21–30 of 175 posts
Google is so protective about Chrome and Search they're scared about getting drawn into an Apple like Epic problem with antitrust consequences.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
According to everything i read about chargebacks on Google services, they indeed don’t pay attention, they just automatically block access to any of your Google accounts and services shortly after you do a chargeback. And given the horror stories I’ve heard about trying to resolve or reverse any automated account bans by Google, I do not recommend following that route.
Yup, companies dislike charge backs and many will block you from all their services for requesting one. So don't go that route unless you never wish to use services from that company again. My wife accidentally did one for a mmorpg she plays and after 6 weeks (and dealing with support, multiple banks, etc.) it was only social media shaming that got them to unban her.
Stripe is a processor with more generous chargeback terms than many out there, but merchants with small payments still suffer from them very much.
I feel like we are getting nearly weekly examples of "the platform store will eventually kill your business". These platform stores wouldn't be anywhere without independent developers building the software to sell in then, and these big companies just shit on them.
Google represents one type of software thankfully, web. It’s craziness at the end of the day. Examining this behavior takes you into the pathological where no other being exists, Thanos incarnate.
Is it just that nobody paid for things? Presumably they're going to keep running the chrome web store, so isn't a cut of paymens "free money" to them? Is there some big cost to this I'm not seeing, maybe too much fraud?
I understand shutting down expensive products. It's weird keeping the expensive product running and shutting off the revenue model, no?
The interesting thing here is that a commercial marketplace for browser extensions failed. That seems surprising - surely a marketplace for extensions to the most popular browser on the planet could bring in some revenue?! Is it just that nobody paid for things? Presumably they're going to keep running the chrome web store, so isn't a cut of paymens "free money" to them? Is there some big cost to this I'm not seeing,…
"There is no way to bulk export your existing user licenses, so you need to have your users help with this part of the migration."
Another thing is that once their licensing API is gone there's no way to enforce any license attached to a particular user, so what happens with users that don't go through the migration process that is supposed to be set for this?
I think it would have been easier if they reached out to a couple of payment providers and ask them to write an adapter for their licensing system. That way all the developers could migrate to something else without affecting the users. But I doubt Google is willing to give any business to anyone.
A related fun fact: accounting data exports for extensions have been broken for me (and I think all extension merchants?) since April 2018. I had to get the NY attorney general to write them a letter before they would actually respond to my support requests so that I could properly file my taxes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20588493. I'm sure that will be fun this year!
Who says Google is destroying competition, they encourage competition by closing down their own stuff people love and use.
That is destroying competition though. What Google does is enter a market which previously had a healthy economy of paid software, snuff out all the other players with a free version, and then abandon the space when they get bored. And the old economy can never come back, because there's hysteresis involved in the relative costs of starting from scratch versus keeping a functioning ecosystem alive, and because users…