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Comment by Pkeod | Hacker News Reader

https://plus.google.com/106557483623231970995/posts/Bed6WUJp...

"With apple's app store you buy the apps from apple. With google play you buy the apps from the developer. If you are the merchant of record you need to know the address to correctly compute sales tax.

This is documented on http://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/bin/a....

Google cannot give tax advice, so we have to give you the data to make the determination yourself"

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In other words, Google, the huge corporation, would rather that the app developer, who may not even be a corporation at all, be the merchant of record?

I guess I can kinda sorta see this from one point of view: they are trying not to be Apple. But they are still taking 30% of the money.

And while they give you the burden of being the merchant of record, they also give you capabilities Apple doesn't (e.g. carrier billing, control of refunds, ability to reply to reviews, etc.). It's a different bundle, with different trade-offs.

>you need to know the address to correctly compute sales tax.

OK, so that explains why they provide the city you're in, which is the least objectionable of the information -- the developer can probably get that from GeoIP in any event.

But why do they provide your real name? Why do they provide your email address rather than an anonymized forwarder like Craigslist does? Walmart doesn't need to know any of that when I buy a toaster, neither should the app developer.

For the e-mail: Google Wallet / Google Checkout has a checkbox that lets you hide your email address (instead using some intermediary one from Google) at checkout. They also have one that let's you tell the merchant that you don't want to receive promotional emails from them (if that is an option with the normal purchase via other means). Both options have been there since Google Checkout came into existence (I've been using this service since it came out in 2006).

I've looked, but cannot find a way to hide my email for app purchases through the Play store. There doesn't seem to be anything in either the Play store settings of the Wallet settings. Do you know if this feature still exists?

Not sure. I left the US and switched to an iPhone right before Google Wallet went live so my only experience with using it (Google Checkout/Google Wallet) is via a web browser. For that, the option is present during checkout, not in the settings. As far as I know, the option has never been in the settings.

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