Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair • Hacker News Board

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#861

Post by oneplane » Sat, Mar 16, 2019, 6:44 PM UTC

juiyout wrote: post #859

oneplane wrote: post #845

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using the word 'tax' here is like calling anything that you need to pay for 'tax'. If you put a bit of money in a vending machine to buy some chocolate, you don't call that vending machine tax, do you? If you were to scope it to 'services' or 'platform', then perhaps we should call virtual hosting cost not cost but tax :p and if you rent a movie, that'd then be movie tax, or rental tax? But what about actual tax, are…

In your vending machine example, it is a transaction, not a tax, as you implied and I agree. However Apple taking cut of app's revenue is awfully a lot like corporate tax.

In that case are transaction fees for credit cards also tax? Or PayPal fees for that matter? Or fees for using platforms like eBay and Aliexpress?

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#862

Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, Mar 16, 2019, 11:26 PM UTC

oneplane wrote: post #861

juiyout wrote: post #859

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your vending machine example, it is a transaction, not a tax, as you implied and I agree. However Apple taking cut of app's revenue is awfully a lot like corporate tax.

In that case are transaction fees for credit cards also tax? Or PayPal fees for that matter? Or fees for using platforms like eBay and Aliexpress?

Yes, I'd call any small mostly-percentage-based transaction fee that a platform imposes a "tax" or "platform tax".

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#863

Post by flanbiscuit » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 6:26 AM UTC

smileybarry wrote: post #604

AimForTheBushes wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't use spotify in browser, so I don't think a PWA would work in this scenario.

But you can use Spotify in a web browser. They have a web player at open.spotify.com .

But can you have the audio from their mobile web player continue to play in the background?

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#864

Post by qhwudbebd » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 6:33 AM UTC

kccqzy wrote: post #724

qhwudbebd wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"iOS is not a monopoly." I think the confusion here is that you incorrectly believe this is a necessary condition for Spotify's complaint to be upheld.

How so? I'm not very knowledgeable on antitrust law, but I do believe US regulators usually only take action on companies already having a monopoly.

This is a complaint to the EU...

Re: Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair

#865

Post by throwaway198389 » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 10:22 AM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #843

throwaway198389 wrote: post #801

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may have changed recently, haven't used an Android in a bit, but this wasn't true (and still probably isn't). Specifically my company wanted to break our app into multiple apps and give a way for people to easily install the companions. If you send the user to the Play Store page, about 75% of users would dropoff, in user studies much of it was confusion about what to do once they saw the play store page. Google…

I believe that API is in the play store itself. If your user used a third party store, you could ask them to give you an API to install other apps with no user interaction too. As far as the platform is concerned, any app with the right permissions can install any other app. It just so happens that only the play store and other stores have that permission.

That's true; you're right that there is a open platform between the AOSP layer and the APK apps that run on top of it.

As you point out there is a fly in the ointment (which is enhanced by Google making it very difficult to ship with anything but the Play Store).

As an app developer like Spotify, the platform is the base of devices out there in the wild and how I build on top of them which, for me, is inclusive of the play services and play store.

Android definitely is a lot more open than iOS. But when the Play Store enforces a mechanism that favors Google, it's not of a practical difference to my livelihood than when the App Store has policies that favor Apple. If you have a really loyal following, like Epic/Fortnite, it's better than nothing. But even then the barrier to your users is huge and even the most establish companies with technical user bases will have a hard time crossing it. Nevermind the fledgling startups or developers with non-technical user bases.