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Comment by eridius | Hacker News Reader

Google has relatively few ways to actually give them money directly for software and media. There's Google Apps (assuming you aren't a grandfathered free customer from back when it was free), and I guess YouTube Red, and, um.... is there any other way to actually pay money to Google for services rendered? I honestly can't think of another option.

(I'm ignoring their hardware here because of course that's not free, and I don't think it's even intended to be a significant source of revenue anyway)

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Don't they take a cut from any transaction in the Play store?

In stores around here, you can buy gift cards with a Google logo on it (play store credit). That's about as direct a way of giving them money as i can think of.

They do, but I wouldn't consider that to be the customer paying Google directly. There's a reason why people usually use the word "tax" to refer to this (and Apple's cut on their store).

I suppose buying a gift card is technically giving Google money directly, but that isn't the same thing as payment for services rendered, it's just exchanging USD for Google Play credit, which you then spend on apps. Or in other words, you get the exact same service that you do if you skip the gift card and just pay for apps at the point of sale.

>Google has relatively few ways to actually give them money directly for software and media.

Doesn't Google sell music, e-books, and movies/TV through Google Play? They also have Google Play Music as a subscription service. I was counting the Play Store as buying applications from Google, although it isn't Google's first-party software.

They do, but the context we're talking about is paying Google for Google software, not using Google as a storefront for buying other people's software.

I didn't realize Google Play had their own subscription music service. Good to know.

You Tube TV. It's almost ready for the average couch potato, and certainly good enough if you watch 3 hrs at most of TV a week.

Google offers 2 different paid YouTube products? Wow, that's not confusing at all...

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