Under a million you can get it to 15% by applying to the small business program.
In most cases they allow users also to purchase subscriptions outside their app store, but you can't link directly to those purchases from within the app.
Ask HN: How is this legal that you must use Google Billing for Android apps?
11–20 of 53 posts
Re: Ask HN: How is this legal that you must use Google Billing for Android apps?
#12I thought a big benefit of Android was that you don't have to distribute your apps through the one official App Store.
Re: Ask HN: How is this legal that you must use Google Billing for Android apps?
#13> How is this legal that if I want to publish an Android app on Play Market and charge for subscriptions, I must use Google Play Billing and pay 30% to Google? This is insane It's bad for the developer, sure, but what exactly is "insane" or "illegal" about it? They have created a product marketplace, and they let you sell there, and you must abide by their rules. If you want to sell on Gumroad or similar services you…
Ebay originally had no preffered payment processor, you could use whatever system you wanted to. PayPal became the vast favorite among buyers and sellers, ebay bought PayPal, but for a long time at least, you could opt for an alternative. I'm not sure that ebay ever required PayPal payments. Ebay eventually jettisoned paypal and integrated their own seperate payment processing.
Re: Ask HN: How is this legal that you must use Google Billing for Android apps?
#14I thought a big benefit of Android was that you don't have to distribute your apps through the one official App Store.
Yes, but if you do use Google's store, you have to use their payments system (which is roughly 10 times the price of normal online payments processing).
Except if you're too big for them to lose your business since it would make their store look bad as a platform, or too small for them to bother, or they are distracted by some other shiny trinket on that particular day.
Re: Ask HN: How is this legal that you must use Google Billing for Android apps?
#15> This is insane (because there are no alternatives to Play Market). This is not true? Huawei uses android but is banned from the US so Google can't take their money. Guess what... you don't need Google Play to distribute apps.
Their issue doesn't seem to be with Google Play but being forced to use Google Billing?
Re: Ask HN: How is this legal that you must use Google Billing for Android apps?
#16Wait until you find out about apple. They are worse in every way.
Re: Ask HN: How is this legal that you must use Google Billing for Android apps?
#17> This is insane (because there are no alternatives to Play Market). This is not true? Huawei uses android but is banned from the US so Google can't take their money. Guess what... you don't need Google Play to distribute apps.
Name a popular Android app that's not distributed through Google Play outside of China.
Of course that could also just mean that the market agrees that Google's store is just the absolute best, and paying Google 30% (or 0% if you're really cool) is a steal – we just don't know since we haven't ran that particular experiment anywhere in the world.
We are probably about to, in the EU, though.
Re: Ask HN: How is this legal that you must use Google Billing for Android apps?
#18There are alternatives to Play market. Play doesn't work at all in China. There is Huawei, Samsung and Xiaomi store, and probably others. Users can also install F-Droid or any other alternative store app. I don't see why it should be illegal to have fees and terms of use on your platform. Don't like it? Don't use the platform. You're not entitled to others' work.
> Don't like it? Don't use the platform.
Many users don't even know that's possible, because all they've ever known is Google Play and it comes pre-installed on the majority of the devices, without a clear way to get something else.
Even their own store explicitly disallows other store apps: https://play.google.com/intl/ALL_uk/about/developer-distribu...
> 4.5 You may not use Google Play to distribute or make available any Product that has a purpose that facilitates the distribution of software applications and games for use on Android devices outside of Google Play.
This leads to the second point: developers will essentially be locked into using Google Play because trying to opt for any other platform that doesn't have many users is pretty much killing their own business. Unless you are explicitly targeting a demographic in an area where Google's service is unavailable, if you like putting food on the table then you basically don't have a choice.
It feels like a monopoly due to the network effect, especially with how third party APKs will throw warnings on Android by default.
Re: Ask HN: How is this legal that you must use Google Billing for Android apps?
#19I wish folks would realize this has knock on effects for them--you're paying 30% more for things (or 15%, if it's a small developer). Is the "safety and curation" of the Play Store (or Apple App Store) worth 30% more to you?
(Full disclosure: I moved my apps off the Apple App Store/Google Play Store earlier this year. I wasn't seeing any value with distributing on them. After leaving, I've had better interactions with my users and almost all of the folks who discover my apps end up upgrading to the paid version. While my installs are lower, my conversion rate has never been higher.)
Re: Ask HN: How is this legal that you must use Google Billing for Android apps?
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