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| ▲ | lemagedurage 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Yep, I'd hypothetically economically gladly build an alternative app store charging "only" 5% on app revenue. The blocker would be that Google has a hold on what store is installed by default on Android. Apple even more so. This is hardly a fair market. | | |
| ▲ | brainwad 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | There are other app stores on Android, e.g. OEM ones like the Galaxy store. The latter doesn't really compete on price though - 20% cut of one time payments and 15% of subscriptions. I think the Android app stores anchor to the iOS app store prices to piggy back on Apple's monopoly power - devs are used to having to pay Apple that much, so they will not resist if you charge the same. | | |
| ▲ | xethos 17 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > they will not resist if you charge the same. Sure, but they also won't generally bother if the fees are the same as the installed-on-every-device Play Store |
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| ▲ | philipallstar 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | That would work because someone else "Google" is doing all the development of Android etc etc. Of course you can create a parasitic service for less. | | |
| ▲ | benoau 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Google is not developing Android for the IAP fees, they're doing it to sell phones loaded with their search, advertising, browser and services. They take hundreds of billions in revenue annually from this, they are being paid several times over for that work even if they get no IAP fees. | | |
| ▲ | b112 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It's sad that Google has absolutely no foresight. The speed of government is slow, incredibly slow. It's measured in election cycles. It takes government eight, twelve years to simply turn around and notice. But once it does, it's a juggernaut. Nothing can stop it. Nothing can avert it. Nothing can prevent it. And as everybody from Facebook to Microsoft knows, once it starts moving, you're screwed. In the US, the oil companies thought they were too big. Then the telco companies thought they were too big. What really happens is eventually people just get pissed off, and then it's too late. Google is fast approaching that. They almost had chrome and other things ripped away from them, and now they've got requirements to have alternate play stores. If they don't turn course, and turn course blazingly fast, they're going to have their entire empire wrenched away from them. Oh well. | | |
| ▲ | mrandish 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > If they don't turn course, and turn course blazingly fast, they're going to have their entire empire wrenched away from them. Unfortunately, that's no longer the case with the app store monopolies. While Apple is under some partial enforcement on parts of their app store policies, Google managed to play the game of regulatory brinksmanship better and largely avoided that for their app store. So the regulatory powers (such as they are) have already taken their best shot and this is where we are. | | |
| ▲ | b112 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Once this starts it never ends. Regulatory action has been steadily increasing around the world, and it will continue to do so. Juggernauts do not have to be fast. And the judge has seen Google being intractable and sneaky with alternate app stores too: https://www.theverge.com/policy/979852/that-is-not-acceptabl... There is now a record of this. The next action against Google, will see people pointing out each step they took to avoid compliance. A case a year down the road about AI, will see stubborn attempts to comply like the above cited. Google, with the gold plated shovel, digging a hole for itself. Put another way, breaking up a company typically comes after other methods don't work. Such as being sneaky and making them not work. Or even because the required competition didn't occur, regardless of fault. It's not over. It's a step taken, with a positive outcome, and a judge who is making sure there's follow through. Next step will be more stark. |
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| ▲ | philipallstar 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You can already stand up an alternate store. |
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| ▲ | izacus 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Google is funding Android fully from Play Store, since previous CFO the ad revenue isn't shared between parts. | | |
| ▲ | benoau 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | They also say they generate $57 billion ad revenue from being default search engine on iPhone, so obviously there is a cash value to being the default search (and everything else) on Android too even if their accountants can finagle reasons that doesn't contribute to Android's development costs. If they didn't develop Android they'd be paying $10s of billions annually for the prime positioning their apps and services and search enjoy too, so even if you buy their accounting tricks the development is paying for itself many times over. | | |
| ▲ | izacus 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | That would then go against the wishes of people here for Google to be broken up and Android to self-fund, no? ;) | | |
| ▲ | benoau 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | If Android did belong to someone else then there could be an argument that IAP fees are funding it and subsequently required, perhaps even under less-than-competitive circumstances. But if the court allowed, Google would be paying that company $10s of billions for the prime real estate their software, search and services enjoy and it would then be a very weak argument that only IAP funds its development. Just like it is when Google earns $100s of billions in revenue from Android now. |
