[HN Gopher] Donation page "not compliant with Google Play Policies"
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Donation page "not compliant with Google Play Policies"
Author : agateau
Score : 323 points
Date : 2021-04-10 14:10 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (agateau.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (agateau.com)
| blauditore wrote:
| Many comments here confuse paid apps or in-app purchases with
| donations. In fact, donations are sort of a blind spot on Google
| Play: They're forbidden through the platform's payment system
| (because it would be a price charged without service in direct
| return), but donation buttons are also forbidden. Since both are
| forbidden, it's not (just) commercial optimization by Google, but
| that just makes it weirder IMO.
|
| As a rule of thumb, don't include a direct link to PayPal,
| Patreon or similar, but create a dedicated page on your website
| listing those and link that page.
| tenuousemphasis wrote:
| >As a rule of thumb, don't include a direct link to PayPal,
| Patreon or similar, but create a dedicated page on your website
| listing those and link that page.
|
| That's exactly what this developer did. They linked to a page
| on their website that has the donation options. Google still
| objected.
| themacguffinman wrote:
| AFAICT donation buttons/links are not entirely forbidden, it's
| only permitted for organizations that are officially registered
| as tax exempt (eg. a non-profit) [1]. Apple's App Store has the
| same policy on donations.
|
| [1]
| https://pay.google.com/intl/en_in/about/policy/?visit_id=637...
| redthrow wrote:
| You answered my question. Signal (a non-profit) definitely
| has "Donate to Signal" link in Settings.
| [deleted]
| macando wrote:
| _I recently updated Pixel Wheels banner image on Google Play.
| That triggered a review of the game: shortly after the update I
| received a message telling me Pixel Wheels was "not compliant
| with Google Play Policies". What nefarious activity does the game
| engage in? Sneak on users? Mine bitcoins?_
|
| This paragraph threw me off. I thought Google is offering some
| sort of carousel banner advertising thing for their Pixel phones.
| Figured out it's the name of your game.
|
| On topic, app store providers are super sensitive when it comes
| to anything related to payments. That's probably the first step
| in their review algorithm/process.
| Qahlel wrote:
| There are many simps who would defend the Google-or-Apple's right
| to get a fixed cut from a 3rd party's work while also denying any
| other ways for that 3rd party to profit from its own work at the
| same time.
|
| Don't be that guy. Please. I don't like state capitalism. I
| genuinely hate digital monopoly capitalism.
|
| I do love free market capitalism btw.
| muro wrote:
| Host the apk on your website and you can do whatever you like
| and not pay Google anything.
| anoncake wrote:
| Unless you like providing auto-updates.
| seaman1921 wrote:
| Yes they have a right if you are using their play store. You
| can host your app elsewhere mr. free market
| judge2020 wrote:
| > while also denying any other ways for that 3rd party to
| profit from its own work at the same time.
|
| It's obvious that Google and Apple have a duopoly in mobile
| phones, and that makes sense since it takes a lot of time and
| money do so and most developers don't want to deploy to an
| extra platform that doesn't have any users (and thus you have a
| chicken-and-egg problem where users/phone manufacturers don't
| want to switch to your platform with no apps due to this). If
| these monopolies are exploiting their position via anti-
| competitive business practices, then the current antitrust
| probes will hopefully deal with them and force some change.
|
| But you can't ignore the reality of the current situation:
| Google and Apple have invested trillions of combined dollars
| into developing the mobile phone ecosystem and making it
| something that consumers feel safe conducting commerce on
| (Apple more so than Google). You're not paying for a vhost to
| host your apk or ipa when you pay percentages of your in-app
| purchase revenue, you're paying for the development of the
| operating system, payment system, and future APIs that enable
| your app to even exist. If you don't like it, you are not
| forced to have a native app, as on Android and even on iOS you
| can make an offline-capable PWA.
| agateau wrote:
| (author here)
|
| I thought I would answer to some of the comments here.
|
| > It's their place, their rules
|
| Definitely true. And I am not going to try to go against those
| rules. But I believe I am allowed to voice my opinion about them.
|
| > Use in-app purchases instead
|
| This is definitely a valid option, but that requires diving into
| Google Pay, which from what I understand is not the easiest API
| to work with. It also means I have to maintain additional code
| for Google Play. More not-so-fun work to do for a side project.
|
| > Make it a paid game
|
| Another valid option, but given how everybody is used to free
| games on Android, I doubt it would get much success. It also does
| not help that Google Play disallows switching a published app
| from free to paid and vice-versa: it's a one-way decision.
|
| I might end up going that way though, because it has the
| advantage of not having to write store-specific code. Pixel
| Wheels is not Android only: it also works on Linux, Windows and
| macOS, so not having to deal with store-specific requirements
| gives me more time to work on the game itself. The game would
| still be available for free on F-Droid and for pay-what-you-want
| on itch.io.
|
| I also happen to run other open-source projects, and my goal with
| donations is to get people to support this open-source work, not
| just my work on this particular project. I don't expect to ever
| live from this: in my wildest dreams donations would let me spend
| a work-day per week or every two weeks to work on open-source
| projects.
| scambier wrote:
| > It's their place, their rules
|
| Yeah and then what's a viable alternative? They (with Apple)
| can unilaterally cut your revenue stream for any made-up reason
| with no recourse, and yet there's still people defending
| mono/duopolies.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Google and other companies now enforce rules to what happens
| to your phones and laptops, they have "home assistants' in
| your homes, they are in your car, on your watch, soon their
| will be some random software in your toilet seat.
|
| What has to happen before people realize that allowing
| megacorps to set arbitrary and capricious rules will render
| both consumers and other businesses into a subservient
| position? Why do the megacorps retain so much control of the
| device long after it has been sold and become my property?
|
| turkeys voting for christmas
| joelthelion wrote:
| >It's their place, their rules
|
| This doesn't apply when you control more than 50% of a huge
| global market. Or at least it shouldn't.
| xbmcuser wrote:
| I don't see what google did wrong here. The op is calling it a
| donation when in actually it is a tip. i.e income skirting around
| by calling it donation doesn't change the fact the the op is
| trying to make money using google services without paying google
| its cut. Now we can argue about google cut being too high though
| they have changed it to less for apps making less than a million.
| But that's not the argument here. I am wondering do all the
| developers working on so called donations declare their income to
| the tax department as I believe it is income just like it is for
| restaurant staff.
| cabalamat wrote:
| > The op is calling it a donation when in actually it is a tip.
|
| Er, unless I'm missing something, that's the same thing.
| [deleted]
| willseth wrote:
| Just to reiterate the other commenter who was inexplicably
| downvoted, donations are for charities, tips are profit. It
| seems completely reasonable to waive app store commissions
| for a charity, but not something that's for profit.
| mannerheim wrote:
| The other commenter was explicably downvoted because this
| is not a distinction that's made in the English language; a
| 'donation' in the vernacular does not imply it is tax-
| deductible, and this is not a distinction that Google
| itself is consistent with, since GoFundMe is available on
| the Play Store, and they refer to contributions made on
| that platform as 'donations'.
| mayneack wrote:
| Charities are not the only entities that receive donations.
| Political candidates and other advocacy groups (like the
| ACLU) are mostly donation based non-charities. This year
| I've seen dozens of restaurants asking for donations to
| keep afloat. Google may have a more constrained definition
| for their TOS, but I don't think this use of "donate" is
| outside the common understanding of the word.
| willseth wrote:
| Given the very obvious context of TFA, I don't see how
| this is relevant. Yes, what makes something a "charity"
| may be confusing and difficult to define. (AFAIK Google
| simply has a list of organizations they think are
| charities) However, it's not ambiguous or confusing at
| all that this guy is not a charity.
| temp667 wrote:
| Cool - I will start deducting the tips and gifts I give my
| friend and family on my taxes!! Can you provide your name and
| address so I can cite your views when the IRS comes knocking?
|
| So we are 100% clear, donations are things given to
| charities. Gifts and tips are generally given to individuals.
| In a lot of contexts, including with google, there is a major
| difference, and folks pretending to be charities to use the
| donation exceptions are basically scammers (in google's
| eyes). Not sure I disagree either.
| bashinator wrote:
| You seem to have an exclusively legalistic interpretation
| of language that doesn't necessarily account for casual,
| real-life use of speech and writing.
| temp667 wrote:
| The person is complaining about google's policies.
|
| Google's policies follow this accepted language. You are
| allowed to have donate now buttons to accept donations on
| or even off platform if you are a charity.
|
| If you want to make up your own words, and then be
| outraged that google and others don't agree with you -
| fine. We are living in alternative facts / outrage world
| these days. But if someone calls you out on this - and
| points out that plenty of scammers also try to thread
| this needle in lots of ways, maybe worth a minute of real
| life reflection.
| bashinator wrote:
| Well now I'm curious. Do you suppose if the app instead
| of "donation", said "I'm giving you the gift of this
| software. If you'd like to return the favor, click here"
| it would fall within Google's TOS? I personally kinda
| doubt it; I think the actual outcome Google wants is to
| prevent alternative means of monetizing an app, and being
| strict about the semantics of what a "donation" is, is
| mostly a means to that end.
| willseth wrote:
| This is tantamount to suggesting that language should
| always make sense regardless of context, which is absurd.
| Homonyms could not even exist!
| candiddevmike wrote:
| I recently implemented Google Play billing in my app (after doing
| Stripe and Apple App Store) and Stripe was by far the easiest to
| implement/test/maintain. Google and Apple not only take their
| 15/30% cut, their payment systems add a very non trivial amount
| of work (cost) to implement and maintain while offering none of
| the (automated) testing capabilities of Stripe. Work that I'm
| forced to do, even though I had already implemented Stripe. All
| because they have a monopoly on their platform.
|
| For something as critical as payment processing, both Apple and
| Google make it an arcane journey into API documentation and stack
| overflow questions. Hoping to write a blog post detailing all of
| this in the near future.
| cyral wrote:
| I really hope Stripe builds out a better payment solution
| around the App Store and Google Play APIs. I would love to see
| their take on it. There are services like RevenueCat that do
| this but they are small companies and still don't have the best
| API. (And have a lot of bugs) Still better than dealing with
| the terrible APIs from Apple and Google directly though
| CodesInChaos wrote:
| The google play subscription API is unbelievably buggy and
| generally terrible.
|
| Apple's and Amazon's APIs have major flaws as well, but Google
| is on a whole different level.
| shimfish wrote:
| I used RevenueCat's API for Apple and Google just to avoid
| having to do all this crap myself and it's free up to $10,000
| of monthly revenue.
|
| I was less happy with their Google implementation, mostly
| because of their bizarre insistence of treating every IAP as
| consumable but overall still less painful than having to roll
| my own code.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| It's their platform. They can set the rules as they like. If you
| don't like it, just make your own os, sell billions of
| cellphones, then distribute your app on your own play store. They
| are not obligated to host you.
