Google Demands Its 30% Cut from App Developers in Play Store | Hacker News Reader

Google Demands Its 30% Cut from App Developers in Play Store

nytimes.com

34 pointsgamblor95614 comments

The announcement is here: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/09/listening-...

To me the most interesting part is: "we will be making changes in Android 12 (next year’s Android release) to make it even easier for people to use other app stores on their devices"

If this means applications other than the Play Store (or other apps on the system partition) can automatically update apps, it's about time. If I want to distribute self-updating apps to my own devices, I don't need or want Google to intermediate that, and I don't want to have to unlock the bootloader to install a different system to do that either.

That will likely take years to reach actual users. Many existing phones may never see Android 12.

Scold apple all you want but, Google takes our money and even sells our data to any bidder. Apple taking 30% is one thing and Google shamelessly taking and us bending down to it is another thing.

This is not a "clarification", this is a major policy change. They used to very clearly state that apps were allowed to use alternative payment systems:

> "Developers offering products [except games] must use Google Play In-app Billing as the method of payment, except for the following cases: [...] - Payment is for digital content that may be consumed outside of the app itself (e.g. songs that can be played on other music players)."

From a few days ago: https://web.archive.org/web/20200916183117/https://support.g...

A very good reason to switch to F-Droid: https://f-droid.org.

My thought was a very good reason to switch to a PinePhone or Purism Librem for true software freedom.

How do app developers make money with F-Droid?

In-app purchases, using whatever payment platform they like!

Imagine being against taxation because "tax is theft", even though you use your country's infrastructure. And then agreeing to pay 30% tax to Apple or Google for every mobile purchase you make "for using their infrastructure".

Does this close the loophole of being able to sell IAPs directly if they can be used on other platforms?

Yes, and it now explicitly says that you can't link to outside payment systems

Given that both Apple and Google charge the same 30% commission, I wonder if they did some kind of A/B test to see which company would give them more clicks when used in the title.

Read the article. Google is stepping up its enforcement, which is the story.

> Google said in a blog post on Monday that it was providing “clarity” on billing policies because there was confusion among some developers about what types of transactions require use of its app store’s billing system.

> Google has had a policy of taking a 30 percent cut of payments made within apps offered by the Google Play store, but some developers including Netflix and Spotify have bypassed the requirement by prompting users for a credit card to pay them directly. Google said companies had until Sept. 30, 2021, to integrate its billing systems.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com