Google Found To Unfairly Block Rival Payments on India Store

Google's billing system for app developers is "unfair and discriminatory," India's antitrust regulator said in the initial findings of an extensive investigation, paving the way for potential penalties in future. From a report: The Competition Commission of India found Google discriminated against developers in its Play store billing policy, according to documents seen by Bloomberg News. The findings come after a months-long investigation triggered by protests from developers, who've complained the U.S. internet giant charges an unfairly high fee in return for using Android app stores and its proprietary payments service.

Alphabet, Google's parent, and Apple have come under pressure from regulators around the world who accuse the twin mobile giants of forcing developers to use their payment systems, then taking an outsized cut of revenue. In South Korea, Google was forced to provide an alternative billing system after regulatory action. In that market, Google said it was reducing app makers' fees by 4%. "Google is imposing unfair and discriminatory conditions in violation" of regulations, the Indian agency said in its preliminary report dated March 14.

if they made the fee like 5% then people will not

[Joe_Dragon]

if they made the fee like 5% then people will not have an issue but 15%-30% (in app sales that are not hosted on the app store) + dev fees.

Now dev fees + 15%-30% of the up front app price is ok.

No more free app services?

[misnohmer]

Where this seems to be heading is that app stores will no longer offer any free (to developers) app hosting/services, since their current business model amortizes serving all the free apps by charging the successful ones. So if you have an app and want Apple or Google stores to host is for free, you will have to pay monthly hosting fee, and a per download fee. Payment processing will be available but competition will be allowed there, so the fees will drop. Of course with per download fees, updates/patches

or up the dev fee for free apps. apple $300-500

[Joe_Dragon]

or up the dev fee for free apps. apple can go to $300-500 an year for free apps.

Opportunity

[tanmoyr]

India is seeing EU making billions from big corps as fines, why not do the same? As long the profit is more than the fine, companies will stay. The only people losing in this is Americans who don't want to touch the corporations and tax/fine them.

Re:

[Canberra1]

Unfair means unfair. Forced hand or monopoly power on payment originating in host countries is also unfair. Competition is good, unless you are abusing market dominance. Now it has been determined - what is India actually going to do about it?

Re: Opportunity

[junglee_iitk]

You guys have 0 clue about India. India has a payment system that is supposed to be like email address based on phone number, which Google openly and uniquely obfuscates in order to promote its google-pay system. We all know how Russia was attacked by exploiting it's weakness of not having an indigenous payment system. No country should will voluntarily submit to that kind of "integration".