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Comment by josteink | Hacker News Reader

TLDR: Application banned for not using a Google-blessed payment option which Google has not enabled for the country in which the developer actually lives.

In that case I guess the only other option is going completely free? How many developers will be willing to accept that position?

Do Google really think they can create a thriving ecosystem and market if they start throwing around inconsistent and conflicting rules and enforcement around apps?

Yes, inconsistent enforcement sort of worked for Apple, but they at least had a coherent platform. The things they required developers to use were actually available to the them.

Google asking developers to use things they wont enable for them is just a symbol of how Google has grown to such a size that the left hand no longer knows what the right hand is doing.

This is like watching Microsoft all over again.

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The main problem with Google is their lack of customer care. I had my Adsense account rejected a few years back for no reason (there was no bad activity) and when I appealed, their response was the same "We have reviewed your appeal and can't do anything about it."

Lol.. Adsense. Don't get started. You probably never had an actually living human being reviewing your appeal. They love programming at Google.

It happened to me. I try to forget it to avoid uncovering the rage buried deep my brain :)

I had successfully forgot about them doing it to me, but I get reminded every time they pull stunts like this. Which seems to be almost constantly now that they touch so much of the tech industry yet have refused to improve this aspect of their company.

Same. The closest to any sort of answer I was able to get was something suggesting the clicks from my site's visitors weren't profitable enough for them therefore I'm permanently banned from ever putting AdSense ads on that or any other site I may make in the future.

It's sad to see them go from "Do no Evil" to "Pray we don't alter the deal any further" in just a few short years.

Dude, it you check out http://www.google.com/ideas/, they are looking a bit like a defence contractor these days.

You weren't kidding. That reminds me of Palantir a bit.

OCP?

http://robocop.wikia.com/wiki/Omni_Consumer_Products

Well, they did by Boston Dynamics, so they actually are a defense contractor now.

"This is like watching Microsoft all over again."

Doing what, specifically?

It's hard to pinpoint exactly, but there was a time when it became clear that Microsoft's actions as a whole were increasingly getting less and less coordinated. They could say one thing on one event, and another division could say something completely conflicting a week or two later.

Their execution strategy and ability to put the entire company behind it has been sorely lacking for many years, something even Ballmer recognized before announcing he was stepping down.

This is ofcourse 100% subjective and not very scientific, but IMO we are seeing the same trends with Google. They have different divisions saying and doing different things (like here). They have no clear strategy or message about where they're going next.

You have the smudge of partially or completely overlapping platforms like Chrome, ChromeOS and Android. For ages you've had Google talk (IM), Google Voice (and or regular SMS depending on geographic region) and G+. Now they've started looking into consolidation, but it took them years.

Google is fragmenting at their seams with a myriad of platforms and services, and their attempts at putting things back together seems mostly driven by the G+ initiate, a initiate which has faced massive user-criticism due to the way it is being executed.

This feedback, had it been taken to heart, would have led to changes around G+ but so far we've seen none. This is like Microsoft and the whole Metro/Win8 fiasco. They think they're too big to fail and just keep on pushing.

All in all, all those small pieces start to add up. A lot of the things we saw with Microsoft, we're seeing again with Google.

The app in question was using Paypal.

Right or wrong, there is no way Google is going to let developers use Paypal instead of their own Google billing, for which they keep 30%.

I think you're missing the point where

- Google wouldn't even accept the developer into their own 'Take 30% of my income' program

- Other popular apps get away with that (using Paypal) just fine

So.. arbitrary, idiotic and no way to talk to a human. There's no way to justify that.

And the author was willing to push a mandatory update that disabled the PayPal IAP.

I think you're missing the point. Google is god. You either follow the TOS or get booted eventually, if or when they find out.

The other crappy thing is, even if the developer has a working version on another app store, there's no way (under the terms) to say "Sorry, you can't do that here, but here's a link to a version of the app that does allow it". I think even mentioning Amazon's app store ("you can also download this app in the Amazon app store", for instance) would be enough to get you banned.

Unless they've recently renegotiated, Google only gets 5% and the other 25% goes to the carrier. I'm not sure why the carriers in the counties where Play doesn't support payments haven't been able to get Google to implement support though.

That sounds very suspicious. Do you have a source for this? Remember that you don't even need a carrier to be able to use the app store. Who takes the 25% from the payments done from my wlan-only tablet?

Here's a story about them trying to negotiate an increase in their cut with carriers in South Korea: http://www.androidauthority.com/google-share-play-store-andr...

I don't know what happens for carrier-less devices. I had actually thought OEMs had a slice in the pie too but couldn't find any evidence of that as so didn't mention it earlier.

I would have to think South Korea is a whole different ball game.

Yes. In South Korea you can't just put a SIM card in a device and use it like you can in the rest of the world. The phones have to be activated with the carrier.

I don't know of any other place where this happens.

Let me get this straight. If i happen to purchase an app on goggle play and say I'm using my home wifi to install it since I value my bandwidth their still getting 25%?

I get goggle making money but a carrier who doesn't do jack making money? In what world does that make sense?

It's not about bandwidth used, it's about the billing service (charging via the customers carrier contract)

25% is a low rate for that, carriers usually charge 40-60% of the total amount, which seems totally insane to me considering that a carrier has much lower fraud risks than some web service because they usually have established billing relationships with they customers.

Edit: Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_payment#Direct_operator_...

Oh, that's really expensive. I guess it's ok for small amounts though but for large amounts 25% is way overkill.

Credit/Debit cards incur a fixed charge of say (max) £1.50 so that would mean that if you're paying more than £6 you're better off with the card.

If the developer was able to use Paypal to receive money in his country, why isn't it possible for Google to do the same? It just shows that Google isn't really trying to make its payment system truly global.

I wonder why they allow skype? As far as I know skype use their own billing for credit. This isn't a physical product, so I can't see why this shouldn't be disallowed by the terms of service.

In a negotiation if one party is prepared to walk away and take a huge loss and the other is not, the party that is prepared to walk away will win the negotiations. Apple historically has been willing to cut into their own flesh to get big developers to obey the rules (if you will remember the amazon kindle in-app purchasing debacle). They would be willing to ban an app like Skype to make them comply. Google and microsoft have less resolve, they're not willing to ban a "must have" app for TOS violations, so that implicitly means those apps can ignore the TOS.

If Skype sold credits in-app they would have to follow the same rules.

Because Skype allows you to use the digital content that you buy outside of the Android app. (Desktop, Web and so on)

Apple has a similar rule. (We have an iOS App in the App Store that uses Paypal)

Edit: Here's the relevant part from the TOS:

Developers ... must use Google Play's in-app billing service as the method of payment, except: ...

... where payment is for digital content or goods that may be consumed outside of the app itself (e.g., buying songs that can be played on other music players).

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