| sagolikasoppor wrote:
| This is good sarcasm.
| echelon wrote:
| End app stores.
|
| The megamonopolies have no right to have their hands in so many
| cookie jars, yet have the back breaking ability to take our 30%
| and shut us down. They control too much, and only got there
| through monopoly forces.
|
| The Internet was not supposed to evolve in this direction. 1990 -
| 2007 was full of hope and dreams for an open ecosystem, then this
| app cancer showed up.
|
| Windows lets you install anything without central control. This
| is how it should be.
|
| Take the app stores down. Rip them out.
|
| Take away Google's ability to run a browser too. They shouldn't
| be able to set web standards and shape what we can see.
|
| Please, DOJ. You're our only hope.
| [deleted]
| xyzelement wrote:
| I have a lot of sympathy for the dev, but it also seems really
| naive to expect something different from a company trying to
| operate a service at scale.
|
| Simplest example, if Google allowed this benign thing, how do
| they protect from opening the floodgates to scams being run on
| their platform under the guise of donation pages etc?
|
| Basically if you are relying on a broad policy, any one-off
| exceptions are either very costly in validation or they undermine
| the policy.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Scale is not a justification, it's an excuse for bad behavior.
| We should punish companies whose focus on scale hurts
| individuals.
| throw14082020 wrote:
| I seem to think his sentence reads better without "at scale".
|
| > it also seems really naive to expect something different.
|
| is enough
| xyzelement wrote:
| You are wrong, at least versus my intended meaning. If I am
| dealing with a small company and my business is a decent
| size chunk of theirs, then I would ABSOLUTELY expect them
| to cater to me. For example, I expect a ton of flexibility
| out of my real estate agent or the SaaA startup my company
| uses. I don't expect the same out of a company serving
| billions of people.
| xyzelement wrote:
| Okay sure. I am just saying there's a big difference between
| "Google's policies are unfair across the board" (which I
| guess is the statement you'd advocate for) and "I am
| surprised that a multinational company didn't default to
| letting me break its policies" (the author's take) which is
| naive or disingenuous.
| astatine wrote:
| Conflicted thoughts on this. On the one hand Google has this
| defined policy, which developers should be aware of. In this case
| they seemed to have generously explained the reason (must be the
| season for miracles). On the other, tarring all apps with the
| same brush and forbidding donation links looks excessive and
| predatory.
|
| Oh, and Bad Google.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Google/Apple should be regulated and forced to drop their
| anticompetitive clauses concerning third-party payment systems.
|
| They should also forced to fully allow third-party apps
| installation, including independent push notification services.
|
| Currently, both Android and iOS severely restrict background app
| running, and developers are forced to depend on push
| notifications services provided by google and apple. This
| effectively locks in users, who can't empoy full capabilities of
| the device if they do not use Google/Apple services.
| aaronharnly wrote:
| I appreciate that perspective. As a user of a phone with
| various apps, I also appreciate those restrictions, which make
| my experience less of a jungle of different payment plans and
| questionable battery-sucking activities.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Ideal solution is giving YOU, the User, decide, which apps to
| run. All you need to make the decision is the data which app
| consumes how much energy.
|
| If I need a processor-intensive app to do some computations
| all the time, I should be allowed to run it, with full
| understanding that the device will need to recharge in 3
| hours. It's my device, my battery, my use case.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| Android is very opaque about what is actually running. I
| was walking by a shopping area with a new phone recently
| and Google Maps popped up with some irrelevant
| notification. But upon viewing running apps, Maps was not
| in that list, so there's basically an unknown number of
| useless background tasks running that the user cannot view
| or control.
|
| As a whole, Android is pretty terrible. You can't run the
| things you want and you can't stop the things you don't.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| That's why efforts should be directed towards improving
| this aspect of Android, not removing entirely user's
| capabilities to manage his own device.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| We are 100% in agreement. But I don't think the Android
| team agrees with us unfortunately.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Google's best interest is to vendor lock users on it's
| plstform and retain the maximum amount of control over
| Android. They won't give it up voluntarily, that's why I
| used the word 'forced' in my first post in this thread:
| now it can happen only after a binding legislation, and,
| possibly, breaking up Alphabet.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| > Currently, both Android and iOS severely restrict background
| app running,
|
| I love that as a user. Android used to not do that, and apps in
| background would just kill the battery in a few hours.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| I don't. When I walk, I like to use a GPS logger app, a heart
| rate bluetooth app, a pedometer app and maybe sometimes
| listen to music at the same time. I hate when Android decides
| that no, it knows better what I really want and randomly
| shuts one or more of those off.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| You missed the critical part of my message: the only way to
| wake app in the background is via push notifications,
| currently fully controlled by Apple / Google on their
| respective platform. The User should be able to use an
| alternative source of push notifications.
|
| You will think differently when Apple/Google will remove the
| app you need from AppStore, because your government told them
| so, and you'll be out in the cold, with no backup and a
| useless device, which you paid for, but you don't really own,
| using only those apps which you are allowed to run. But your
| lack of imagination does not allow you to foresee that before
| it happens.
| matwood wrote:
| Agree. I think this black and white view of free for all
| good, App Store bad is not productive. The App Store model
| does bring a lot of benefits to both the end user and
| developer. There are also tradeoffs of course.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Tradeoffs is that you can't use the device you supposedly
| own to run the apps you need. You can't use Signal or
| Telegram in countries like China. Some people are fine with
| that. I guess, some slaves do love their chains, they are
| so shiny!
| lucb1e wrote:
| Hey, I know this game but from F-Droid! Played it a couple times
| when it was new on there. Fun game, and for being on touchscreen
| I found the input to work quite reasonably (which is an
| achievement! Without any tactile feedback it's very hard to get
| something workable for someone without a lot of practice).
|
| What I'm a bit missing from the article is what Google requires,
| though. Do they want you to offer a Google pay option on the
| donation page and then it's fine, or are you (like with Apple)
| not to link or even mention any other donation methods at all?
|
| Frankly I find the whole thing weird. You pay to be on the store,
| and now they want you to also give them a cut of donations? I'm
| surprised you're not just pulling it and "updating" the game to
| be a link to F-Droid for the remainder of your play store
| subscription.
| meamin wrote:
| "Play-distributed apps must use Google Play's billing system as
| the method of payment if they require or accept payment for
| access to features or services, including any app functionality,
| digital content or goods"
|
| https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
|
| I think this is an algorithm mistake on Google's part. Their
| policy is clear that this scenario is okay. I wonder how they
| will respond?
|
| On a tangent, if I were to release a paid app to third-party
| stores. I would have a base price then add the third-party fees
| on top.
|
| A gripe would be that I don't see these stores allowing for a
| clear break down of fees. So I can't educate my users. And if a
| user is unaware of the added fees they can't take it into account
| on their next phone purchase.
|
| Beyond that, given that there are only two choices seems to imply
| high barriers of entry into the phone OS game. And that does
| imply free market issues. But nothing a bit of waiting might not
| fix?
|
| Well given the state of desktop market which has been around for
| decades there may be room for intervention, haha. Like grants/tax
| incentives for consumer apps selling on open source operating
| systems... idk
| TrianguloY wrote:
| I know they won't do it, but imagine if the Play Store had a
| built-in button to donate/support/tip a developer. Like the
| member feature of YouTube.
|
| Small developers will have access to donations without doing
| anything, no more 'normal/donation' dual apps, no need to add
| 10MB of unused code to apps just to implement the payments api,
| probably more and better free apps... A developer can dream.
| ArcVRArthur wrote:
| Free open source software funded by donations is evil because it
| undermines Google's ads business. Free must be free with ads, not
| free with donations. Richard Stallman was right. :^)
| Spivak wrote:
| You're free to add "donation" buttons on your app you publish
| on either the App Store or the Play Store but Apple and Google
| still get their 30% cut. You can't (currently) get around it by
| linking to your website and asking for donations there.
| dgellow wrote:
| That's not true, both stores only allow this (the "donation"
| button) for registered charities and foundations.
| Spivak wrote:
| Which is why I put it in scare quotes since they're not
| charitable donations that have special status. They're just
| regular purchases but with nothing attached to them -- "pay
| what you want", "support development", "buy me a coffee."
|
| Google and Apple (for now) say that this is just normal app
| revenue.
| bobkhthgdkgcd wrote:
| I mean, it sounds fairly obvious that this isn't allowed. It is
| well known that Google (and Apple) do not allow you to have links
| in your app to payments outside of the ecosystem.
| redthrow wrote:
| Why does Signal (at least on Android) have the "Donate to
| Signal" link in Settings? It's allowed if it's a registered
| charity?
| Pfhreak wrote:
| The author isn't balking at being told no, they are balking at
| the reasoning.
|
| The problem for them isn't the surprise, it's the denial.
| joshgoldman wrote:
| Yes but people here are too dumb to realize and care more
| about defending thier masters
| sixothree wrote:
| What if the payment is for something other than just the game
| or app? What if the app is part of a broader ecosystem that
| includes videos and merchandise (for example)?
| cyral wrote:
| There are numerous exceptions, which is how Amazon, Uber
| Eats, etc get away with bypassing the App Store payments
| (because they are providing physical goods). If an app is
| only unlocking content, even if that content is spread across
| other platforms, then it needs to use in app purchases. (And
| you enter a world of hurt as you try to sync a users
| subscription or purchases across all platforms)
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I would have expected a donation link, which doesn't provide
| the user anything in return, to be different.
|
| Apple allows apps to sell physical goods (otherwise Walmart
| would have problems), would the situation be different if the
| people who donated got T-shirts?
| ledauphin wrote:
| isn't there a pretty salient difference between soliciting
| donations and taking payment? I would have thought those were
| generally agreed to be qualitatively different things.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| If only it was that simple.
|
| Google allows large players to have payment services that do
| not go through Google, as long as all of the money is directed
| towards a single person and is not in exchange of physical or
| digital goods.
|
| Of course, that goes out of the window as soon as you're a
| small developer because then you simply get banned from the
| play store for doing this, your only recourse being talking to
| a bot that will never answer you.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Entitled dev gets told no, throws hissy fit. News at 11.
| blunte wrote:
| > entitled dev
|
| You may disagree with his reasoning, your use of that
| expression is unreasonable.
| dylan604 wrote:
| "What nefarious activity does the game engage in?"
|
| "Yes. I confess it."
|
| "depriving Google of some precious money"
|
| No, unreasonable it is not. These are very entitled quotes.
| agateau wrote:
| (author here)
|
| I am sorry this came up sounding entitled: I don't expect
| Google policies to change on this subject, and since this
| is not business threatening to me I just decided to write
| something I thought would be snarky and hopefully amusing
| to read.
