Several blogs and websites have recently noted that Microsoft’s Windows Store has been completely overrun by fake apps and scams. Whenever users search for well-known apps like iTunes, Firefox, Adobe Flash, Pandora, Spotify, Minecraft, even Windows itself, they’ll see a host of fake apps for sale, many of them illegally using trademarked logos that belong to the real apps.
The How-to Geek website lies the blame for the problem squarely at Microsoft’s feet. The company paid developers $100 for every app they submitted in March, and that likely led to a lot of poor-quality apps on the site. The site adds, “Here?s one of the most shocking parts of this. People from Microsoft are actually examining each of these scammy apps, checking their content, and approving them.”
In response to the criticism, Microsoft released a statementwhich says:
We strive to make the Windows Store a high-quality experience for customers and also accessible to the broadest audience of developers. Based on customer and developer feedback, we recently took actions to help users discover the specific app titles they?re searching for and improve the overall Store experience. Those updates provide clear guidance to developers and also improve our ability to identify, audit and remove problematic apps.
We recognize that there is more work to do and will continue to re-evaluate our policies to strike a balance between the opportunity for developers and the app quality that our customers expect.”
