EsquireCats

I understand where people are coming from with this - but you know what this actually looks like? 
It looks like a vocal minority had down rated the app, and now that more people are being prompted to rate it, the rating is now a fairer reflection of the widespread user sentiment.

This doesn’t mean people suddenly believe the app is good or better, or that apple are evil or had planned this - it means that ratings continue to represent the average, and that in-app prompts are a fairer way of obtaining that wide spread view. If the only way to rate this app previously was to return to the app store then it is no surprise whatsoever that only angry users went to this effort. 

This seems like the right time to do it - in this environment where self-service is gaining moment, when someone inevitably destroys their device, it’s relatively straight forward to push against the inevitable blame - that this was the user’s decision.

A bit similar to how we’re seeing app developers getting called out when they provide b/s reasons why their invasive app was rejected from the app store. 

This situation does more to reveal how completely out of touch some developers are with commerce and the business of apps - I would not be at all surprised to see an overlap between these complaints and those that don't seem to grasp that contributions to the app store via some fee structure are never going away. 

Firstly there is no harm to their business, they are the primary beneficiary to the advertising and none of these apps have saturation rates which would imply even a modest amount of cannibalisation let alone the significant % needed to make the 15/30% fees produce a negative outcome. (Which is also trivial to check since they can merely review their profit growth from before and after the ads - one can be almost guaranteed that their profit rate has increased from the extra advertising activity that they didn't pay for.)

We call this a win:win scenario. Whoever Apple has engaged to drive traffic to the app store can claim a win, and the developers profits have increased which is the other somewhat obvious win.

When someone isn't happy with a win:win scenario - it's called greed. Greed is more often based on fantasy rather than reality - the developers think that given more time they would have acquired these users as full rate customers (that's the fantasy). They don't at all understand momentum, competition and user choice. More users in a shorter timespan lead to faster growth and stymies their competitors, meaning on both short and long timescales having someone advertising for you is always a good thing.

The fears of this pushing up bid prices are negligible since both theirs and the app store ads aren't in scarcity volumes. One may ask: would they rather the ads point to someone else in the app store?

Having the apps as separate listings as well as catalogued in the main app is *better* for Netflix. It means that instead of just one entry point to their subscription service, a user can be onboarded from possibly hundreds of locations in the app store. This means every listing, every relevant search, every spot on the top lists and every recommendation are all immediately fed into Netflix's offering. The idea that Gurman thinks this is a weakness because consumers "tend to prefer all-in-one services" is both short sighted, but ignorant to bundle software and playback media into the same bucket.

For Apple's customers and Netflix it's an absolute "win/win" scenario. The store is enriched with titles and Netflix have a large visible spread to drive subscription to their service.

Facebook inc is the best example of why you don't surround yourself with yes-men. It's dead, we're all just waiting for the funeral.