Crazy that this new revolutionary "first of its kind" feature is – letting the user pick between two payment processors.
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Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing
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Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing
#42[flagged]
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Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing
#43Is this "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" play where Google makes Apple look bad in an effort to avoid some of the regulations that might catch Apple? I cant figure out why Google would want this otherwise?
Google made the same decision as Apple when they removed Fortnite in response to Epic Games completely bypassing the store's in-app purchasing flow, thus losing their 30% revenue cut, so the motivation is likely not 'to make Apple look bad'. This is probably just a good show of faith to regulators while Google still collects their percentage of subscription revenue from Spotify on the backend.
> percentage of subscription revenue from Spotify on the backend
This is an advantage of Google vs Apple. Google has multiple business relationships with Spotify. An increase in advertising dollars, infrastructure spend on GCP, etc could all offset the lost revenue for Google here.
Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing
#44Crazy that this new revolutionary "first of its kind" feature is – letting the user pick between two payment processors.
I don't understand how this is a "feature". Is the price different, or the features gained different, or does it just determine who ends up getting what % cut? I can't imagine most people actually care whether Google or Spotify is getting a bigger piece of the same price they're paying either way.
The conditions and trust are different. I personally believe that letting Google have my credit card is allowing a kid with no supervision to play with my life savings; While some others will believe Google provides better guarantees than Spotify when you want to unsubscribe. At least competition will allow us to see “who’s better” and what T&C customers care about, and that’s the important point.
Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing
#45As a user, why would I choose this?
I only see a benefit to developers for this, but from a user prospective going with another system is a downgrade.
Assuming google works like Apple (correct me if I am wrong), disabling a subscription should be able to happen from a central location with a click or 2.
If I instead go with the billing through a company not only do they now have my credit card information, but I have to go through them to cancel. Meaning they can send me through screen after screen trying to convince me to stay (dark pattern) or even worse forcing me to call to cancel.
As a user, if you want to offer this fine. But as long as the ability to subscribe through Google or Apple is not removed I will be fine. But if this starts a trend of more and more apps having their own billing that then uses dark patterns to keep me subscribed... I will just end up spending less money on subscriptions than I currently do, and I have quite a few subscriptions.
Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing
#46> represents a first-of-its-kind option in payment choice and offers opportunities for both consumers and developers What is the opportunity here? For consumers is it that you can pick who you pay? That doesn't sound like much of an opportunity to me. What is the opportunity for developers?
> What is the opportunity for developers? An opportunity to make unsubscribing a more engaging activity
It's the opportunity to take more of your revenue as margin, plain and simple.
Contrary to your suggestion, I would argue that most businesses do not want to predatorily extract money from unwilling customers. It's typically the old, calcified businesses that do not innovate (gyms, cable companies, etc.) that engage in this behavior.
I want more margin so I can hire more engineers and change the world faster.
Google probably sees regulatory pressure writing on the wall, and by doing this they're building evidence that they haven't built a mobile computing monopoly or are backing away from it (insofar as running executions on your customer's devices used to be free in the desktop computing world where two corporations didn't tax all of innovation).
Also, it's a shot against Apple, who is definitely the more egregious of the two.
This is all around good. There might be a company or two that abuse the system, but that's easily dealt with. In an open app ecosystem, you still have measures in place to correct the bad actors.
Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing
#47I was under the impression that they were combining the libraries or you'd get to pick which provider you wanted to stream music from but use the same app. If all this does is give you the option to pay for Spotify using Spotify app or a Google Pay subscription, then it only matters if Google is giving this option to all developers for any app.
Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing
#48I don't understand what i'm getting here?
I downloaded Spotify on to my android phone, it takes my payment and it works.
For a tech non-Silibro, what does this blog post mean?
Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing
#49As a user, why would I choose this? I only see a benefit to developers for this, but from a user prospective going with another system is a downgrade. Assuming google works like Apple (correct me if I am wrong), disabling a subscription should be able to happen from a central location with a click or 2. If I instead go with the billing through a company not only do they now have my credit card information, but I have…
> disabling a subscription should be able to happen from a central location with a click or 2.
Paypal
Re: Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing
#50As a user, why would I choose this? I only see a benefit to developers for this, but from a user prospective going with another system is a downgrade. Assuming google works like Apple (correct me if I am wrong), disabling a subscription should be able to happen from a central location with a click or 2. If I instead go with the billing through a company not only do they now have my credit card information, but I have…
> disabling a subscription should be able to happen from a central location with a click or 2. Paypal
Any optional third party option is not a solution.
As long as it is a choice for the developer, it doesn't fix the issue. The only reason Apple (and I assume Google) are able to make it this easy is because the app developers are forced to allow it.
But if they are no longer forced, why would an app developer choose make it easy to cancel?