| blunte wrote:
| Those are all sarcasm.
|
| I suspect it's the last one that bothers you the most.
| However, keep in mind that Google has a monopoly on
| Android app delivery. (Yes, we will ignore the
| alternatives because they are not reasonably accessible
| to most users.)
|
| Since Google has a monopoly here, any app that pleases
| some users strengthens the platform, leading to more
| users which leads to more apps, some of which generate
| revenue for Google. If there were a reasonable competitor
| app store for Android, this developer could drop Google
| and go give his app away for free on the other app store.
| THAT would deprive Google of more revenue because it
| would strengthen the competing delivery platform.
|
| The only "entitled" party here is Google, because they
| believe they are entitled to a cut of all money possibly
| made anywhere from any app that runs on their "open
| source" platform - simply because they are the
| gatekeeper.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| I don't think that's necessarily true for Apple.
|
| The OP here is just asking for donations; users don't get
| anything in return.
|
| The App Store Review Guidelines only say "If you want to unlock
| features or functionality within your app [...] you must use
| in-app purchase."
|
| I haven't tried it (yet), but it looks like you might be ok
| with a Patreon link from an iOS app. The review process can be
| capricious, of course.
| judge2020 wrote:
| In general patreon would effectively be providing and
| services outside the app (even if that service is 'a warm and
| fuzzy feeling'). More so if you actually provide some reward
| via your patreon.
|
| > Apps in this section cannot, either within the app or
| through communications sent to points of contact obtained
| from account registration within the app (like email or
| text), encourage users to use a purchasing method other than
| in-app purchase.
|
| https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/
| fay59 wrote:
| There's a good point to make that Patreon's donation tiers
| mean patrons can be rewarded for their donations. I would
| hope that the digital equivalent of a tip jar is a
| different category since it's not a purchase.
| judge2020 wrote:
| It technically is, but Patreon takes a percentage so it
| wouldn't be treated as a p2p money transfer app:
|
| > (vii) Apps may enable individual users to give a
| monetary gift to another individual without using in-app
| purchase, provided that (a) the gift is a completely
| optional choice by the giver, and (b) 100% of the funds
| go to the receiver of the gift. However, a gift that is
| connected to or associated at any point in time with
| receiving digital content or services must use in-app
| purchase.
| collaborative wrote:
| Nah, play by the rules or stop suing their service. They funnel
| users to your app, for free. Just use their payment processing
| service for donations.
|
| Donations make sense in open-source software, if you're making a
| game it's best to straight up charge for it or if you're starting
| to build your audience you can do in-app purchases for special
| things
| agateau wrote:
| The game is actually open-source
| (https://github.com/agateau/pixelwheels/), so which side do I
| pick?
| collaborative wrote:
| I also tried the donation-route with an app and had to desist
| (Apple also blocks donations that circumvent their payment
| system) Only speaking from experience. In the end I moved to
| small in-app purchases. You can still do donations, but you
| need to make them an in-app purchase. The donation will pay
| for your work, and for Google's app store presence. Consider
| the latter carefully. They do advertise your "product". Even
| though it's open-source, it's still a product because you
| hope to make money even if in the form of a donation. Their
| advertisement is actually really cheap if you compare it to
| what other real-life products pay in places like Google Ads
|
| So, if you really want to show that "feel free to donate"
| screen you need to make the donation an in-app purchase. What
| is allowed is linking the app to a website, without
| mentioning anything about a donation, and then showing a
| donation form straight after clicking. You can do something
| like "Help->Website" and link it to your donation landing
| page
| taormina wrote:
| It's absolutely not free
| collaborative wrote:
| Publishing on Google Play is free last time I checked
| cube00 wrote:
| At least they actually explained the problem in this case.
| hipposbigsister wrote:
| Google is making sure you can't have a backdoor "pay what you
| want" app in their store, and there's no way to distinguish
| between that and donations intended to be donations.
| mdale wrote:
| Google is so very clearly correct to engage in corrective
| enforcement is the point. Clearly stated rules clearly enforced
| with algorithmic efficiency likely detected by automated play
| store screening algorithms.
|
| Centralized digital mediation eliminates froth; no more can we
| let things slide; we don't bend rules in the way that happen
| constantly in person to person interactions.
|
| Where to go from here; Perhaps social trust tokens to provide
| some flex on rules where people have built some levels of trust.
| I.e if not a game dev farm obfuscating bad things ... Where below
| certain thresholds have no play store fees for Indy devs? I think
| Google has some such initiatives. Certainty unity had a
| progressive license structure that was great for both sides.
| finnthehuman wrote:
| There's a 2-page paper "how complex systems fail." Its worth a
| read in general but one of its points in that humans are the
| grease that allow complex systems to flex in ways that could
| not be foreseen.
|
| https://how.complexsystems.fail/ Item #2
| whydoineedthis wrote:
| imho, the author should stop making apps for Google and iOS and
| start making them for the linux phones. "but so few people have a
| linux phone" you will argue.
|
| Well, one of the reasons for that is that good hardworking app
| developers are still naively giving away their time to the large
| corps that make the rules. Want to live outside the rules?
| Support an echo system that has less of them. Until then,
| complaining is just a waste of your time and everyone else.
|
| Google will only change when their pockets dictate it, no sooner.
| atum47 wrote:
| I recently received an email from them saying that they are now
| helping small developers, cutting back their cut on the each game
| you sell. Seems pretty decent of them.
|
| Maybe publish you game (supported by donations) on platforms that
| encourage such practices, such as itch.io or outpan.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| I remember a time where Google was much more permissive than
| Apple - then I guess Google saw that being draconian about your
| app store made more money so they stopped being so nice (and why
| wouldn't they if you can get away with it).
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > Yes. I confess it. I added a link to my donation page within
| the game, depriving Google of some precious money it totally
| cannot survive without! How dare I?!? I am such a bad person.
|
| He seems squarely in the wrong here. Google provides a service,
| and they have rules that are intended to make sure they get paid
| for providing that service; while, at the same time, still
| allowing people to offer things without paying (ie, free apps).
| Using the service but deciding you don't want to pay because
| "Google has lots of money" doesn't make Google the unreasonable
| party.
|
| By the same logic, I should be able to walk into a store and just
| take anything I want because I'm using it to make items I sell
| "for donations". Obviously, that's ridiculous.
| madsbuch wrote:
| The problem is the defacto platform monopolies. We should not
| tell ourselves that there are reasonable alternatives to
| distribution channels setup by Google and Apple.
|
| Whether there is a problem (and a solution if so) I will not
| judge. But the society are already on it, and we probably will
| see some legislation rendering the "free market" arguments
| futile.
| grawprog wrote:
| >By the same logic, I should be able to walk into a store and
| just take anything I want because I'm using it to make items I
| sell "for donations". Obviously, that's ridiculous.
|
| No, it'd be more like if you paid for a stall in a flea market
| or something and the owners of the market not only took a cut
| of your profits off sales but bans you from telling customers
| to come to your store down the street.
| jpttsn wrote:
| To which you agreed without reading the fine print like an
| adult would, and then you started crying when the agreement
| was enforced.
| grawprog wrote:
| Yes, to further my example. So you get kicked out because
| you didn't read the fine print, turns out, the flea market
| owner now also has the right to go over to your store, rip
| your signs down, turn off your lights and lock your door
| until you agree to stop telling customers your store
| exists.
|
| Oh and by not having a stall in the flea market to begin
| with, your store just couldn't exist.
|
| Shoulda read that fine print though.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| > By the same logic, I should be able to walk into a store and
| just take anything I want because I'm using it to make items I
| sell "for donations". Obviously, that's ridiculous.
|
| HN's favorite pastime, using terribly inappropriate analogies
| for things they don't understand. Because taking actual,
| physical items (also known as theft) is the same thing as not
| using Google's paid for service to receive tips.
|
| 1/ Developers already pay for access to the Play Store. A
| minimal fee, sure, but if Google wants to make more money, then
| they are fully free to raise that.
|
| 2/ You are not using their service to process the payment.
| Google forces themselves into the process simply to extract 30%
| while doing absolutely nothing.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Theft and breach of contract are different crimes, sure.
|
| But I don't think that distinction makes much difference.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| Theft is a crime.
|
| Breach of contract is not one. It's not even a tort. An
| EULA has no legal value, despite what Google would love you
| to believe.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| > 1/ Developers already pay for access to the Play Store. A
| minimal fee, sure, but if Google wants to make more money,
| then they are fully free to raise that.
|
| HN's second favorite pastime: stating that since a company
| has 1 avenue for revenue, that it should be the _only_ avenue
| for revenue and all changes to income should be a increase to
| it.
| dang wrote:
| " _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation
| of what someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to
| criticize. Assume good faith._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| HN's third favorite pastime: extrapolating comments and
| putting words in other poster's mouths.
| dang wrote:
| Please stop posting in the flamewar style to HN. It's not
| what this site is for.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| valuearb wrote:
| Google is actually reviewing. hosting, promoting and
| distributing your app, I wouldn't say that's nothing.
|
| The distribution costs may be minute in the case of this
| developers app if it's only downloaded a few thousand times a
| month, but they exist. And in the case of something like
| Spotify it's likely Petabytes a month of bandwidth.
| Jochim wrote:
| Google isn't doing that out of the goodness of their heart
| though, having a robust app ecosystem is essential and
| they're doing it for their own benefit. I think there's a
| strong case that it's a big part of the reason iOS and
| Android ended up winning against the fairly large number of
| competing phone operating systems.
|
| So while it's true that there is a financial cost to Google
| for hosting your app, there's also a financial gain in the
| sense that the presence of your app contributes to the
| popularity/viability of their platform.
| dfee wrote:
| I don't know how the "goodness of their heart" is
| relevant, but I think you've just arrived at the concept
| of a business: revenue, expenses and profit.
| Jochim wrote:
| The point is that the issue is often framed as
| "ungrateful developers" taking advantage of the
| infrastructure Google provides when in reality developers
| making use of Google's infrastructure provides value to
| Google in itself.
| croes wrote:
| Aren't apps like Spotify and Netflix the ones where you
| don't pay through the app but bypass the store? That is,
| the ones that cost the most don't pay much to Google and
| Apple but the small developers who can't fight back and
| rely on the money have no choice.
| hashingroll wrote:
| Apparently these apps have to integrate their billing
| systems with Google Play by September.
|
| https://android-
| developers.googleblog.com/2020/09/listening-...
| croes wrote:
| Wait and see
| simonklitj wrote:
| 1) How come you get to decide how Google chooses to make
| money?
|
| 2) Shouldn't matter. Their platform, their choice (and if you
| disagree because they're a monopoly, you can't just not pay
| them without consequences, the court has to handle those
| things). You could also say that all the money they've spent
| to make Android a de facto world standard that can benefit
| you as a developer is what you're paying for.
| croes wrote:
| Without apps android wouldn't have become a standard. Look
| what happened to Windows Mobile. So Google owes the
| developers the current status of Androids.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| Android is there because they were quick to move ( first
| movers advantage).
|
| Windows phone tried plenty to sway developers, so it's
| that would have worked. It would have been the money
| incentives Microsoft did, since it was part of it's
| marketing.
|
| Not because they actually swayed developers.
| [deleted]
| xg15 wrote:
| > _1) How come you get to decide how Google chooses to make
| money?_
|
| Because app developers have no choice but to accept
| Google's rules if they want anyone using their app. Do you
| really want to give Google unlimited, unilateral power over
| a whole business sector here?
| simonklitj wrote:
| Not at all! But I don't think I should get to decide it
| for them, except through the regular democratic process
| and then being dragged to court.
| coding123 wrote:
| But that's exactly what we're talking about and going
| towards! No one is saying they're king and I say so so it
| must be. We're having a discussion so that these thing
| can move towards court!
