alt Hacker NewsAndroid introduces $2-4 install fee and 10–20% cut for US external content links
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The fact that this is being introduced after the whole Epic/Apple thing clearly shows that the penalties in that case were not nearly severe enough and the standards set were not nearly stringent enough. The mere attempt to engage in policies like this should result in fines in the hundreds of billions.
> The following fees apply when a user completes [...] any app installs within 24 hours of following an external content link
So does this mean a malicious competitor or motivated disgruntled user could fraudulently cause millions of app installs? With the scale smartphone activity fraud farms are at these days, paying a few thousand dollars on such a service to cause a developer to spend a few million dollars on worthless installs (or a lot of resources arguing with Google) seems like a worthwhile endeavour for the motivated.
I’m very curious how Tim Sweeney will react to this. This is very much not the victory lap he was hoping to take (nor are the Apple rulings)
1. I think uptake of third party stores is quite low and there’s a strong incentive to stay available on the primary store
2. The App Store model has very much been that the paid apps are subsidizing the free ones. So it’s somewhat fair to charge for using the infrastructure, if you’re not contributing into the pot (and are siphoning away from it)
3. Those per install costs are brutal. I was thinking they’d do a dollar , but at almost $4, they’re outside what most people would spend. This is a strong way to keep F2P games from instituting external payment processing.
I feel like many commenters are misunderstanding what this is about. This is about apps that are distributed via Google Play. It's an exception to the long-standing rules that a) all monetary transactions for non-physical items must use IAPs, and b) a Google Play distributed app can't install or ask the user to install something from outside of Google Play.
As far as I can tell, none of this applies to apps installed from elsewhere, be that F-Droid, other stores like RuStore, or just a downloaded apk. As long as the alternative store itself wasn't installed from Google Play that is, but none of them work like that anyway.
I'm not defending Google of course. Their entitlement is still insane.
Hopefully this gets slapped down hard just like Apple recently did. Both Apple and Google want to continue business as usual despite the court rulings.
From just this page it's rather unclear what triggers this... if an fdroid app that does not use any Play libraries has a purchaseable thing on another site, is that in scope? Do they need to add Play libraries to track it, or be smacked? If yes, it'd certainly explain their "developer verification" effort, as it's a way to enforce rent extraction.
> App download event: A fixed fee (subject to periodic adjustments) per install based on the app category of the linked external app being installed. The linked app category must be declared as part of transaction reporting.
> Games: $3.65
> Apps: $2.85
Isn't this dangerously similar to what Unity did with their Runtime Fee? You know, the thing that soured public opinion of them so bad that a lot of devs quit using it altogether? Or is this more of a Google holding everyone hostage situation?
To me the only surprise is that anyone went for the whole "yeah it's open source, honest" all these years ago.
You don't invest millions and billions when you're Google only to give up the control and financial interest.
I think this needs more attention. It's very predatory (almost $4 for linking to a game install?)
I don't quite understand how this would affect apps for SaaS and cloud services (if at all). Examples:
I use Azure's app to launch a VM on Azure.
I access content purchased as part of a SaaS subscription (eg. Sofa Tutor in Germany).
Wasn't Apple just slapped down for exactly this in court, for the second time? They're really both going to fight this to the bitter end kicking and screaming like toddlers, aren't they.
https://www.courthousenews.com/ninth-circuit-confirms-contem...
Is it too much to hope for some fin-syn restoration? And not just for TV, but for all digital content. Make it, or distribute it, but never both.
Tell me you are a monopoly without telling me you are a monopoly.
How much longer until something is finally done? Do laws no longer apply in the US?
Ma Bell never got this far but I guess being a state owned entity was the actual problem not the consumers getting screwed.
Why is anyone still developing for these stagnant walled gardens?
Not 'Android,' Google Play Store
I'm wondering if there was a FSF or GNU "store" (all software $0), would there be costs?
This is just egregious, Google can't be split up fast enough and antitrust laws need to be enforced.
Meanwhile in Japan, Google Complying with Japan's Mobile Software Competition Act for more open app stores
https://blog.google/around-the-globe/google-asia/complying-w...
Google attempting to claim any percentage of revenue from an external transaction will never happen. I believe the current situation with the App Store is that Apple has been barred by US courts from attempting to charge a fee similar to this; though they still do in the EU. USG antitrust, especially in the current admin, hates Google, far more than Apple; this structure will never survive being challenged.
Charging a reasonable fee for the installation of an app can be, IMO, a fair and reasonably cost-correlative way for app store providers to be compensated for what few services they do provide application developers. That's within an order of magnitude of how much bandwidth would cost, if they were paying market cloud rates, and certainly there are other services rendered, like search indexing.
I would emphasize to the people at Google, however, that your customers bought the phone, which came with the operating system, and thus ethically the core technology your application developers depend on has already been paid for. In Google's case, this happens through Samsung/etc's Android licensing; a relationship which landed them on the wrong side of antitrust lawsuits in the US quicker than Apple's racket did. They dip further by charging developers a direct fee to publish on their stores ($100/year for Apple, $25/one time for Google). Attempting to triple-dip by "reflecting the value provided by Android and Play and support our continued investments across Android and Play" convinces exactly no one of your benign intent; not your investors, nor the US Government, nor consumers, nor developers. The only person who may be convinced that any of this makes any sense is some nameless VP somewhere in some nameless org at your mothership, who can pat themselves on the back and say "at least its legal's problem now". Its possible no one at all in this business unit remembers what the words "produce value" even mean, let alone have the remote understanding of what it takes to do so. Exactly everyone who has ever interacted with it know this; your CEO certainly knows this, given how much investment he's made into AI and not into the Play Store. Continuing to cause so many global legal problems, for such an unpromising, growth-stunted business unit, is not generally a good recipe for keeping your job or saving your people from layoffs.
Well in hindsight, that „Don’t be evil“ turned out to be such a blatant in-your-face lie shouldn’t come as a surprise when dealing with Epstein vicinity enjoyers.
99% of consumers don’t give a shit.
Find something better to do with all that effort. Holy shit. Leave Google alone, unironically.
The apparent information gathering and brutal review process is unbelievable here. If I'm understanding this correctly, the requirement is that eg Epic Game Store must register and upload every single APK for every app they offer, and cannot offer it in their store until Google approves it, which may take a week or more - including every time the app updates.
Meanwhile they get full competitive insight into which apps are being added to Epics store, their download rates apparently, and they even get the APKs to boot, potentially making it easier for those app devs to onboard if they like, and can pressure them to do so by dragging their feet on that review process.
> Provide direct, publicly accessible customer support to end users through readily accessible communication channels.
This is an interesting requirement. I want to see someone provide the same level of support that Google does to see if it draws a ban.