Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Play service fee reduced to 15% for the first $1M/year

android-developers.googleblog.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 342 posts

Re: Google Play service fee reduced to 15% for the first $1M/year

#131

Post by sokoloff »

lordnacho wrote: post #109
londons_explore wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is odd... Users of the Play store and App store are a disjoint set. Very few users will switch from Android to iOS or back because in-app purchases are cheaper. Developers are generally forced to support both stores. There wouldn't seem to be any strong reason for both stores to pick identical fee structures - they aren't really in competition.

Users might not change phones but android users might have different behaviour to ios users in terms of how likely they are to spend. Which perhaps skews the developers towards starting on one platform or the other. But generally yes I agree that it can't be all that big a difference.

Low end Android phones/tablets are so cheap that some serve as dedicated displays/devices. I have one that I use as a OBD2 scanner, another sits as a DRO display on a desktop mill. My actual phone is iOS.

If those facts mean I’m counted as an iOS user once and Android user twice, the iOS me spends a lot more in the Apple App Store than the two Android mes put together.

Re: Google Play service fee reduced to 15% for the first $1M/year

#132

Post by hu3 »

cletus wrote: post #114

Better title: Google matches what Apple already did. I said it about Apple and I’ll say it about Google: this is a PR move, nothing more. Google really missed an opportunity here to put Apple in a tough spot by just cutting it to 15%. Your biggest users of your payment infrastructure are also the most likely, most willing and most able to handle their own payments because they already do (eg Netflix, Epic). If either…

Google's proposition is better still.

If I make $2 million on Apple i'll have to pay $600k in fees.

On Google it's $450k.

Re: Google Play service fee reduced to 15% for the first $1M/year

#133

Post by NorwegianDude »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #113

I wish developers would start using the browser more and rely less on the official stores which tax them unfairly. I don't want to install your application, just give me a good web mobile experience.

The web platform is improving fast, but not on iOS. iOS is and has been "the new IE6" for a long time now, except that it's worse as you have no choice but to use it.

Re: Google Play service fee reduced to 15% for the first $1M/year

#134

Post by ocdtrekkie »

krisgenre wrote: post #67
onion2k wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those apps would not survive without vendor-included single click app stores anyway. I find this a little amusing because it's the exact reason why Microsoft lost their IE anti-trust case. Users were given IE by default, and because using something else required effort IE took a huge chunk of the market remarkably quickly. That was deemed to be violating their effective monopoly position on OSs to influence their pos…

What was really the outcome of Microsoft losing the anti-trust case? Windows still comes with a preinstalled browser and I don't remember ever seeing a version of Windows without one.

Google exists, for one. Microsoft decided against early attempts to acquire Google or block their toolbar in IE because of the fear of further antitrust legislation.

Re: Google Play service fee reduced to 15% for the first $1M/year

#135

Post by ocdtrekkie »

einpoklum wrote: post #125
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #11

Worth remembering that as good as it is that Google is reducing it's abusive taxation on third party developers, the primary reason they're doing this is to try to quiet the majority of developers asking for stronger government regulations against this taxation without actually reducing their profit much, since the large companies which bring in the majority of revenue still have to pay full price. Basically, they're…

But can't Google avert this by paying off politicians? You know, with the legalized-bribe political contributions that are so popular? Anyway, Google's hold on mobile ecosystems is really a menace. So much so that it's difficult to even tell apart Google Play the store, Google Play the service(s), Google Play the library(/ies), and whatever else they call by that name.

Paying off politicians has worked well for Google since the Obama era, but it's not working anymore. Reason why was Trump's election. Politicians realized that Google's services, and how they're moderated, can do a lot more to affect an election than a donation ever could.

Re: Google Play service fee reduced to 15% for the first $1M/year

#136

Post by Ploskin »

I always felt the discussion being focused on the platform tax to be a distraction. Sure, now app developers make more. Great. Doesn't change how unresponsive or draconian Google (and Apple) is in when they decide you aren't allowed to be on their Play Store anymore. Or how arbitrarily they choose to enforce their rules.

Re: Google Play service fee reduced to 15% for the first $1M/year

#138

Post by lordnacho »

sokoloff wrote: post #131
lordnacho wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users might not change phones but android users might have different behaviour to ios users in terms of how likely they are to spend. Which perhaps skews the developers towards starting on one platform or the other. But generally yes I agree that it can't be all that big a difference.

Low end Android phones/tablets are so cheap that some serve as dedicated displays/devices. I have one that I use as a OBD2 scanner, another sits as a DRO display on a desktop mill. My actual phone is iOS. If those facts mean I’m counted as an iOS user once and Android user twice, the iOS me spends a lot more in the Apple App Store than the two Android mes put together.

Very true, I have an old android tablet that's gotten too slow for normal use, but functions fine as a clock. Another shows my task list for household chores.

Re: Google Play service fee reduced to 15% for the first $1M/year

#139

Post by [deleted] »

vishnumohandas wrote: post #88
athirnuaimi wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stripe has real costs because it has to interact with the visa and MasterCard networks. The app stores basically have zero incremental costs. They just let you download a file from a directory of listings

In addition to the bandwidth costs for serving the binaries, don’t app stores have to deal with the same networks too for processing their in app payments? How are those any different from Stripe?

[deleted]

Re: Google Play service fee reduced to 15% for the first $1M/year

#140

Post by davidkuennen »

shimfish wrote: post #106

What's also not being said here is that ~99% of apps on Google Play don't make money this way either. Due to a combination of Android user's reluctance to spend money on apps at all and the rampant piracy that Android's open model makes trivially easy, most developers only way to make money is through in-app advertising, which this change obviously makes no difference to. Google Play is mostly a pyramid scheme. Devel…

Actually this change helps me a lot with my app. This reduction will pay for servers and data sources alone, which helps me 'build a sustainable business'.
Post reply on HN