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't sneer, including at the rest of the
| community._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| If other comments are mistaken, the thing to do is
| respectfully provide correct information, so we all learn.
| Putting others down, posing superciliously, and so on only
| adds noise and evokes worse from others.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor.
| ..
| coding123 wrote:
| This is a bullshit comparison and you know it.
| harles wrote:
| I confess I often shoplift on GitHub too. I grew up a hardened
| criminal, stealing server resources from SourceForge and it
| could only end one way.
|
| On a more serious note, this is why Google and Apple need
| regulation. The fact that they can dictate business modes to
| others - whether or not they're within their legal rights -
| should worry everyone.
|
| Edit: Not the author in case there was any confusion.
| geswit2x wrote:
| > this is why Google and Apple need regulation
|
| - publish for free, and doesn't allow you put donations links
|
| - pay monthly cost for publishing, and be able to put link
| for donations
|
| Choose one
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| I choose:
|
| - Advocate for developer friendly policies and work with
| the dev community to weaken Google and Apple's stronghold
| over distribution.
|
| It's funny to see people defending Google here, unless you
| work for Google it's not in your interest (as a consumer or
| developer) to do so.
| jpttsn wrote:
| Maybe people think it's "the right thing" even if it's
| not in their own interest. Or is that inconceivable?
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| How is it the "right thing" if it helps Google but hurts
| developers and consumers? It seems quite the opposite.
| coding123 wrote:
| Option 3 - Monopolistic injunction sees that this is an
| illegal set up and forces both Apple and Google to allow
| donation links and other options.
| acover wrote:
| Option 3: Force third party stores with selection of
| various options at start up. Mirror internet explorer
| requirements.
|
| Google has a monopoly and as such has all the power. How
| can there be consent when one party can dictate whatever
| they want.
| fastball wrote:
| They're not dictating your business model. They're dictating
| the rules of distributing on their platform, which they
| built.
| 987yghj wrote:
| > They're not dictating your business model.
|
| Actually yes they are because they control approximately
| 100% of distribution.
| ampdepolymerase wrote:
| This is exactly why anti-trust legislation needs to be
| extended to cover network effect platforms. A permanent ban
| from GitHub or LinkedIn has a non-negligible effect on
| career progression.
| fastball wrote:
| That actually seems like something that can
| hypothetically still be solved by the free market.
|
| If there are competent employees that are not finding
| good jobs because they are not on GH/LI, then that is a
| market opportunity for people to start hiring people who
| explicitly don't have those things.
| ampdepolymerase wrote:
| The free market can remain irrational longer than a
| person can survive without an economic safety net.
| pydry wrote:
| This is the same argument that was used to try and clamp
| down on anti discrimination legislation.
|
| The idea being that since it was "economically
| irrational" to discriminate on the basis of skin color,
| the "free market" could therefore take care of it,
| therefore legislation was unnecessary.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| You're using their service. You are absolutely free to
| provide your app on F-Droid or your own store and ask for
| donations all day long. But you're still hosting your app on
| their service and use their infrastructure for publishing.
|
| I agree that some regulation is necessary, especially since
| these are near monopolies, but at least on Android you're
| still using expensive infrastructure Google provides to you
| and your users for free. I don't think its unfair for them to
| demand to not make money using what they provide for free.
| ResearchCode wrote:
| Don't think their infrastructure would cost 30% without
| their duopoly, e.g. ten non-colluding platforms of equal
| market share and abiding by interoperability regulations.
| 5% and no draconian content policy enforcement?
| dntrkv wrote:
| Those ten non-colluding platforms would quickly dwindle
| back down to the two we have now, for many reasons,
| network effects being the primary. Look at any other
| space with similar platforms, you have 1 or 2 at most.
|
| Hell, look at PC gaming where there are no restrictions.
| You have Steam (same 30% cut) and... Epic?
| matwood wrote:
| Agreed. I have bought way more apps than I would have
| otherwise because Apple already had my CC and I have some
| trust in their curation (I know it's not perfect). If we
| went to a free for all model we'd end up right back here
| with maybe another store?
|
| Given the scams out there users are already reluctant to
| enter their CC details, so a natural trust network effect
| would weed out everyone else except the biggest players.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| And GOG and quite a few publisher-specific launchers
| (i.e. Blizzard Launcher, U-Play, Wargaming Launcher ...).
| I'd love to have all my games simply integrated into
| steam, but I like that people can simply go with their
| own launcher if they dislike the politics or conditions
| of one.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Probably. But just because you think they are expensive
| it's not okay to exploit their infrastructure "back",
| especially when you are, in fact, not paying anything.
|
| I'm fully on your side with them being near monopolies
| and them being overly expensive. But there's no arguing
| that they have expenses and they need to make money.
| pydry wrote:
| Google is the one being exploitative. The 30% is almost
| pure profit.
|
| How did you think F droid managed to run for free if it
| cost that much to host apps?
|
| Somehow you said you were fully on his side about
| monopolies but claimed Google the was the one being
| exploited. This doesn't make much sense.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Of course it does. Phone manufacturers exploit child
| labor in third world countries to make their phones (and
| that's not okay, for the record). But if I rob their
| shipments and steal their phones, I'm wronging them
| anyway. Being a criminal does not exclude you from being
| a victim.
|
| And, as said in a sister comment, I'm fully on your side
| of 30% being to much. But that does not mean that I think
| they should get nothing.
| pydry wrote:
| >if I rob their shipments and steal their phones
|
| This is supposed to be analogous to publishing an app and
| asking for donations?
|
| >Being a criminal does not exclude you from being a
| victim.
|
| This is not a criminal dispute nor analagous to a
| criminal dispute in any way, shape or form.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| You said it's a contradiction that I say that a) Google
| exploits developers (in a way) and b) developers [can try
| to] to exploit Google. I made an over-the-top example to
| show that these two are not mutually exclusive.
| pydry wrote:
| I think by using an irrelevant example you inadvertently
| demonstrated the exact opposite - that they are.
|
| If two parties "economically exploit each other
| equivalently", there _is_ no exploitation.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| These are not the same people, however. There are the
| developers which give in to the rules and process their
| payment via the app store. These are somewhat exploited
| by having 30% of their profits taken. Then there are
| those which circumvent the store payments by using
| external integrations and therefore exploit Google by
| denying them their fair share[0]. These groups are
| distinct.
|
| [0] Whereas the "fair share" is not necessarily 30%, but
| >0%.
| pyrale wrote:
| Are you making the case that Google risks to go bankrupt
| because some small open-source maintainer adds a donation
| link to their app?
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| It is a near monopoly. The infrastructure costs are small
| relative to market power they possess.
| cced wrote:
| I'm getting really tired of this simplistic "analysis". At
| what point does a monopoly on the distribution
| infrastructure start harming consumers? Would you accept
| that your ISP tell you that you need to use their DNS
| instead of any other? Or their search engine instead of any
| other?
|
| Why do we give Google/Apple the right to decide on
| donations? They developed the infrastructure? They have
| benefited from this. Why isn't this being looked at similar
| to the patent system where innovators receive the benefits
| for early days work instead of a long-forever-their-right
| to dictate how the rest of us work?
|
| You can't even deploy native apps in any official capacity
| on iOS without Apple taking their cut. Did you know that
| the IAP for a youtube premium subscription is more
| expensive than if purchased directly from Google? So, not
| only is everyone forced to pay more because Apple wants
| their cut, but they aren't even allowed to give information
| as to why this is the case.
|
| _Really_ competitive and we're all benefiting from this
| type of behaviour, I'm sure. /s
|
| I just don't see "they built the infrastructure so they
| should benefit" as being the end-all justification for why
| we should accept this.
|
| I guess in support of it:
|
| 1. Why build it if they don't stand to benefit. 2. Building
| it and having it be the only source of applications (case
| of Apple) centralizes application source. Better than
| needing to jump through 3 stores for your apps.
|
| But.. against it..
|
| 1. I just want someone to be able to buy me a coffee. Why
| does Apple need any part of this and why do I need to jump
| through discretion hoops in the black of night to make it
| happen?
|
| My 2c.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| You're misunderstanding my point. I've already said so in
| a sister comment, but we're fully on the same side about
| them being near-monopolies and them being very expensive
| on what they offer. No discussion there.
|
| But two wrongs don't make a right. Yes, they take
| advantage of their position in pricing and yes, they have
| benefited a lot from offering their infrastructure for
| free. But that does not make it okay to use the
| infrastructure they provide for your personal gain just
| because they are "bad".
|
| We also need to differentiate between Google and Apple
| here, as the case is totally different. Google simply has
| a large market share on Android; iOS, on the other hand,
| has (nearly) no option of alternate stores and the App
| Store is not free. That's why I mostly talk about Google
| here; with Apple, it's an entirely different story.
| pydry wrote:
| >But two wrongs don't make a right. Yes, they take
| advantage of their position in pricing and yes, they have
| benefited a lot from offering their infrastructure for
| free. But that does not make it okay to use the
| infrastructure they provide for your personal gain just
| because they are "bad".
|
| The app store is also using him to enrich their
| ecosystem. They allow free apps for a reason even if it
| does cost them a miniscule amount of money to host them.
| It draws people to the platform.
|
| The only reason they're willing to sacrifice kicking him
| off is because they think that they can wring a small
| amount of extra cash out of him which they can feed to
| their shareholders.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > The app store is also using him to enrich their
| ecosystem. They allow free apps for a reason even if it
| does cost them a miniscule amount of money to host them.
| It draws people to the platform.
|
| And he is using the stores to deliver his app, which he
| is payed for by his donators and Patreon supporters, to
| them. And I'd argue that his benefit from having the
| reach of the store is far greater than the stores benefit
| of having another game there. So it's not like he's not
| profiting from that relationship as well.
