It's hard to interpret this because in the presence of better searching tools for ads, and better surfacing of metadata fields about ads, this would be a clearly pro-consumer move. It wouldn't even be remotely controversial. And my instinct is to interpret it through that lens, it is a policy that in many ways just makes sense. But I don't think there is a way to exclude apps with ads from search results or to search for add-free apps specifically? Google isn't taking advantage of any of the upsides of having "ad-supported" as a separate category of information. This is a general problem, search in the Play Store is kind of frustrating; it doesn't feel designed to help really filter information.
I constantly wonder if I'm being far too charitable with Google or not charitable enough. It's a hard balance to strike, and I always feel like I'm slightly getting the balance wrong. Maybe the correct thing in this case is not to question the policy itself at all but to redirect all of that energy towards the more pressing question, "why can't I filter based on this category?"
Because we can have a somewhat endless debate over whether this policy is good or bad based almost purely on Google's motivations and what they plan to do next. But most of that is just interpreting Google's intent; in the abstract forcing apps to move information out of titles into easily accessed categories/fields is a good thing. And in contrast to a debate about intentions, the lack of filtering tools around ads, and the lack of any ability for developers to highlight being ad-free as a selling point -- those are pretty unambiguous weaknesses of the Play store that make the store worse regardless of Google's motivations. The search page doesn't even show whether or not an app contains ads (or in-app purchases while we're on the subject), you have to go into the app screen to see that, Google really isn't putting a ton of effort that I can see into surfacing this information.
That kind of stuff is negative, that stuff should be fixed. The search page does show the price of the app directly in the result list. It should also show an icon indicating if the app has ads or not, that's information that is just as relevant as the price. In a lot of cases ads are the price of an app, and so for UX purposes they should often be treated like they're the same category of information.
I constantly wonder if I'm being far too charitable with Google or not charitable enough. It's a hard balance to strike, and I always feel like I'm slightly getting the balance wrong. Maybe the correct thing in this case is not to question the policy itself at all but to redirect all of that energy towards the more pressing question, "why can't I filter based on this category?"
Because we can have a somewhat endless debate over whether this policy is good or bad based almost purely on Google's motivations and what they plan to do next. But most of that is just interpreting Google's intent; in the abstract forcing apps to move information out of titles into easily accessed categories/fields is a good thing. And in contrast to a debate about intentions, the lack of filtering tools around ads, and the lack of any ability for developers to highlight being ad-free as a selling point -- those are pretty unambiguous weaknesses of the Play store that make the store worse regardless of Google's motivations. The search page doesn't even show whether or not an app contains ads (or in-app purchases while we're on the subject), you have to go into the app screen to see that, Google really isn't putting a ton of effort that I can see into surfacing this information.
That kind of stuff is negative, that stuff should be fixed. The search page does show the price of the app directly in the result list. It should also show an icon indicating if the app has ads or not, that's information that is just as relevant as the price. In a lot of cases ads are the price of an app, and so for UX purposes they should often be treated like they're the same category of information.