It is therefore a necessity to have a viable alternative to the App Store.

I’m very confused what people thought was happening? Like, the image shows a search occurring. Instead of enter sending the query, it’s sent on every keystroke. This is incredibly common. I’m honestly surprised they weren’t doing it before?

And isn’t the privacy community kinda on board with first party analytics? The problem is the sale and distribution of your data to companies you don’t trust. Not a company you trust using analytics to improve their platform.