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Chrome Web Store payments deprecation

developer.chrome.com

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Re: Chrome Web Store payments deprecation

#61

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

whoisjuan wrote: post #28
_qulr wrote: post #3

"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."

This doesn't even make sense. How are the users supposed to help? I think what google is suggesting here is to build a structure with all the license representations of all your users and then figure out how to enforce your licenses or recharge them or walk them through a process of migration to another licensing system which implies authorizing with their own accounts. At that point it's just easier to assume that a…

> This doesn't even make sense

Sure it does. It’s a big ‘fuck you’. Imagine if you’ve built a lifestyle business with this.

Re: Chrome Web Store payments deprecation

#62

Post by jake_morrison »

zmmmmm wrote: post #48
stickfigure wrote: post #26

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,…

I dunno ... Google shuts things down independent of revenue metrics as far as I can tell. They seem to set a bar somewhere around "is this the next Gmail" and if the answer is no they shut it down regardless of how profitable it may be. They want a few giant businesses, not a hundred small ones. I wish they would look at spinning these things out because many of them would make entirely viable independent entities ev…

My guess is that Google promotes people based on creating a new service, but not taking over an old service and running it / improving it. So when a manager leaves the organization, their service is orphaned: there is nobody to run it, and nobody to fight for it, so they shut it down. Customers and revenue are more or less irrelevant to this calculation.

Re: Chrome Web Store payments deprecation

#63

Post by molticrystal »

Gehinnn wrote: post #2

This sucks. I paid $25 for my play console account to monetize my extension two days ago - just to find out they deprecate web store payments entirely.

Do a chargeback through the card/bank, they'll have a webform for you to submit it somewhere for contested charges.

They'll ask for proof, just put you paid for a service that will no longer exist and include screenshots of the deprecation page.

Re: Chrome Web Store payments deprecation

#64

Post by lawrenceyan »

Analemma_ wrote: post #11
mrkramer wrote: post #7

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…

It's the "desert of profitability" strategy [0].

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17048329

Re: Chrome Web Store payments deprecation

#65

Post by AnssiH »

whoisjuan wrote: post #28
_qulr wrote: post #3

"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."

This doesn't even make sense. How are the users supposed to help? I think what google is suggesting here is to build a structure with all the license representations of all your users and then figure out how to enforce your licenses or recharge them or walk them through a process of migration to another licensing system which implies authorizing with their own accounts. At that point it's just easier to assume that a…

> How are the users supposed to help?

By going to your site and authorizing it to access their subscription data with their Google login, like you said in the following sentence. That counts as helping, no?

Re: Chrome Web Store payments deprecation

#66

Post by Wowfunhappy »

simon_weber wrote: post #59
defen wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does one get the attorney general to write a letter like this?

On a recommendation from a friend I filed a complaint online at https://ag.ny.gov/internet/online-forms . I wrote up the situation and attached a pdf copy of the support interaction I'd had with Google. It wasn't quick, but it did seem to work. Here's the timeline: - May 2018: I contact Google about being unable to export my accounting data from last month - November 2018: after nothing but "thank you for your patien…

Sorry if this is obvious, but if I may ask, how did you file your taxes in the meantime, given that this took a full year?

Re: Chrome Web Store payments deprecation

#67

Post by xyse53 »

molticrystal wrote: post #63
Gehinnn wrote: post #2

This sucks. I paid $25 for my play console account to monetize my extension two days ago - just to find out they deprecate web store payments entirely.

Do a chargeback through the card/bank, they'll have a webform for you to submit it somewhere for contested charges. They'll ask for proof, just put you paid for a service that will no longer exist and include screenshots of the deprecation page.

Has anyone tried this with Google though? Is there a chance it can result in a locked account? And what would recovery be like?

Re: Chrome Web Store payments deprecation

#68

Post by bawolff »

stickfigure wrote: post #26

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,…

Nobody has ever managed to sell a web browser (Netscape's problem), im not sure why people would buy extensions when they wouldn't be willing to buy a browser.

Re: Chrome Web Store payments deprecation

#69

Post by whoisjuan »

AnssiH wrote: post #65
whoisjuan wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't even make sense. How are the users supposed to help? I think what google is suggesting here is to build a structure with all the license representations of all your users and then figure out how to enforce your licenses or recharge them or walk them through a process of migration to another licensing system which implies authorizing with their own accounts. At that point it's just easier to assume that a…

> How are the users supposed to help? By going to your site and authorizing it to access their subscription data with their Google login, like you said in the following sentence. That counts as helping, no?

My question was rhetorical. Users can help, but they shouldn't. This is not their responsibility. This is the equivalent of Netflix interrupting my service because I need to help them to migrate their payment provider and they cannot do it if I don't do some manual process.

Re: Chrome Web Store payments deprecation

#70

Post by cosmie »

defen wrote: post #52
simon_weber wrote: post #29

Haha, this is so ridiculous and completely on-brand for Google at this point. I've run a Google Music extension for a few years now and would have absolutely no migration path since I don't have a backend -- but it doesn't matter since they're shutting down Google Music anyway! A related fun fact: accounting data exports for extensions have been broken for me (and I think all extension merchants?) since April 2018. I…

How does one get the attorney general to write a letter like this?

Depends on the state, but look for verbiage related to lodging a consumer complaint. Here's[1] the one for my state.

The AG office isn't necessarily writing a personalized letter, but rather forwarding your complaint and maintaining visibility into the correspondence until it's resolved.

In this case, a complaint such as "Google operates a marketplace for web browser extensions. I generate revenue through this marketplace, and have been unable to obtain the transaction records for sales made through Google's marketplace that are necessary to comply with my NY State tax obligations. Please see attached for correspondence records of my unsuccessful attempts to resolve this situation to date."

AG's office forwards that to Google's legal team, asks for a response. Technically the AG's office doesn't care how the situation gets resolved, and they're just acting to facilitate the complaint and not as your personal lawyer. But in this situation a resolution/response of "oh yea, no we can't give you those our export button is broke" _would_ be of interest to the AGs office, since it potentially means there are many NY state residents unable to comply with their tax obligations and it becomes an actual issue on their radar to look into. So instead their legal team will track down whoever the hell is responsible/capable of providing those records, hand them over with a smile, get the matter closed with the AG's office, and give you a direct point of contact for the future, so Big Brother AG doesn't have to get involved (or see) future correspondence on the matter.

Actual responses will vary depending on the complaint. But issues that are likely to impact more than just you are likely to be taken the most seriously by the company receiving the complaint, since those are the ones that could be issues the AG decides to look into "on behalf of the State" and can lead to enforcement actions/fines/etc.

[1] https://www.tn.gov/attorneygeneral/working-for-tennessee/fil...

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