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Comment by coolgoose | Hacker News Reader

I always wondered why all these stores are so fucking awful to filter. Is it calculated ?

Ye probably they want to manipulate the "feed" like Facebook. Google Play have no way to filter on permissions, ads or price ... has to be on purposely, as it is so user hostile.

Yes. I often find Play "hides" deep in the results apps that I had previously bought, even typing their exact name, in hopes I choose another (always paid or with ads) above them.

> Yes. I often find Play "hides" deep in the results apps that I had previously bought, even typing their exact name, in hopes I choose another (always paid or with ads) above them.

Previously installed apps and games used to be listed under the 'Library' portion of your user profile, now you can find them under 'Manage Apps and Device > Manage > Not Installed'.

Of those path segments, the first is a menu option, the second is a tab, and the third is a drop-down. It is almost as if Google doesn't want the user to find it, while making it technically available.

Both Google and Apple monetize app discovery by selling advertising spots and such, and both collect revenues from inside apps (be it the mandatory-through-them in-app purchasing systems or advertising). As they are monopolies on their respective platforms, they have no reason to improve your experience, and so they do not care if you find the best app.

They care that you find the app that generates them the most revenue, and that's exactly what they're going to do.

I imagine it would be easy to add a search filter for ads or no ads, but they don't.

Are there any third party search interfaces? Seems like it would be pretty easy to add automatic checking for ads.

Yes, Aurora Store provides a filter for this. https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.aurora.store/

And someone else mentioned https://playsearch.kaki87.net/

That second one is great! Although I just did a search for "Music" and it only returned 4 results. I'm sure there's more than 4 ad-free music players.

Along with what other people are saying, the app stores have little competition and already rake in massive quantities of money. They don't have much reason to improve anything.

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