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W10 Store Feature

When Microsoft launched Windows 10 eight months ago, it made a point of telling developers that information technology was working to improve the capabilities and usefulness of the Windows x Store. Whatever the company did, information technology apparently wasn't plenty, and 1 longtime Windows dev is calling for a boycott of the storefront until Microsoft fixes it.

According to Nikolaus Gebhardt, developer of the open-source 3D engine Irrlicht, the Windows ten Shop'southward search function is broken, most to the point of being useless. Gebhardt'southward contempo web log post describes how sales of his various Windows applications, which were already low, have gone to nearly zero under Windows ten. He writes:

You cannot find my apps anywhere in the app store. Unless you know the exact proper name of my app, you lot won't detect it. Yous can blazon any of the keywords my apps accept in their championship, description or even in the list of keywords submitted to the store, and information technology won't list my apps. Instead, the app shop will simply listing two or 3 other, useless apps. In total. Judging from the developer forums, in that location are many other developers with this problem. When contacting Microsoft about this, they apparently sent the other developers a prewritten text, saying basically that "they have no control over the search results shown in the store."

The response to Gebhardt'southward mail service proves he's not alone. Numerous devs have reported that their applications can only be found if you search for the precise proper noun of the app. Another reported apps vanishing from the Windows x Mobile and Windows Phone 8 shop. Developers take been asking Microsoft to address these bug for months, simply the company is stonewalling both publications and the devs themselves.

BusinessInsider reached out to Microsoft to enquire about the problem and was handed a boilerplate response that boiled down to "Read this blog post and follow its instructions to ensure your app will exist surfaced in search results." None of the recommended tips seem applicable to the bug developers are having, particularly when it comes to keyword searches that should render relevant results and simply don't.

Why the Windows Store matters

In theory, the Windows Store is the linchpin that ties the entire Windows ecosystem together. Consumers who want Universal apps that are guaranteed to piece of work across phones, tablets, computers, and even the Xbox One are supposed to get them from the Windows Store. And Microsoft has been searching for new revenue streams since it launched Windows x.

Discoverability has been a major problem for both Apple tree and Google, just Microsoft has a theoretical advantage at that place, in that the bulk of PC users accept devices with much larger screens; it should be easier to surface applications when the user has more space to consider their options. Bing just has a fraction of Google's search volume, just Microsoft still owns a fully functional search engine. It shouldn't be this hard to assistance people find useful applications, only plainly, it is.

Microsoft's app ecosystem is a fraction the size of what Apple or Google manage. In theory, that should make it the best platform to surface great content. In exercise, killer apps tend to brand a splash on iOS or Android and transition to Windows at a much later date, if at all. We've previously criticized Microsoft for the vast numbers of terrible applications that filled the Windows Store, and balancing the need to weed out garbage versus limiting legitimate developers is difficult to do. If these complaints are any indication, however, Microsoft has still to detect its anxiety. Until it does, developers may take fifty-fifty less reason to write code for Redmond's platform than ever.