Comment by rkangel
10 hours ago
The problem is that it ISN'T a fee for services as it should be. Their platform power means that they can levy a tax, and they don't feel the need to do anything on exchange for that.
10 hours ago
The problem is that it ISN'T a fee for services as it should be. Their platform power means that they can levy a tax, and they don't feel the need to do anything on exchange for that.
Yep, I'd hypothetically economically gladly build an alternative app store charging "only" 5% on app revenue. The blocker would be that Google has a hold on what store is installed by default on Android. Apple even more so. This is hardly a fair market.
There are other app stores on Android, e.g. OEM ones like the Galaxy store. The latter doesn't really compete on price though - 20% cut of one time payments and 15% of subscriptions. I think the Android app stores anchor to the iOS app store prices to piggy back on Apple's monopoly power - devs are used to having to pay Apple that much, so they will not resist if you charge the same.
All of the alternative stores are systematically disadvantaged time and time again due to Google's and Apple's near-absokute control over their respective OS. They are as anti-competitive as they are allowed to be. And the US seems incapable or unwilling to rein them in.
> they will not resist if you charge the same.
Sure, but they also won't generally bother if the fees are the same as the installed-on-every-device Play Store
That would work because someone else "Google" is doing all the development of Android etc etc. Of course you can create a parasitic service for less.
Google is not developing Android for the IAP fees, they're doing it to sell phones loaded with their search, advertising, browser and services. They take hundreds of billions in revenue annually from this, they are being paid several times over for that work even if they get no IAP fees.
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Would it be OK for Microsoft to prevent Steam from running on Windows because Valve doesn't contribute enough to funding the Experiences and Devices org? I've never really understood why mobile platforms should be different from how we think about desktop ones.
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Parasitic? Writing software for folks' devices and selling it isn't parasitic...it's just participating in the market. Weird that the overton window has moved so far that anything not built by the trillion-dollar duopoly is considered some kind of free-rider.
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theres nothing parasitic about a competing app store.
it is parasitic to try and prohibit competing app stores and then leverage your monopoly by charging monopoly prices.
everything google is trying to do to discourage graphene, newpipe, competing app stores, etc. is parasitic and it's right that they are being fined by the EU for this behavior.
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It is rent extraction which always feels like bullshit because it is. Competition is supposed to be the counterbalancing force but it barely exists here.
It doesn't exist because it can't:
The basic services Google provides can effectively only be consumed by humans individually, creating an inevitable bottleneck.
Such bottlenecks impede interchangeability of goods, as you can't reasonably entertain multiple suppliers simultaneously there. And that means, you cannot have a free market, because you can't really have meaningful competition.
Google has captured services that really are public utilities. Them being "new" doesn't play a role.