> the Play Store is a fragmented wasteland of low-effort shovelware

Wait how does this differ from the appstore?

If you think that AppStore is a wasteland, don’t even look at Play Store unless you want a PTSD.

They're both quite awful but one thing that really irks me is that on the Apple Store, every search for something first shows a result from a competitor product.

Search for WhatsApp? First result is an ad for Twitter and WhatsApp is the second result, half hidden (on an iPhone SE). Search for my bank? First result is another bank. Firefox? First result is Chrome. Doctolib (the app for taking covid vaccination appointments in France, and the main doctors appointment service in general)? Another one that's probably more or less a scam. Google Maps? You get an ad for Coyote.

It wouldn't be so bad if the ads didn't look almost exactly like real search results, and if the actual results were not hidden below the bottom of the screen.

The general quality of apps on the Google Play Store might be worse, but this behaviour never happens there. When you look for an app name, you get that app and not one of their competitors that paid more.

Having used both, they're both pretty evenly awful.

The Windows App Store has entered the game...

The thing about the windows app store is that there is quality, I kid you not, on that store, but the curation and search are both so abysmal you would never know. I have found quality apps on social media for the windows store for surface devices, and then when I search the exact title in the store windows can't find anything so it shows me a catalouge of decade old b movies.

Agree - both app stores seem to have their fair share of junky apps.

There's still a dozen different Bonzi Buddy clones on the Mac App Store.