT is on the App Store and has been very successful there. Wordle famously got cloned by a number of app store devs who made a ton of money before getting called out for it. 10. Advert.