Fortune published an article last week titled This Software Is So Sleazy, Google Calls It Ooze. It refers to this blog entry by Google, which summarizes the results of a study by Google and NYU researchers that lays out some of the worst parts of the software monetization industry.
The article tells how consumers end up being deceived and bamboozled into downloading software they don’t want or need. It describes how the current system of incentives is encouraging bad behavior, rewarding fraudsters, and harming consumers. And it notes the need for solutions. “One of the primary outcomes of this research is, we hope, to raise awareness from the research community at large,” says a Google researcher, “and to focus more on techniques to help protect users.”
We at AppEsteem couldn’t agree more. Our entire business is dedicated to offering a solution to all this “ooze” -- one that will help the industry get clean and thrive, so consumers can live in a world where they no longer need to fear installing or using apps.
Check out our plan to find out more!
This week David Finn and I attended Affiliate Summit East in New York City. We met with prospective customers, secured commitments to participate in our pilot program, and spent time listening to what else AppEsteem could do to help clean up the software monetization ecosystem. It was great - we have more demand to join our pilot program than we can handle, and we have a better understanding of additional benefits we can offer our customers to help make the "safe" ecosystem financially rewarding.
Armed with this knowledge, our team updated the original plan Hong and I put in place back in April.
One hundred days later, our plan's got a lot more detail. We've made adjustments and worked on explaining our intentions more clearly. You can find the latest version (August 2016) at this link: Vision and Plan.
Our vision is simple, and I hope it resonates for you: Consumers have nothing to fear when installing and using free apps on their computing devices. We have a great plan to help make this happen, and we'd love to hear what you think about it. Please send me an email ([email protected]) if you have ideas for improving or correcting it.
-- Dennis and the amazing AppEsteem team
BTW: As you might imagine, some of us were concerned with putting our plans online. Would that drive others to compete with us? Would our security partners look for ways to outflank us? Would the bad guys be armed enough to thwart our attempts to drive them off consumers' machines?
All great questions. And in the end, we decided that if others could help meet our vision by competing with us, we'd welcome them. We want this ecosystem cleaned up in a way that lets the good players thrive, and we believe the best path to get there is if our future partners and customers find us and our plans credible. So we're sharing as openly and transparently as possible in the hopes that together we'll get it done that much faster.