Comment by lemagedurage
11 hours ago
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.
It's sad that Google has absolutely no foresight.
The speed of government is slow, incredibly slow. It's measured in election cycles. It takes government eight, twelve years to simply turn around and notice. But once it does, it's a juggernaut.
Nothing can stop it. Nothing can avert it. Nothing can prevent it. And as everybody from Facebook to Microsoft knows, once it starts moving, you're screwed.
In the US, the oil companies thought they were too big. Then the telco companies thought they were too big. What really happens is eventually people just get pissed off, and then it's too late.
Google is fast approaching that. They almost had chrome and other things ripped away from them, and now they've got requirements to have alternate play stores. If they don't turn course, and turn course blazingly fast, they're going to have their entire empire wrenched away from them.
Oh well.
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Google is funding Android fully from Play Store, since previous CFO the ad revenue isn't shared between parts.
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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.
It's not weird - you've just completely misunderstood the situation. This is about the OS, which the software in question (the alternate app store) relies on, but generates no revenue for. The devices are still being sold, because their manufacturers are allowed to make money, the alternate store is allowed to make money. Only the OS maker will make no money, because that would be bad.
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That trillion dollar duopoly is probably the worst case of free riders. It’s an enabler/vehicle for all the other billion dollar free riders to steal from the population.
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.
Only Apple is. Android supports alternate app stores, and has done since 2008. Samsung's app store for Android has been running since 2009.
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.
> theres nothing parasitic about a competing app store.
I think a more honest way to say this might be: Android OS development is massively funded by Google, and the Play Store feeds into this hugely. No other store does this, so it shouldn't be surprising that they can charge a lower fee. They're just doing the easy bit.