| pydry wrote:
| You've essentially just rephrased "might makes right",
| no?
|
| If I wield a _vast_ amount of economic power and you do
| not, you are therefore obligated to bow to my whims...?
|
| It's not like he's profiting a lot, anyway. This is more
| akin to a beggar having to fork over 30% of their
| earnings to a Walmart coz theyre standing outside it.
| After all, technically the beggar "profits" from doing
| that.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Well, he does profit from the app store. I don't think
| it's inherently unfair from Google to ask for a share of
| the money he makes due to their arguably mutually
| beneficial relationship.
|
| If he'd complained that 30% is too large of a share, I
| would be fully on his side. This _is_ unreasonable and I
| 've made that point in the past. But the general
| principle of getting a share is very reasonable and, just
| because Google could afford to give him money, they have
| no moral obligations to do so and change the rules for
| him because they're so "rich".
| pydry wrote:
| No, he doesn't. He gets donated cups of coffee for an app
| he developed and gave out for free _and which makes the
| app store a more valuable platform_.
|
| It's only profit if you discount the value of his labor
| to zero.
|
| Google is demanding that every time somebody wants to
| gift him a cup of coffee _to say thank you for giving
| away something of value for free_ that they get a cash
| payment.
|
| This isn't about Google just being rich, it's about
| Google using their power to extract profit from charity
| simply because they are economically more powerful.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| > But two wrongs don't make a right. Yes, they take
| advantage of their position in pricing and yes, they have
| benefited a lot from offering their infrastructure for
| free. But that does not make it okay to use the
| infrastructure they provide for your personal gain just
| because they are "bad".
|
| Theoretically, no. Pragmatically, yes.
|
| Pretending Google is just like everybody else is like
| pretending racism doesn't exist. It's not helpful. Google
| doesn't play by the same rules as others and we shouldn't
| pretend that they do. At this point, anything that harms
| Google is probably good for the consumer.
| robert_foss wrote:
| If they gave you an option to pick app stores on first
| boot, I would agree with you.
|
| The choice between the Google store and F-Droid are
| presented very differently, and I doubt most users are even
| aware of there being a choice.
| techrat wrote:
| False dilemma.
|
| Google does not restrict one from sideloading another app
| store of choice. One can install FDroid, Humble Bundle,
| Epic Store, etc... So whether or not one is aware of a
| choice doesn't mean you can use the hypothetical of "no
| option to choose on first boot" as a loophole for
| violating the TOS of a different service.
| robert_foss wrote:
| One can if one knows alternative stores exist.
|
| What I'd like to see is the solution Microsoft was forced
| to implement w/r to giving users a choice about browsers.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| That would actually be a really good solution
| literallycancer wrote:
| You need root to get the same background update
| functionality in FDroid though. Otherwise you have to
| click install for each update.
| techrat wrote:
| If you're able to sideload Fdroid, I think clicking to
| update ranks among the least difficult things you can do.
| crtasm wrote:
| Difficulty isn't the issue - for every app that has an
| update you have to click it, then approve the install. On
| my phone there's a significant wait inbetween each step.
| It's a hassle.
|
| I wouldn't turn on automatic updates anyway but I'd love
| to be able to select multiple items and give a single
| confirmation to update.
| anonymousab wrote:
| I have found that f-droid click updates are very finicky
| and unreliable. They eventually work, but failed updates
| and repeat and phantom update notifications are the norm.
|
| It's fine for me but I don't think the average consumer
| would ever tolerate it.
| hobs wrote:
| And that wasnt a good enough argument for microsoft
| bundling internet explorer and they got the anti-trust
| hammer on their asses.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| While I don't agree with the author's point, I _do_ agree
| very much that it should totally be fine to force Google
| and Apple to allow multiple stores that are selected by
| the user.
|
| Furthermore, there is plenty of precedence for this
| solution, as this is pretty much _exactly_ the approach
| government took when Microsoft demanded IE be the primary
| /main browser on Windows.
| adkadskhj wrote:
| I hate Google, but.. you bought the phone, did you not?
|
| Like, i get that the market sucks for people who care
| about this stuff, but i avoid Google because their
| practices bother me. Are their store practices any
| different then? Should i not simply avoid purchasing
| their phones (and phones based on their OS) if i dislike
| it?
|
| I think there's a huge difference between, say,
| residential ISPs where you can not realistically find a
| better ISP - vs phones. There are _lots_ of phones, many
| of them without any storefronts at all, problem solved.
| You're not forced to buy Google phones, so what is the
| regulation needed here?
|
| I'm generally very pro-regulation/government, but this
| feels so optional that i don't get what the expected
| outcome is. No more closed ecosystems? Playstation has to
| allow arbitrary storefronts in their system?
|
| _edit_ : Another way to look at this is that the
| storefront isn't the problem. You're using their infra,
| they have a right to make you pay. However when they
| don't allow you to install your own apps outside of their
| storefront, that is the real problem. Of course you need
| to pay for hosting, why do you expect it free? But your
| phone is your own, so you should be able to avoid their
| hosting entirely, should you choose.
| robert_foss wrote:
| There are lots of phones, but realistically you're
| picking between two ecosystems, Android / iOS. My
| grandmother isn't going to buy a Fairphone.
|
| I think Playstations are different from smartphones /
| ISPs. You can live a normal life without a console, but
| you really can't without a smartphone or internet access.
| This technology is no longer optional.
| adkadskhj wrote:
| I can agree with that, but i don't see why that has
| _anything_ to do with Google hosting your code for free.
|
| The argument of Google not having the right to dictate
| terms of their infra seems completely unfounded to me.
| Why aren't we arguing for a more open Phone? Google
| demanding money for their own infra is not the issue.
| Greed wrote:
| Realistically when you buy a phone you have a choice
| between two storefronts-- what are these other phones
| with no storefront you're referring to? Surely you can't
| be presenting conventional flip phones as an alternative
| here.
|
| Blackberry now produces Android phones and the Windows
| phone is defunct. That just leaves the myriad of fly-by-
| night Kickstarter phones that wouldn't be able to run
| these apps in the first place.
| adkadskhj wrote:
| So i'm lost though, is the implication that, because it's
| difficult to buy comparable phones that Google should
| offer their infra for free? At what point does Google
| have a right to make decisions on their own infra? If
| they're hosting your app they don't get a say in what
| they host?
|
| And again, i already said i think you should have a right
| to run what you want on your phone. But most of the
| comments here seem to want to dictate what Google does
| with its own infra. That they don't get a choice in this.
| greatgib wrote:
| They can decide to force you to sell at a price an app but
| it is an abuse of power to have a look inside to be the
| almighty judge. To the point that here they are even
| leaving the app space to look at the content of the
| website.
|
| Imagine if you go to IKEA store and they look into your bag
| to refuse everyone that has an android to accept only
| iphone users? Just because they can!
|
| Or if walmart will check your sms or your facebook profile
| when you enter to refuse persons that support Trump. And
| Costco, the same with persons supporting Biden.
| hokumguru wrote:
| I'm sorry, I don't see the difference here between them and
| say, Walmart? The latter is well known for dictating exactly
| what products and even at which price point is allowed inside
| their stores. Companies often have to create entirely new
| versions of their product in order to be sold there.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > I'm sorry, I don't see the difference here between them
| and say, Walmart?
|
| The number of customers who patronize _only_ Walmart for
| any given class of goods, and never use Amazon, Target,
| Costco, Dollar Tree, etc. is negligible. If Walmart won 't
| carry your stuff, you can sell to the same customers
| through many other stores.
|
| The number of customers who patronize _only_ Google Play
| for mobile apps is a pretty good approximation for the
| number of Android users. There is no plausible alternative
| to sell to those customers. Amazon is a serious alternative
| to Walmart; Aptoide is not a serious alternative to Google
| Play.
| henvic wrote:
| No. First, it's not fair to them. Second, if you create such
| regulations, do you really know who would benefit from them?
|
| It wouldn't be the consumers, but these companies. There's a
| thing called regulatory capture
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture).
|
| Try to introduce such regulation, and what would happen is
| that the regulations themselves would be even manipulated or
| even drafted by the big players in the market.
|
| Why is that so bad? Because it means the regulations will be
| harsh to everyone else who tries to join that given market.
|
| This happens all the time in other industries. We don't need
| this in computing, please.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Except we do need it. And without regulation we have
| network effects and bundling feeding into ever more
| centralization. Until these companies have resources
| equivalent to mid sized countries.
|
| Regulations can also have thresholds so they don't crush
| small upstarts, yet do provide necessary controls for
| larger companies.
| hilios wrote:
| Regulatory capture can happen, but it is by no means so
| inevitable or incorrigible that regulation should not be
| attempted.
| indigochill wrote:
| > this is why Google and Apple need regulation
|
| No, this is why devs need to read the TOS, realize
| Google/Apple are not platforms they want to support, and work
| to create/support platforms that are developer-friendly (e.g.
| F-Droid/itch.io, as highlighted here).
|
| Or they are the platforms they want to support (because, for
| instance, they're where the people are), in which case
| they're just trying to both have and eat their cake, like
| Epic on the Apple store.
| coding123 wrote:
| Do people simply not understand anti-trust anymore?
| captaincurrie wrote:
| _cough_ Parlor
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| The whole world is becoming a store, and our presence in it is
| only at the discretion of the owners.
|
| This is why tech needs interoperability requirements.
| tpoacher wrote:
| your analogy is way off. a better analogy would be walmart
| refusing to sell your candybars which promote a charity,
| insisting this can only be done via walmart credits which earns
| walmart a 30% commission and vendor-lock-in.
| jpttsn wrote:
| And the charity is producing the candybars?
| rpdillon wrote:
| Yes, and they continue producing them regardless of whether
| or not they get paid.
| croes wrote:
| Wrong analogy. You can walk into a store where usually you can
| take items he made for free, not the store owner. After one
| month, he puts a sign on the shelf "If you like what you see,
| you can send me money to my bank account". So where is the
| difference for the store owner between before and after the
| sign? Before he didn't get any money, after he don't get any
| money.
| trevorishere wrote:
| If you don't like the store policies, you may be able to find
| an accommodating store.
|
| Can't do that with the app stores, hence your analogy falls
| apart due to the lack of available competition.
| fastball wrote:
| Right, but with that analogy, you have his store predicated
| on a cheaper lease from the landlord because he said he
| wouldn't be making any money off his items.
|
| But now he is accepting donations for the items people are
| taking "for free", and is therefore in breach of the lease
| agreement he signed with his landlord.
| minitoar wrote:
| Because the store owner & seller agreed to the former and not
| the latter. It's the agreement they already made. If they
| want to change the agreement, probably both parties have to
| agree to the changes.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| If you give me your old TV for free and I use it, we both are
| happy. If you give me your old TV and I turn arround and sell
| it for 400$, you're probably not happy, despite you not
| getting any money in either case.
