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. 🤦♂️🤦♀️🤦
As someone who’s seeing this Play Store search result page for the first time, I also find it massively confusing.
Frankly, it looks like just the description page of RealVNC with an info box for “Zoho Assist” at the top (which might be the team that develops RealVNC?), and for some reason there’s also two install-buttons.
You don’t have a chance to realize that it’s a list of search results, because there’s practically no repeating UI elements.
Aside from the sponsored app at the top (which I also don’t find clearly labeled; that “Sponsored” could just be a generic heading above everything), I don’t even assume malicious intent from Google here.
Presumably, they made the RealVNC entry big, because they don’t want you falling for scam apps. But it is absolutely not helpful in this case.