I would think that few people, if any, open up the Android market thinking, "I want to find an app that I have to pay for." I would think that most people begin with "I want to find an app that does <i>X</i>," and pay for it if it seems to be worth the money according to ratings, screenshots and reviews. There are unquestionably free apps out there better than their paid alternatives, so why would anyone slice it that way?
<i>The discoverability is much, much higher for free apps.</i><p><i>7% of visitors used the free filter, vs. less than 1% enabling the paid filter.</i><p>The evidence following the statement doesn't seem to support it. If 92% of the time having a price doesn't affect discoverability how can you possibly say free has "much, much higher" discoverability?<p>Not to mention this article commits the same fallacy that large media companies do when they talk about piracy. Every pirated copy does not represent a lost sale, same as here where every search filtered by free doesn't represent a lost sale opportunity. It could very well be that these people that filter by free would never pay for anything no matter how good it is.