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| ▲ | agsnu 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Would it be OK for Microsoft to prevent Steam from running on Windows because Valve doesn't contribute enough to funding the Experiences and Devices org? I've never really understood why mobile platforms should be different from how we think about desktop ones. | | |
| ▲ | philipallstar 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Only Apple is. Android supports alternate app stores, and has done since 2008. Samsung's app store for Android has been running since 2009. |
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| ▲ | rpdillon 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Parasitic? Writing software for folks' devices and selling it isn't parasitic...it's just participating in the market. Weird that the overton window has moved so far that anything not built by the trillion-dollar duopoly is considered some kind of free-rider. | | |
| ▲ | philipallstar 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It's not weird - you've just completely misunderstood the situation. This is about the OS, which the software in question (the alternate app store) relies on, but generates no revenue for. The devices are still being sold, because their manufacturers are allowed to make money, the alternate store is allowed to make money. Only the OS maker will make no money, because that would be bad. | | |
| ▲ | zem 41 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | what you are arguing for is objectively extremely bizarre. if you take a step back, this is what is playing out: company C makes a device. it needs an operating system to run software, so they add it. if there was no operating system the device would be useless and no one would buy it. now person A buys said device. it's theirs, they have paid money for it, they own it. person B writes some software. it runs on the device's operating system. they want to sell it to person A. person A wants to buy it from them. why should company C be involved at all? I found this super weird and distasteful when game consoles were allowed to use this business model, and am even more taken aback that general purpose computers get away with it. | |
| ▲ | necovek 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You seem to imply Google was forced to open source Android or even to give it for free: sounded like it was a purely business decision to capture more of the market. Now that they have, they are also turning around on bits of that too. | |
| ▲ | arrosenberg 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Ah yes, Microsoft famously never made money off of Windows. |
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| ▲ | catlifeonmars 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | That trillion dollar duopoly is probably the worst case of free riders. It’s an enabler/vehicle for all the other billion dollar free riders to steal from the population. |
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| ▲ | pydry 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | theres nothing parasitic about a competing app store. it is parasitic to try and prohibit competing app stores and then leverage your monopoly by charging monopoly prices. everything google is trying to do to discourage graphene, newpipe, competing app stores, etc. is parasitic and it's right that they are being fined by the EU for this behavior. | | |
| ▲ | philipallstar 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > theres nothing parasitic about a competing app store. I think a more honest way to say this might be: Android OS development is massively funded by Google, and the Play Store feeds into this hugely. No other store does this, so it shouldn't be surprising that they can charge a lower fee. They're just doing the easy bit. |
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| ▲ | ajkjk 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It is rent extraction which always feels like bullshit because it is. Competition is supposed to be the counterbalancing force but it barely exists here. | | |
| ▲ | Loquebantur 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | It doesn't exist because it can't: The basic services Google provides can effectively only be consumed by humans individually, creating an inevitable bottleneck. Such bottlenecks impede interchangeability of goods, as you can't reasonably entertain multiple suppliers simultaneously there. And that means, you cannot have a free market, because you can't really have meaningful competition. Google has captured services that really are public utilities. Them being "new" doesn't play a role. |
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| ▲ | jeltz 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | 8% for Stripe? Why would anyone have to pay that when my tiny company pays 1.5%? | | |
| ▲ | benoau 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | It's a level of service above their payment processing, where they also collect and remit certain taxes which I believe is built-in to that ~8%. This is the same service that Google and Apple provide for in-app payments. https://stripe.com/managed-payments This is what Apple said about it: > Stripe and Paddle are leading full-service, turnkey payment processing, and merchant-of-record providers handling all the services necessary for link-out, including payment processing, tax compliance, fraud detection, and customer service. Across the top apps, the mean implied processing and merchant-of-record fee based on Stripe’s and Paddle’s rack rates (which few, if any, large developers actually pay because they negotiate discounts or provision in-house) is 8.1% using Stripe rates, or 7.8% using Paddle rates. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.36... |
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