I asked a relative to look for RealVNC on the Play Store and install it. Once they were done, I asked them to fulfill a basic task inside RealVNC and they were really confused by my instructions. I took a look at their phone, lo and behold, they had installed a different app. I asked them to repeat the install procedure while I watched. They punched in “realvnc” in the search box, two identically formatted results appeared. Their finger instinctively clicked the Install button on the top result. It was an ad. 🤦♂️🤦♀️🤦
Pffft, the young generation, not hardened by the 6 different download buttons on a torrent search engine… /s
This, but unironically. How can you be so blind to click on something called Zoho, when RealVNC (the thing you searched for) is right below it?
Google play shouldn’t confuse users just because some company pays more for ads
Google being evil and assholes doesn’t remove the fact that this person literally didn’t spend a second to check what they clicked.
Digital safety starts with everyone, despite if we need laws to regulate the asshole companies trying to mess with people’s lack of attention.
Clearly many of the commenters here have not supported average smartphone users enough to know how they will blindly click the first thing that looks anything like what they think the technician is asking them to click. Remember, the average person does not have a laptop or desktop computer, they only have a phone (and only the one because they probably traded their old phone in with the carrier for a pittance when they got their current one), and they often do not have internet service at home and simply rely on mobile data from their unlimited data plan.
Is that really the average user? Especially not having internet service at home? I can reluctantly but relatively easily believe the “no computer” bit but, average or not, I don’t think I know anyone without some kind of non-mobile Internet.
Nobody in my wife’s family has a laptop. Not a single person. They are tech illiterate to the point where I’m not sure they know how to use a keyboard.
That’s probably not the average user either, but they certainly help to set the average as low as it truly is…
It’s entirely plausible that this is the case for your wife’s family and others, but it’s hard for me to imagine a household without at least one non mobile computer. However, I can.
Without non mobile internet, though? Again, I can imagine it … But it seems wrong.
It shouldn’t be so hard; I was around before the internet was prevalent. My life now involves constant internet access, though, so I guess it’s weird to me that some people have lives that don’t - and especially that that might be the average.
One must always remember the words of George Carlin, I suppose.
To this average person, they have an unlimited plan because that’s what they sell you in the carrier store, and they go do a quick cost benefit and go “nah I don’t need to pay for another internet plan for my home when I have unlimited data on my phone” Mobile data has gotten good enough and cheap enough that they don’t have to care really.
I agree its very hard for us in tech to imagine. I had a similar discussion with one of my colleagues in IT who was in a similar state of disbelief (in this case it was a person who was recently fired who had been with the company for over 25 years and used his work email for a bunch of personal accounts because he “doesn’t have a personal email” a couple of us pointed out some of the thought processes and cost/benefit analysis one might make that can lead to that point)
This was the thought process I had after the episode. I pictured the average user, blissfully installing apps they didn’t search for, before trying again and installing what they needed. I bet a lot of those people leave such apps installed after the fact. And I don’t recall the current broadcast behavior but some time ago it was possible to wake up without the user starting the app and then you could do work on the user’s device. Such as pestering then with notifications, sucking up data, and so on.
I bet a lot of those people leave such apps installed after the fact.
The fun part is once an app is installed, it tends to stay installed for a very long time, and often will even follow them to new phones because what does your phone helpfully offer to do when you first set it up? It asks if you want to transfer all of your data to it. So it transfers everything, including all of your installed apps. I’ve uninstalled flashlight apps from back when phones didn’t have such functionality consistently built in
That’s a fucking Google, an advertising company, for you.
This seems like a case of user error, considering the sponsored result is clearly not the application you asked them to install. However, the Play Store is undoubtedly trash and anti-consumer which is why I primarily use the Aurora Store even on non-deGoogled phones. Performing the same search in Aurora, that Zoho Assist app is not even in the first 20 results while RealVNC Viewer and RealVNC Server are the top two results.
No, fuck that. The ads being listed before rhe first result are intended to cause people to misclick. That isn’t all on the user.
Don’t excuse predatory business practices.
Are you illiterate? My very next sentence was:
However, the Play Store is undoubtedly trash and anti-consumer which is why I primarily use the Aurora Store even on non-deGoogled phones.
If the practices are predatory, blaming the user is excusing the predatory practices. Bragging about how you use something else in that context is doubling down on blaming the user instead of the practices.
So no, I am not illiterate. You ahould have just left off the sentence blaming the victim.
Of course it’s user error. However a system makes it easier or harder to achieve a task or make errors. You say it’s clearly not the app that was asked for. I see two equally sized icons of nearly identical color, two equally sized Install buttons if the same color. The first one being the wrong one. And this is after looking for an exact app name. I think we don’t need a focus group to show this drives clicks away from the searched app and to the ad. In fact we can be reasonably sure Google’s research drove the decision to create this UX. In a slightly saner timeline I’d have expected the ad to not have an Install button on it or at the very least to not use the prominent button color. 😒 BTW I didn’t downvote.
Of course, as I said - the Play Store is trash and anti-consumer. However, that does not change the fact that the sponsored application is clearly not called “RealVNC”, nor does it have a logo which says or suggests it is RealVNC. If you are getting tricked by the colour of an application logo then you have problems closer to home you should be worrying about.
A few months ago I needed to install Google home for something Chromecast related, so I quickly searched the play store and installed it. Loaded it up and I see an ad, what the hell. App opens and I realise it isn’t Google Home, it’s something made to trick me into thinking it was when I wasn’t paying attention.
Google is letting their ads steal their own users from them.
They recently changed it so that the search bar no longer appears by default, and you have to go to the search tab just to get to it. Fuck heads.