|
| Or, in case of your store example: The store owner does not
| have a store "for free". He still needs to pay the bills and
| be there. By suddenly earning money with his goodwill you're
| basically monetizing the space he is gifting to you.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| Because, if the store owner's business model is
|
| > People are welcome to offer items for free on my shelf
| space, but if they make money based off the items people got
| from those shelves, then I get a cut
|
| Then, if you accept a donation because of such items, then
| you pay. Because it was stated up front and it's part of the
| owner's business model.
|
| As to how it effects the store owner. Let's say the store
| owner does not allow free items on their shelves at the
| moment. And they make enough money to pay their bills, plus a
| little extra. The owner decides to allow free items on their
| shelves, with the above caveat. They figure they will make
| less money overall (free items now take the place of items
| non-free item), but still make enough to live on. Only now,
| just enough, no extra.
|
| If all the people that give their items for free + donations
| decide not to pay a share of their donations, then the
| business owner does _not_ make enough to pay their bills...
| because the assumption of people paying that money was built
| into the decision to allow free items in the first place.
|
| So there _is_ a different to the store owner.
|
| Obviously, Google doesn't make "just enough to pay their
| bills", so the analogy is loose... but the concept of people
| following the rules that were set out at the beginning being
| built into the business model, and the decision to support
| that model at all, doesn't change because of that.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| first paragraph is accurate. second paragraph is absolute
| nonsense.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| Microsoft lost its anti-trust case for simply putting IE as the
| default browser.
| [deleted]
| lelanthran wrote:
| Okay, I'm genuinely curious here - what if your app is free but
| your service is not?
|
| Lets say I run a backup service; companies and people pay me to
| run my backup agent on their desktops, and the backup agent
| backs up all their important files to my server.
|
| I provide the desktop agents for free. Does it mean that I
| cannot write an android agent and make it available for free on
| the Play store?
|
| What about iOS? Can I make an iPhone agent that my (already
| signed up and paying customers) download from the Apple store?
|
| If my main business is providing a service and using a client
| program that my customers install to make use of that service,
| am I simply now allowed to tell my customers "You can use our
| free app on the Play store"?
|
| How do Banks do this? My bank has an app on the play store, but
| it's free. I'm definitely paying for the service my bank offers
| through that app, but Google doesn't seem to mind.
| sosuke wrote:
| You can make a service then provide the android agent for
| free. But you can't use that app to then drive signups for
| your service without paying Google's fee.
| wcarss wrote:
| My knowledge may be out of date, but as of ~2012-2015, Apple
| generally made free-app-with-paid-subscription services
| choose between one of the following two options:
|
| 1. No sign-up/subscribe/payment buttons in-app, and no links
| in-app to external payment forms for those purposes,
| (effectively the app is a convenience for the users you
| already have) or,
|
| 2. Integrate your sign-up/subscription/upgrades available in-
| app to Apple's systems, and give up a cut for any
| subscriptions/upgrades that originated via the Apple app. (On
| this side, you're effectively paying Apple commission for
| converted leads generated through their app as an advertising
| channel.)
|
| They included this in part of their review process, and they
| did not give much leeway. Even _linking to your service 's
| website_ from in-app was risky, if your website was plastered
| with sign-up/subscribe/upgrade buttons.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| This logic would make sense in a competitive market. However,
| Google Play leans on monopolistic control of the platform. Not
| only that, but Google _does_ use its monopoly to strong-arm
| manufacturers not to bundle competing services to the Play
| store.
|
| Its essentially a tax on anyone doing commerce on the most
| installed computing platform on the planet, used by two billion
| people (not including China).
| sneak wrote:
| I feel like if people agreed with you, this wouldn't be news.
|
| The link was added on the support webpage, which is viewed in
| the browser in the app.
|
| Google's rules are shitty.
| joshgoldman wrote:
| No, you are rediculous and cringy
| walrus01 wrote:
| > By the same logic, I should be able to walk into a store and
| just take anything I want because I'm using it to make items I
| sell "for donations"
|
| This is the worst sort of "you wouldn't download a car, would
| you?" analogy. Stealing a physical product from a retail store
| is nothing at all like publishing a piece of software that
| people choose to install on the devices that they own. This
| comment really illustrates how far we have diverged from people
| actually owning and controlling their own handheld computers,
| in the google or apple "walled garden" ecosystem.
| 987yghj wrote:
| Just like I can switch browser and download programs from lots
| of sources, I should be able to switch Play Store.
|
| Google is a monopoly that must be broken up.
| worble wrote:
| Except that you are forced to use Google's services if you want
| to reach any audience on android (and Apple for iOS).
|
| I would be sympathetic to Google if the Play Store was just one
| realistic choice of many, or if like FDroid it allowed you to
| create and use other sources of packages, but at the moment
| it's like saying "You can't use Chrome to visit a donation page
| without also giving Google a cut, you're using THEIR service
| after all to do so."
| adkadskhj wrote:
| I think it would be more like "You can't use Free App Engine
| and infra without giving Google a cut".
|
| Now if you can't access the app at all, such as by browser or
| etc, then i think there's a better parallel to Chrome. But
| when you're using someone elses infra entirely it feels odd
| to say you have the right to use it for free.
|
| The donations aren't the problem in my mind. Installing
| applications outside of the app store is the problem. Because
| locking app installs down and not supporting alternatives
| like PWAs is the real devil.
|
| I still partially think we should just avoid Google phones
| period, but other comments suggest Microsoft already was
| forced to allow alternate browser installs, so there in i
| think that sets a precedent to require Google/etc to better
| support 3rd party app installs (out of store).
| twirlock wrote:
| How is that the same logic? Are you on bath salts or something?
| alert0 wrote:
| Google also makes an OS which he provides content for, so
| Google should make sure that relationship is sustainable for
| him.
|
| >By the same logic, I should be able to walk into a store and
| just take anything I want because I'm using it to make items I
| sell "for donations". Obviously, that's ridiculous.
|
| No, this is nothing like literal theft.
| 015a wrote:
| Yeah; I'm definitely on the "Apple is overdoing it" train, in
| that their similar policy is unreasonable given there are no
| alternative options for developers on that platform.
|
| But, Google/Play is different; developers who decide to
| distribute outside of Play don't receive any significant
| negative impact to their application outside of the marketing
| and operations that Play gives you, basically for free. There
| are other options, including no option ("go to my website and
| download the APK").
|
| The pre-installation of Play on millions of Android devices
| _is_ a weird sticky point. But, the most popular android
| devices on the planet (Samsung, Huawei) also ship with
| secondary (or, in some markets, primary) storefronts, and devs
| can distribute on those. Google set a norm with most customers,
| that all apps are on Play, but I also don 't really see much
| tactile anticompetitive behavior from them in making it that
| way; its just the cultural norm, primarily due to convenience.
| I'd support government intervention to force device
| manufacturers to prompt users to install alternate storefronts
| on device setup, but its not the biggest of deals on Android.
|
| Also; developers _can_ monetize their "donations" via in-app
| purchases. I've seen tons of devs do this; either one-time or
| subscription, sometimes for little dumb non-functional stuff
| like extra theme colors, sometimes for nothing. I've paid for a
| few. Google will take their 15%. So, you're paying maybe an
| extra 10% on-top-of whatever you'd already have to be paying
| Stripe or whoever. Is the marketing, distribution, metrics,
| bandwidth, customer base, and even tangentially, developer
| tooling (Android Studio), worth that? The answer to that is
| different for every developer, but I think you'd have to be
| turning some huge revenue (some may say, some "Epic" revenue)
| for the absolute number underneath that percentage to start
| drawing scrutiny.
| sixothree wrote:
| My problem here is is when the donations aren't for the game
| hosted by google, but for the author in general. Imagine the
| game being only one small portion of their business that might
| include videos and merchandise. Should google be allowed a cut
| of all that revenue as well.
| hokumguru wrote:
| I believe their TOS doesn't include physical goods, just like
| Apple.
| fastball wrote:
| It's a tough problem. Google/Apple aren't taking cuts of
| genuinely free apps, even though they are part of the overall
| cost and can sometimes (for big apps) actually have pretty
| high variable costs.
|
| So you might say that Google/Apple should just start charging
| directly for the app store spots, with some markup. e.g.
| $30/m for up to 10k downloads, $50/m for 30k, etc.
|
| But arguably app stores wouldn't be the juggernauts they are
| without the loads and loads of free apps people can download
| for no upfront cost, and it seems unlikely that this would've
| happened if the app store business model had been the one
| above from the outset.
|
| In other words, the author is complaining about the existing
| model, but it is unclear if putting his stuff on the app
| store would've been such an appealing thing to do _without_
| said model. Bit of a catch-22.
| kentonv wrote:
| Google provides a service, but they also require everyone to
| use their service. There is no realistic alternative if you
| want to reach the 70% of the market Google controls. Sure,
| F-Droid and sideloading and whatever exist, but realistically
| they are so crippled by unnecessary restrictions imposed on
| them _by Google_ that they aren 't serious options.
|
| So now Google is in a position where they can place
| unreasonable rules on their service and no one can do anything
| about it. So, naturally, that's what they are doing. You can
| argue it's their right to put whatever restrictions they want
| on "their" service. But we can still argue that their
| restrictions are unfair.
|
| This rule in this case seems unfair. The cost to Google to
| distribute this app is vanishingly small, probably on the order
| of cents. The benefit Google gains from exerting total control
| over the availability of apps on Android is quite large. It
| seems like Google is already getting the better end of the
| deal, and saying "you are not permitted to ask for donations to
| support your free art project unless you give us a 30% cut"
| just seems petty.
|
| Can Google do it? Sure, they have the right. Is it fair? In my
| opinion, no. Being legal doesn't make it fair.
| bluetwo wrote:
| But doesn't Google provide a simple way to both support the
| developer AND stay within the rules? Make it a pay app.
| vhanda wrote:
| It's really not the same thing. With Donations you want a
| subset of users to pay for the app, who really want to.
| With a paid app, every one needs to pay.
|
| Also, a donation is very different than selling something
| from a legal point of view. When selling, you need to pay
| VAT.
|
| One could keep two apps, one paid and one free, but then on
| the paid one you're essentially paying 30% to Google and
| about 20% more to VAT. So you're effectively losing half
| the money and having to do lots more work to maintain two
| apps, and their subsequent ASO.
| ec109685 wrote:
| Why can't you do an in-app purchase that _is the
| donation_ and doesn 't unlock anything? Yeah, you're
| still paying the various taxes, but you don't need two
| apps.
| vhanda wrote:
| Yup. You're right. You can do that.
