In the pre-Apple days, mobile app makers on J2ME, BREW, Symbian etc had to give up to 70 percent to marketplaces and spend potentially up to 50 thousand dollars or more to code sign each app across multiple device types. $99 for code signing all the individual developers apps across all devices and publishing it was unheard of at the time and truly shocking compared to the old paradigm. Goolge then made it free and only later charged $25.
That's interesting, about the pre-Apple days, I didn't know that. Do you know how/why Google manages at $0 per year though (with a $25 one-off fee), while Apple charges $99 per year? It's really hard for me to believe that Apple's price would survive in any kind of competitive market, but I'm willing to be convinced.
For the equivalent experience that users now demand and expect on Android, it is usually much more difficult and nuanced to achieve.
Google has gotten better at treating developers with love, but it is probably not their main priority.
In fairness there is tons of scamware, and general garbage in the play store.
I've heard this from a few people here, but I'm not convinced that the $99 fee is the relevant differentiator -- Apple already has stricter requirements to get into the store (e.g. apps have to be "original" and can't duplicate functionality of an existing app), and it feels to me like for any particular form of scamware Apple can just ban it directly -- I'm not sure how the $99 per year fee helps, because if anything scammers/spammers are more effective at making money off their apps than most of us so should be more willing to swallow the fee. (Also I'm still annoyed that Apple is kicking out apps that have already paid the fee and been approved/authorised -- no matter what the relevant filter is those apps have already passed it)