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

81–90 of 342 posts

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

#81

Post by input_sh »

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.

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.

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

#82

Post by quelsolaar »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #70
krisgenre wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Microsoft didn't lose the anti-trust case. Go check Wikipedia.

They did loose, then they appealed and settled.

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

#83

Post by quelsolaar »

input_sh wrote: post #81
krisgenre wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

In legal terms they got off easy, but it did change Microsoft and computing forever. Microsoft became terrified of been seen as monopolistic and that lead to them effectively saving Apple, not buying Google or Yahoo, embracing Linux and so on. It was very much worth it.

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

#84

Post by perryizgr8 »

travisgriggs wrote: post #33
perryizgr8 wrote: post #7

Shouldn't this be inverted? Small devs with unknown apps have more to gain from play store's distribution, and won't mind paying 30% of a smaller revenue in exchange for all the help. Bigger apps like Netflix are already doing their own advertising and marketing and have close to zero to gain from play store. And they will be making a large amount of revenue. According to this they will have to pay 30% of a larger am…

I see your logic, kind of. But if I abstract the reasoning it might be recast something like this: Poorer citizens with unknown prospects have more to gain from the government's services, and won't mind paying 30% of their earnings for all that help. Wealthier citizens like Bezos and Musk are already taking care of their own garbage, lobbying, education, protection and who knows what else and have close to zero to ga…

This is not a tax imposed by a government, though. This is a service provided by a business to another business. There have always been wholesale prices and volume discounts if you buy in larger quantities. I see many people are comparing this to a tax, why?

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

#85

Post by shoo »

I'm curious to estimate how much google's app store revenue would be decreased by this change in fee structure. Can anyone share accurate statistics on the distribution of app revenue per google play developer?

I'm not familiar with the app dev business. There's a 2016 post from Mike Sonders about ios and android game revenue [1] that suggests that app revenue is extremely skewed, to the extent that 0.3% of apps in the category of top 500 action games accrue over 90% of the revenue. I.e. the top 1 or top 2 games out of the _top 500 games_ in the category get 90% of the revenue.

If the same relationship holds for other categories, that suggests that the bottom 99.7% of the app distribution accounts for at most 10% of play store revenue, so cutting fees by 50% for the bottom 99% of developers would reduce google's rake by at most 5%.

[1] https://medium.com/@sm_app_intel/a-bunch-of-average-app-reve...

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

#86

Post by cblconfederate »

This is not good for the quality of apps, it is impossible for apple or google to review all the spying apps and ensure they can spy with the highest standards of quality, without withholding at lest 30% of the revenue of developers from bangladesh. We will be doomed by spammers and scammers now, what a shame (/s)

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

#87

Post by guytv »

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…

> You know that Android is open source...

Technically Android is OpenSource.

De-facto - its not.

For many many years now Google is adding all non-os functionality into "support" libraries, "Google Services" - the name changes periodically - but the essence is the same: Making sure that any Android that is not "Google certified" won't be able to run Android apps - which all use these libraries - and won't have apps such as YouTube, Gmail, Photos come pre-installed..

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

#88

Post by vishnumohandas »

athirnuaimi wrote: post #68
vishnumohandas wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 5% That’s less than the Stripe tax!

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?

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

#89

Post by tweetle_beetle »

joebob42 wrote: post #58
dfabulich wrote: post #48

Here's the next achievable goal to fight for: I want the fee structure Microsoft provides on the Microsoft Store. https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2018/05/07/a-new-... Microsoft takes only a 5% cut if customers click on a link on my website with my referral code, taking them directly to the store details page. Otherwise, they take a 15% cut. > consumer applications (not including games) sold in Microsoft St…

One other case where imo the 5% should apply: if someone goes to the store and searches for your app by exact name. Ie if I go to the store and search "Netflix", the store hasn't helped me discover that product.

That makes sense on paper, but in a world of instant search, search completion and search suggestion, doesn't it become a bit murky?

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

#90

Post by dbrgn »

TLDR: Out of your firsts million dollars in yearly revenue that you make on Google Play, Google stoped billing you 300'000$ and now only bills you 150'000$. And they frame it in a way that suggests empowerment and goodwill.

Seriously, when did fees of 15-30% for a service that you essentially cannot avoid as a software publisher become acceptable?

Post reply on HN