|
| You then have the problem of writing and maintaining the
| code for the IAP, which isn't always trivial. But yes,
| absolutely do-able.
|
| At this point it's the same thing as selling an invisible
| skin for your app. The fundamental issue is that of
| selling vs donating.
| kentonv wrote:
| Yes, and they take a 30% cut, with is insane. Like,
| completely nutso absurd. 30% is a reasonable tax rate for a
| government that provides roads, schools, defense, social
| security, etc., not a reasonable fee for a company to
| process electronic payments. But Google (like Apple) has no
| incentive whatsoever to reduce the price, because they have
| a captive audience.
|
| If Google took a more reasonable cut, like 5%, maybe even
| 10%, then sure, I wouldn't be so bothered by them insisting
| that this app use in-app purchases for donations.
| LordAtlas wrote:
| Google has reduced the cut to 15% for revenue below $1
| million.
| coding123 wrote:
| But as long as they force you into their payment plan AND
| not allow competition (ie additional stores) there
| definitely seems to be anti-trust problems.
| cma wrote:
| So good luck getting funding for something that you tell
| the funder could earn millions if it works out. That
| means less greenfield investment, and ultimately less
| investment for apps that make less than a million, since
| only X% will end up doing so, but investment will be
| impacted for all.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Solely under threat of upcoming litigation, yes, they now
| rip people off half as much.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Are you claiming that the 30% (or 15%) cut is to only
| support the payments infra, and isn't supporting the
| android ecosystem as a whole?
| kentonv wrote:
| 1. I think they should support the ecosystem by _selling
| phones_. That would result in far fewer perverse
| incentives and market distortions compared to their
| approach of taxing developers.
|
| 2. I don't think Google actually needs a 30%/15% cut to
| "support the Android ecosystem". I think they're charging
| way more than necessary, just because they can.
|
| (Same arguments for Apple.)
| joshuamorton wrote:
| I won't argue with 2 (I don't think either of us can
| really say with certainty, and then there's the second
| layer of arguments about what is "necessary" in a profit
| situation)
|
| But for 1, this has some significant downsides to
| consumers. As it stands assuming most of the support
| comes from the android platform (ads and fees), you get
| price discrimination. The people who just want a phone to
| use the internet or stay connected or whatever don't have
| to subsidize people who do more.
|
| I generally think having power users subsidize non power
| users is an ethical form of price discrimination.
| Thoughts?
| [deleted]
| tshaddox wrote:
| Funny how the exact same arguments get applied to Apple in
| the exact same markets. Weird how "no one has a choice but to
| use Google product" and at the same time "no one has a choice
| but to use Apple products."
| Osiris wrote:
| Vendor lock-in.
| 8note wrote:
| How legal are cartels?
| sqreept wrote:
| A duopoly is just a monopoly with two CEOs
| kentonv wrote:
| To reach iPhone users, you must go through the Apple store.
|
| To reach Android users, you must go through the Play Store.
|
| Realistically, these stores are not in competition. They
| have monopolies over their respective markets. If one store
| offers a better deal to developers, that doesn't meant the
| developers can all flock to that store and abandon the
| other one. Developers still must deal with both. As a
| result, the regular forces of competition aren't doing
| their job here. Neither store has any incentive to make
| their terms better because they won't gain any developers
| by doing so.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Taken to it's conclusion, the world becomes a pretty scary
| place when things are determined by just what is "fair". At
| the end of the day the author's argument boils down to
| "Google is very rich, I'm not, I should be able to sidestep
| their demands for payment on their service." Given an exactly
| equivalent analogy, if you put your house up on AirBnB would
| anyone be surprised if AirBnB cracks down on people paying
| outside their platform and instead guiding renters to a
| separate "donation page"?
| kentonv wrote:
| No one is arguing we should abandon rule of law for some
| abstract notion of "fairness". We're having a public debate
| about whether this behavior is fair. If we decide it isn't,
| then the next step is legislation to correct the problem
| (or Google doing so voluntarily). No one is going to
| directly enforce an ambiguous notion of fairness on Google.
| coding123 wrote:
| Let's make the world more fair first before locking
| everyone into the play store or the apple store. With the
| airbnb analogy, people are also free to list their vacation
| house on reddit, craigslist or just tell people about it
| and as long as they have a method to take payment - that
| just works.
|
| Let's simplify. Let's say I sell lemonade. It's 100% legit
| with USDA approval or whatever BUT I'm having trouble
| selling it. Grocery stores are happy with their own brand
| but maybe I'm lucky enough to get 1 Wholefoods to set up a
| counter. I can see the analogy of whole foods requiring me
| to not sell while in their store. However whole foods does
| NOT require me to white label. And they would not require
| me to change my website to not have alternative buying
| choices. In fact I do this all the time with foods I find
| in Wholefoods - I go to the website of foods I love and see
| if I can buy directly in bulk.
|
| This is the CORRECT analogy. It's not correct to say that
| everyone is going into Safeway and stealing shit off the
| shelves. The OP should know that, and you should know that.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I can't downvote you because you're a direct response,
| but please don't do this:
|
| > Downvotes are not replying so I'm assuming they are
| just pissed that my logic checks out.
|
| It breaks the site guidelines [1].
|
| [1] Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It
| never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
| coding123 wrote:
| Thank you, noted and removed.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| [1] is the stupidest. Well second stupidest. HN's voting
| system is stupider. And yeah, downvotes are done in lieu
| of actual discussion. And they shouldn't be allowed.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Its Orwellian how discussion of how broken something is
| is not allowed. So, now I'll just down vote everyone for
| the hell of it. There.
| themacguffinman wrote:
| > With the airbnb analogy, people are also free to list
| their vacation house on reddit, craigslist or just tell
| people about it and as long as they have a method to take
| payment - that just works.
|
| And on Android, developers are free to list their apps on
| F-Droid, Amazon Appstore or just let people download &
| install it from their own website. Unlike iOS, the Play
| Store is not mandatory.
|
| > However whole foods does NOT require me to white label.
| (...) And they would not require me to change my website
| to not have alternative buying choices.
|
| Grocery stores can and do ask anything they want of
| suppliers. Trader Joe's buys many products from suppliers
| like PepsiCo under a white labelling agreement. Walmart
| will fully dictate the packaging and pricing of your
| product (eg. demanding that Vlasic sell a Walmart-
| exclusive $2.97 gallon jar of pickles). Don't like their
| terms? Tough luck, it's their store.
|
| I'm not saying that the grocery store analogy is a good
| one but it clearly works against your point. Actually
| I've only seen it mentioned to support dictatorial app
| stores.
| anoncake wrote:
| > And on Android, developers are free to list their apps
| on F-Droid, Amazon Appstore or just let people download &
| install it from their own website. Unlike iOS, the Play
| Store is not mandatory.
|
| In practice, it is. Only the Play Store can update apps
| in the background.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Trader Joe's, on the other hand, does require almost
| everyone to white label.
| kentonv wrote:
| Trader Joe's customers can and do shop at other stores as
| well. Whereas people don't realistically carry more than
| one phone or switch phone types frequently.
| coding123 wrote:
| Trader Joes has what, 1% of the market share of shoppers?
| Android and iPhone have what, 99%?
| AuthorizedCust wrote:
| How is 1% market share relevant? If that policy is
| justified, then market share is irrelevant.
| coding123 wrote:
| ... because a seller literally has 99% of the market to
| go after instead because they don't have a policy like
| that?
| tshaddox wrote:
| Android and iPhone definitely cannot each have 99% of the
| market.
| Osiris wrote:
| Combined, not each.
| anoncake wrote:
| Android apps and iPhone apps are different markets.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| If you can just define a market to whatever you want,
| then everyone has a 100% market share. By your
| definition, Samsung has a 100% market share on Samsung
| TVs.
| coding123 wrote:
| Going back to the grocery store analogy... https://en.wik
| ipedia.org/wiki/List_of_supermarket_chains_in_...
|
| While at least 50% of the random grocery stores you would
| see are under one of the big 5 (or so) many of these
| stores are generally able to carry additional products
| not even necessarily approved by the top. Part of that is
| simply competition with local chains. And that doesn't
| even cover the fact that you have gobs of local and
| regional chains to contact and sell goods to.
|
| But basically as a seller of lemonade you are highly
| likely to be able to sell your product without insane
| restrictions - as well have the ability to choose a chain
| or store that has competitive markup or a markup that you
| agree with.
|
| If you sell phone applications you are dealing with
| exactly 2 entities that you HAVE to go through.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| As a consumer or developer, your interests are aligned with
| the author's. Unless you work for Google, you'd be better
| off fighting policies like this.
| mitchdoogle wrote:
| It surprises me when anyone defends these companies. I
| mean, come on, they really don't need your help. It's like
| cheering for the Empire in Star Wars, because they are
| "well within their rights to build a planet size spaceship
| with capabilities of destroying planets"
| root_axis wrote:
| This is a really tortured analogy. Google isn't building
| a doomsday weapon, it's a mobile app distribution
| platform for what is almost entirely composed of trivial
| time-wasters. Believe it or not, some people base their
| reasoning on principles rather than the topic of
| discussion's perceived reputation.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I would strongly contend it is not legal under existing laws
| and they don't have the right. Hopefully some legal cases
| will bear that out shortly.
| kentonv wrote:
| I do hope that that is the outcome of the court cases, but
| I'm not an expert in antitrust law.
| jmull wrote:
| > they are so crippled by unnecessary restrictions imposed on
| them by Google that they aren't serious options
|
| What are these restrictions? I've heard this mentioned
| before, but I'm not finding information on what the
| restrictions are.
| gsich wrote:
| No auto-updates. Having multiple settings to even enable
| custom APKs. Having no interface to allow alternative
| appstores.
| ggggtez wrote:
| I believe that the "unreasonable restrictions" are that the
| user needs to click "I accept" when they enable sideloading
| and see a scary warning.
| cma wrote:
| No warning just pops up, usually they have to redirect
| the user to manually open settings, or at least open
| settings for them. It's not a simple dialog, they have to
| remember instructions and then apply them within the
| separate settings application. And then no auto updates
| on top of that.
| kentonv wrote:
| The user has to enable a setting buried deep in the menus
| -- easy for someone tech savvy, but not for the typical
| user. They need to do that before they can even install the
| alternative app store, since you cannot distribute an
| alternative app store via the play store. Even once you've
| done all that, every app install through the alt app store
| must be confirmed by the user through an interstitial
| dialog, which also means the alt app store cannot auto-
| update apps. It all makes for an awful experience that even
| those who know how to do it don't want to deal with.
| zo1 wrote:
| By crippling non-root features on the phone would be my
| main "restriction". I should be able to do _anything_ with
| my own hardware.
| akiselev wrote:
| _> Can Google do it? Sure, they have the right. Is it fair?
