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Comment by pwinnski | Hacker News Reader

I find myself hoping that large tech behemoths will "go after" each other and tear each other apart, leaving smoking ruin.

Instead, they're fighting over who gets how much of the money. Of course.

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in this case FB is fighting for the consumer to get all the money, which is a fight worth having regardless of what the cynic might say

> Hosts will be able to collect the full ticket price from Facebook users who attend their online events via the web or Android. Facebook says it is using its own payment system on Android and letting developers keep all the money.

Agreed!

I'll give 3 months before Facebook starts charging individuals, or starts tracking them.

well that's because FB in is the "growth stage" for its payment platform. Its common for tech companies to provide a service at a discount or free to get traction.

No doubt FB would be taking a large cut if it becomes the cash cow that the app store is.

If it does become the cash cow, is 30% the norm? Or would it settle on something closer to 10% or 5%

It should come down to the credit card/PayPal range I think. So probably 2-3% as at economies of scale these are huge amounts.

There are technologies like UPI of India which have a 0% charge but I don't understand who pays for maintaining the common infra and how do UPI apps like Whatsapp Payments/Google Pay earn money.

depends if it has platform lock-in.

They just launched the instagram shop a couple months ago. I could see that taking a 30% cut: https://business.instagram.com/blog/introducing-shops-on-ins...

It's still better for FB to take a cut than for both FB and Apple to take cuts.

> in this case FB is fighting for the consumer to get all the money, which is a fight worth having regardless of what the cynic might say

Sure, but that's not quite their goal. No doubt that the "Paid Online Events" feature will be exposing people to ads and generating revenue for FB.

While FB is claiming to be doing this for "small businesses", what it really wants is to get people to use their product. If people offering events had to give 30% of their revenue to Apple, they wouldn't bother using Facebook's event product. Instead, they would use a competing product that takes only a minor cut and no ads, even if it doesn't offer a mobile pay experience.

What FB is trying to do here isn't to help small business, it's to get ahead of the small companies that currently compete with their upcoming events platform by strongarming Apple into eliminating those small companies' edge. All while putting on a pro-small-business facade.

To keep in perspective how much money we're talking here, Oracle disclosed during the 2017 lawsuit with Google that Android had generated 31 billion in revenue (22 billion profit) since its inception in 2007. Google asked the court to place that disclosure under seal [0],

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oracle-google-lawsuit/ora...

How does Google attribute a profit to Android specifically? Play Store cut? or do vendors have to pay for Google Apps which I doubt would be the case.

> or do vendors have to pay for Google Apps which I doubt would be the case.

They do: https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/19/17999366/google-eu-andro...

Huh, that's surprising. $40 seems like a good price for getting the core Google Apps but then if I take the APK and install it on my non Google Play Android phone is it considered piracy?

> if I take the APK and install it on my non Google Play Android phone is it considered piracy?

Indeed. And meanwhile, the same apps are completely free on iOS.

I think that's what this will achieve to some extent. With big companies like Spotify, Epic turning the screw on say Apple. There will be regulation at least in EU on either allowing payment options, alternative install avenues etc.

My dream scenario would be if like the Microsoft ruling in EU, both iOS/Android have to give user an option to choose the core apps like browser, music player etc. This helps companies like Firefox survive which they are struggling to do right now.

Have you read the article? FB is not taking any cut from these events and giving it all over to event organizers.

I did. I'm not sure how that affects what I said. They are still fighting over who gets how much of the money.

it's an odd way to frame Apple asking for a slice of a pie that's 100% consumers, I think that's where the disconnect is

Are they willing to write than on a contract for perpetuity? Is it not dereliction of duty they have to shareholders?

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