Comment by wccrawford
11 hours ago
15% is a lot. I'm not trying to say it isn't.
And they're annoying and often screw up the review process.
Google is always going to make money off any work they do. That's just business. They're not going to put more money towards better reviews without taking more money. And without the reviews, even as crappy as they are, a lot of really crappy software would be on the store. And a lot more would be actively malicious
And you were making like 7x as much as they were taking. Without them, you would even get noticed and you'd have made nothing.
We know this because almost nobody installs FDroid, and the other stores like Samsung make basically nothing for developers, even though they're preinstalled on so many devices.
The app store is full of crappy and malicious software though. Why pay them for something they aren't doing anyway?
so how much do you think they should take?
what is "fair" in your opinion?
For the services they currently provide, zero. They provide negative value. If they shut down the play store that will be good.
It's not just business - it's basically a monopoly. Enough to extract rent while providing a minimal service.
Imagine if all streets were owned by two large companies who charged you enough to use them that you'd be paying as much in fees as you are in paying for gas. People would still use cars. The streets could be in horrible condition, the two companies would be making an insane amount of profit, but there would still be people out there saying that if it wasn't for those companies we wouldn't be getting anywhere and it's just business.
It's literally not. And your analogy is bad, because it describes inelastic demand, and not the platform effect.
How is the Play Store not a monopoly? It has been found such by multiple judges in multiple jurisdictions for a reason.
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To me that's semantics.
If I had an app, I'd have to pay Apple whatever they want to charge in order to get access to one part of all mobile phone users and Google whatever they want to charge in order to get access to the other.
Maybe calling that a monopoly wouldn't be good enough in an economics paper, but I don't see much of a practical difference. I get to accept the price or not do business.
And to set off some more bots: We desperately need regulation in this space.
> And you were making like 7x as much as they were taking. Without them, you would even get noticed and you'd have made nothing.
Jesus Christ you can always count on HN for the most sycophantic, bootlicking comments sucking up to big tech imaginable.
It's an absolutely fair argument and it just doesn't show great intelligence to go straight to namecalling rather than bringing up counter arguments.
I do believe that while Google and Apple are evil gatekeepers they also made it easier for non-tech people to install their own app without always calling their kids or neighbours. That's already a big win.
There is nothing about finding and installing apps that required Google/Apple app stores to make it easier and/or safer.
The way they are doing it is merely the way they are doing it, not the only way it could be done.
So no it was not a win at all and does not justify the method or the various forms of cost & overhead. Not just money but freedom, privacy, agency, discrimination, censoship, algorithm thumb on scale, support, etc.
It is not a win that we've given up our freedom and privacy to Google, Apple, Steam, etc. because people refused to learn how to click setup.exe.
There’s Huawei App Gallery but it is to the West a product of a commie so it needed to be suppressed and snuffed.
No, it's because Huawei assists the CCP in conducting systemic espionage on the West.