| In my opinion, no. Being legal doesn 't make it fair._
|
| The whole concept of some action being "legal" is nebulous at
| best in the US. At the cutting edge of technology where there
| isn't any directly analogous precedent, it just means that
| someone with deep enough pockets or enforcement authority
| hasn't challenged the status quo. There is so much going on
| with Google, Facebook, Apple, the telecom/media mergers, and
| so on that clearly is worth investigating and litigating in
| courts but we're doing the bare minimum. Once they're a
| certain size, companies just do whatever they want, pay their
| fines, pull out their token gestures on Twitter, and keep
| steam rolling ahead as if nothing had happened.
|
| At this point, the whole system of conglomeration, regulatory
| capture, "cost of doing business" penalties, and arbitrary
| enforcement looks like a total farce as do the rights it
| gives its "constituents".
|
| /rant
| ggggtez wrote:
| > There is no realistic alternative if you want to reach the
| 70% of the market
|
| Not to point out the obvious, but doesn't that mean that
| Google is providing a service that is providing you with
| value? I can't imagine someone saying that TV ads should be
| free because that's the only way to reach 70% of the
| market...
| tshaddox wrote:
| In fact, people often do say that telecoms are monopolistic
| or oligopolistic, that they engage in anti-competitive
| behavior that is terrible for consumers, and that they
| should be broken up and/or strictly regulated. That has
| been a very prominent argument for many decades.
| paulluuk wrote:
| Well, let's say that I could hypothetically buy both the
| Google store and the Apple store, and I raised the
| percentage cut from 30% to 95% on all sales.
|
| I'll even make it so that all apps are automatically
| available in both stores! And I'll use the revenue to buy
| out any competitors, or sue those who I can not buy.
|
| would that still be fair? After all, I am providing a
| service, am I not?
|
| I think the debate here is not about whether or not there
| is a service being provided -- but rather what kind of
| service fee would be "fair" in exchange for the service
| they provided, while acknowledging their (near) monopoly on
| android users.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| > Google provides a service, but they also require everyone
| to use their service. There is no realistic alternative if
| you want to reach the 70% of the market Google controls.
|
| Epic/Fortnite beg to differ. Unlike with Apple, no one is
| _forced_ to use the Play Store to get apps for your phone.
| kentonv wrote:
| Epic is literally suing Google over exactly this problem.
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/13/21368363/epic-google-
| fort...
| freyir wrote:
| What prevents the Epic store (or any alternative store)
| from gaining more traction? Is it just that users prefer
| the default store that ships with the phone? Or are there
| other barriers?
| kentonv wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26762660
| themacguffinman wrote:
| Well people can do something about it. They can invent their
| own app store and operating system and negotiate with
| hardware vendors to deliver it. Does that seem difficult to
| do? Yet that's what Google did in the face of iOS. And it's
| what Apple did in the face of Blackberry/Nokia. It's what
| Purism is trying to do now.
|
| Google's actual infrastructure costs are not low, they're
| actually so high that many people don't think it's feasible
| to do it. It's so high that they're reduced to complaining
| about how difficult it is to do anything other than use
| Google's existing infrastructure.
|
| Maybe that still feels unfair. I'm not totally unsympathetic
| to that perspective. But it's wrong to characterize Google's
| costs as trivial and claim that there are no options. Both
| you and the author imply that Google's 70% marketshare
| platform is a triviality worth far less than they charge, and
| that doesn't strike me as entirely fair either.
| passivate wrote:
| >Can Google do it? Sure, they have the right.
|
| I think maybe its time to discuss what 'rights' mean in a
| purely digital economy.
| kenniskrag wrote:
| > Google provides a service, but they also require everyone
| to use their service.
|
| Not really if you consider huawei without a play store. Also
| consider the IE case where microsoft only was forced to allow
| a browser chooser window. I think if the same would happen on
| android all would be fine.
|
| > There is no realistic alternative if you want to reach the
| 70% of the market Google controls.
|
| I think just because they are big they shouldn't be forced to
| allow everyone to use their platform.
| ZoF wrote:
| I think you're spot on and that's precisely why the
| discussion on legality will be being had. Yes google is
| providing meaningful app infrastructure, what level of
| control we as citizens give them over this 'monopoly' is yet
| to be decided.
| freyir wrote:
| It's a simple policy: a percentage of revenue from games
| hosted on the platform goes to the host.
|
| When that revenue is labeled "donations", it doesn't make it
| not revenue.
|
| > "you are not permitted to ask for donations to support your
| free art project"
|
| The host is not in the business of differentiating art
| projects from non-art projects or donation-based payments
| from non-donation-based payments, which could easily be
| abused by developers offering in-app rewards for "donations."
| That is a slippery slope that would be ripe for abuse and
| satisfy no one.
|
| When we have a complicated system, like the US tax laws,
| people abuse it and everyone complains. When we have a simple
| system applied fairly across the board, people think
| exceptions should be made for them and complain. The lesson
| seems to be that someone will always be complaining.
| jayd16 wrote:
| The tone of the link is a bit juvenile but I'm not sure its a
| simple case of payment due for services rendered.
|
| It seems like this is about a donation link on an external
| developer page. Can they not provide a donation link for other
| games not on the Play store? Surely you're allowed to have a
| donation link on your developer page _somewhere_. How buried
| does google need the link to be? Is the policy clear?
| benatkin wrote:
| I have an issue with the tone of the comment you're replying
| to. Shameless bootlicking has a tone when I read it, that
| seems to be just as strong as a tone expressed through swear
| words.
| fay59 wrote:
| I completely disagree. The developer offers the same version of
| their game for free to everyone. Donations are solicited, but
| people who donate don't receive anything in return.
|
| In-app purchases have value to developers to verify payment
| validity and function as DRM to prove the user did purchase a
| thing, and they have value to the user to provide legitimacy to
| the transaction and assure that if they don't get what they
| paid for, there's reliable customer service to help them. None
| of these things are relevant when users donate.
|
| So what's Google's role in this? If they're OK not getting a
| cut of subscription services paid for outside the app, what's
| the problem with not getting a cut of transactions users get
| nothing out of?
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| The problem here is monopoly. Your argument totally makes sense
| ... in a context where there are reasonable alternatives. But
| there are not. And the fault for that, I'm afraid, is the
| government's.
| SuperSandro2000 wrote:
| The user already paid for the app download with his/her
| personal data more than it costs google to provide the download
| and development.
| sarsway wrote:
| I think another problem is, with the advent of Twitch.tv and
| Patreon, "Donations" as a business model have become somewhat
| normalized. But it's anything but normal outside of a few
| fields like OSS, where it's the only viable option to generate
| revenue. Businesses don't ever ask for donations.
|
| Individuals don't think of themselves as businesses, but they
| really should. If you're making a game, and distribute it via
| the App/Play Store, you should think hard about providing
| something of value to the player, and how much you can charge
| it. Even if it's just a one time in-app-purchase. It's a much
| better experience for the users to let them buy something they
| want, and the success is directly tied to how much value the
| game provides. Rather then just putting it out there for free,
| and hope someone will support it.
|
| That's how I see it, for Google it's probably more about
| revenue sharing and also tax issues, but I do believe not
| relying on donations leads to better products, that make more
| sense, as they need to be able to stand for themselves.
| ShaneMcGowan wrote:
| This is "technically" circumventing the protections they have in
| place for users not getting scammed out of their money. As with
| all things at scale they have to turn you down unfortunately so
| they can have a specific stance with no wriggle room
| kazinator wrote:
| If this is not a free game as in FOSS, I'm not highly
| sympathetic.
|
| Basically, this sort of thing is a way of collecting money
| outside of the store. Bad agents can disguise "in-app purchases"
| by handling them via a "donations" page.
|
| It could easily be that donations are actually payments, because
| users who donate have some sort of preferential treatment in the
| software.
|
| If you run an operation like the Google Play Store, you cannot
| investigate everything into that level of detail.
|
| Next time, try having an unobtrusive link to a general website,
| without insinuating that it's a page where you pay.
| rpdillon wrote:
| Interesting you raise this! It's not technically FOSS as far as
| I can tell, but it is on f-droid.
|
| CC-BY-SA is a very poor choice for software IMHO...too many
| ambiguities.
|
| https://github.com/agateau/pixelwheels/blob/master/LICENSE.C...
| agateau wrote:
| CC-BY-SA is only for assets: code is GPL3 and Apache 2, see
| https://github.com/agateau/pixelwheels/#license
| rpdillon wrote:
| Excellent! I clicked through using GitHub's "License"
| link...I should have dug a bit deeper. Thanks for
| clarifying!
| Jan454 wrote:
| I don't understand why Google (and Apple) at all are allowed to
| deny apps on their own. This is self-administered justice! They
| are monopols. If they say "there are alternatives, just go to
| Apple/Google/China/F-Droid" that's just a farce that should be
| punished hard.
| valuearb wrote:
| I agree. Apple and Google should be forced to use their
| resources to distribute apps for any developer under any terms
| the developer wants.
| newbie578 wrote:
| Oh what a burden it is to host APKs of 10 MB for people to
| download and use..
|
| Let's stop the pretense that Google and Apple are doing us a
| big favor with hosting our apks for download. They are not
| paying for my cloud storage or cloud functions which my users
| actually use, but me personally. The only role Apple and
| Google have is to be the troll to take the toll to "allow" me
| to put a link and download my app from the stores.
|
| I would love to just put the same APK on my website and have
| people install it directly.
| valuearb wrote:
| Unlimited free downloads is not an inconsequential benefit.
| Imagine if Spotify tried to host their downloads on a
| SquareSpace account, how many microseconds would it be
| before that account was banned. Even a 10 Mb APK isn't
| cheap to host when you have millions of monthly downloads.
|
| And then you can just ignore all the ancillary services
| that add value to being on an App Store, such as app
| review, marketing promotion, international market access,
| etc, etc.
|
| It's as if you somehow think all those services appear out
| of the air instead of requiring thousands of expensive
| employees to design, build, test, and maintain.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| That's not the problem with Google, as there are other methods
| of distributing apps for Android. But with Apple it's a
| different story.
|
| Also AFAIK Android's browser is more advanced than Apple's one,
| so you can create web applications with more capabilities for
| Android compared to iOS. But web applications do not seem very
| popular for some reason I don't understand.
| seaman1921 wrote:
| >I don't understand
|
| put that on a tshirt
| snthd wrote:
| Thanks for the game :-)
| agateau wrote:
| You're welcome! :)
| avereveard wrote:
| well yeah breach of contract is breach of contract no matter how
| draconian the contract is. you agreed to it, because you wanted
| the google play store eyeballs, then decided it was not enough,
| and tried to sidestep their share for the eyeball providing
| services.
|
| and that makes _you_ the greedy one in the relationship.
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