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

141–150 of 342 posts

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

#141

Post by Dylan16807 »

Waterluvian wrote: post #107
danybittel wrote: post #41

It puzzles me that some people still think 30% is a reasonable cut for any kind of online store. Imagine you're 3 guys / girls and working on an app / game / .. whatever and one person only does "distribution" of the final asset. You are working one / two years or more on it, and one person only checks / verifies the final asset and organizes hosting. How is this in any way justified? And the days that person made an…

A reasonable amount is literally any amount the market will tolerate. Seems 30% nolonger cuts it in any of these stores.

You need a certain amount of competition before a market can give you a "reasonable" price. The market for phone app stores doesn't meet this bar.

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

#142

Post by einpoklum »

rafaelturk wrote: post #117
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.

That's what we're doing. We're leaving both App Stores.

Good on you!

And if your app is FOSS, consider F-Droid among other options.

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

#143

Post by supermatt »

SomeHacker44 wrote: post #78
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

These credit card fees are likely under 3% in the US. So taking 5% adds about 2% for convenience.

Interchange fees for credit cards are about 1.5% + 10c. For debit cards its even less.

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

#144

Post by krisgenre »

lenkite wrote: post #110
input_sh wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've reached a settlement equal to a slap on the wrist. They've agreed to share their API with third parties and a couple of people to verify that for a couple of years (it expired in 2007). So basically nothing.

"So basically nothing" Umm..no. IE could now be un-installed on Windows. After various settlement fines in the US with several parties, the EU took it further and also leveraged its largest anti-trust penalty of that era. (~1 billion) Microsoft were forced to share ALL their earlier private computing API's as open specs. MS word, excel formats, SMB, etc. This was amazing and resulting in several OSS libraries.

>>IE could now be un-installed on Windows.

Why is this important?

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

#145

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

cat_plus_plus wrote: post #29
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…

You know that Android is open source and you can just sideload apps, install a 3rd party app store or replace entire OS with your own ROM right? What, your app/game is not valuable enough to the user to bother with unless it's a single click install without having to enter credit card? Well... Basically - Situation is not at all the same as with iOS - There is too much emphasis on friction-less low value installs and…

> or replace entire OS with your own ROM right

For over 90% (rough guess) of devices this isn't true.

ARM isn't an open platform like Intel/PC.

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

#146

Post by cletus »

hu3 wrote: post #132
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.

Does Apple really do that? If you make $1m, they'll take $150k but if you make $1 more they'll take $300k? Really?

I assumed it wouldn't be that dumb. Is it really the case?

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

#147

Post by 40four »

Really a meaningless gesture if you ask me, reluctantly following Apple’s lead. A meager attempt to get regulators off their back.

I believe Google & Apple should not be allowed to take a percentage at all. It should be a tiered system of fees, like a subscription or something. Sure, their systems help distribute and promote discovery of our apps, so let us pay for that. It should be a yearly fee appropriate for this service.

The idea they they deserve to hover up a percentage of everyone’s business in perpetuity is completely bonkers. They don’t deserve it. But they do deserve to be paid for running the app store infrastructure and services.

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

#148

Post by atleta »

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…

I think the platform makes little difference. The app store/play store app game is a long tail one: most apps make exactly 0 money and see very little traction.

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

#149

Post by eru »

dalu wrote: post #130
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…

That's exactly one of the reasons, but a representative one, why Google needs to be broken apart

Wouldn't more competition be the logical thing to ask for instead?

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

#150

Post by tyfon »

londons_explore wrote: post #105
enos_feedler wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The primary reason they are doing it is because Apple did it. Same goes for every other rev share change that Apple has implemented.

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.

Speaking of swapping, I switched from android to iphone last spring since my old android phone croaked on teams and I couldn't get a new xperia fast enough.

The switch was actually relatively painless when it comes to the apps themselves, the biggest problem I have is the phone itself. Iphone has inconsistent UI/shortcuts and lots of hidden gesture based inputs that you just got to know to be able to use. I'm really tempted to switch back but the google tracking keeps me away for now.

So there are some who are in the market for both :)

The developer cut/price of apps is really low on my list of reasons to switch from one to another though so you got a good point there. I'm actually trust an app that costs 100 NOK (€10) more than a 10 NOK one since they will have less incentives to do shady things.

Post reply on HN