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Microsoft today released an update to its app store that introduces 10 new policies to “promote choice, fairness and innovation.” While detailing the changes, the company fired at Apple over App Store rules. In particular, the move sees Microsoft align itself with the Coalition for App Fairness that leads Apple’s antitrust charge.
Microsoft Vice President and Deputy General Counsel Rima Alaily today published a blog post covering the company’s new policies aimed at promoting fairness and application development for Windows 10 (via The Verge). At the opening, Alaily says that app stores “have become a critical gateway” and that Microsoft is working to “practice what we preach.”
In particular, Microsoft’s 10 new app store policies are based on ideas shared by the Coalition for App Fairness, which was founded when companies like Epic Games, Tile, Spotify and more oppose the practices of the Microsoft App Store. Manzana.
For software developers, app stores have become a critical gateway to some of the world’s most popular digital platforms. We and others have raised questions and at times expressed concerns about app stores on other digital platforms. However, we recognize that we must practice what we preach. So today we are embracing 10 principles, based on the ideas and work of the Coalition for App Fairness (CAF), to promote choice, ensure fairness and promote innovation in Windows 10, our most popular platform, and our own Microsoft Store on Windows 10:
In the section describing how the new principles will work, Alaily did a clear dig on how Apple manages its iOS App Store (a closed ecosystem):
Windows 10 is an open platform. Unlike other popular digital platforms, developers are free to choose how they distribute their applications. Microsoft Store is one-way. We believe it provides significant benefits to consumers and developers by ensuring that available applications meet strict privacy, security and protection standards, while making them easier to find and providing additional tools and services for developers to focus. in the development.
The comment comes after Microsoft recently had a discussion with Apple about its game streaming policies that prevent Microsoft’s xCloud game service from working on iOS.
Going further, the post highlights the benefits for developers who choose to distribute software on their own, including the ability to use whatever payment options they want.
But there are other popular and competitive alternatives in Windows 10. Third-party app stores, such as those on Steam and Epic, are available for Windows and offer developers different options for pricing (or revenue share), standards, requirements, and features. And developers can also easily choose to distribute their applications on their own terms directly over the Internet without restrictions. The first four principles are designed to preserve this freedom of choice and the strong competition and innovation it enables in Windows 10.
Other new principles that Microsoft says it will stick to include maintaining its own “applications” to the same standards that it maintains competing applications by.
Here is the complete list:
- Developers will have the freedom to choose whether to distribute their Windows applications through our application store. We will not block competing app stores on Windows.
- We will not block a Windows application based on a developer’s business model or the way it offers content and services, including whether the content is installed on a device or streamed from the cloud.
- We will not block a Windows application based on the developer’s choice of which payment system to use to process purchases made in their application.
- We will give developers timely access to information about the interoperability interfaces that we use in Windows, as set out in our Interoperability Principles.
- Each developer will have access to our app store as long as it meets objective standards and requirements, including security, privacy, quality, content, and digital security.
- Our app store will charge reasonable fees that reflect the competition we face from other Windows app stores and will not force a developer to sell anything they don’t want to sell within their app.
- Our app store will not prevent developers from communicating directly with their users through their apps for legitimate business purposes.
- Our application store will maintain our own applications with the same standards with which it maintains the applications of the competition.
- Microsoft will not use any non-public information or data from its app store about a developer’s app to compete with it.
- Our app store will be transparent about its rules, policies, and promotional and marketing opportunities, will apply them consistently and objectively, will notify you of changes, and will provide a fair process to resolve disputes.
Last month, Apple updated its App Store policies to include more transparency and some tweaks, but critics of the company, including Microsoft, weren’t happy with the slight changes.
Apple also created a way for developers to challenge the App Store review process as announced at WWDC 20, but antitrust concerns surrounding their business practices are certainly not resolved.
Read Microsoft’s full post on app store changes on their blog here.
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