Google Will Let European Developers Use Their Own Billing Systems (theverge.com) 19
Google will start allowing the developers of non-gaming apps in the European Economic Area (EEA) to offer alternate payment systems. In a blog post, Google outlines its plans to comply with the Digital Markets Act (or DMA), a piece of legislation aimed at regulating big tech. From a report: The DMA passed through the European Parliament earlier this month, but it isn't expected to go into force until spring 2023. But Google is rolling out the changes ahead of time to make sure that its plans "serve the needs" of users.
The legislation requires "gatekeepers," or companies with a market capitalization of $75.8 billion or over, to follow a set of rules meant to promote competition among digital platforms. Failing to comply could lead to fines of up to 10 percent of a firm's global revenue or 20 percent in case of repeat offenses. Android developers who choose to use an alternate payment processor will still have to pay Google a service fee for each transaction on the first $1 million they make within one year. However, Google says it will reduce this fee by 3 percent, meaning the company will take a 12 percent or lower cut from every transaction. If developers make more than $1 million in one year, Google will charge developers a 27 percent fee on transactions (3 percent less than the standard 30 percent).
The legislation requires "gatekeepers," or companies with a market capitalization of $75.8 billion or over, to follow a set of rules meant to promote competition among digital platforms. Failing to comply could lead to fines of up to 10 percent of a firm's global revenue or 20 percent in case of repeat offenses. Android developers who choose to use an alternate payment processor will still have to pay Google a service fee for each transaction on the first $1 million they make within one year. However, Google says it will reduce this fee by 3 percent, meaning the company will take a 12 percent or lower cut from every transaction. If developers make more than $1 million in one year, Google will charge developers a 27 percent fee on transactions (3 percent less than the standard 30 percent).
Lovely (Score:4, Insightful)
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And to do some seriously half-assed diligence, because malware has been delivered by the Play Store before, and it will happen again.
On the other hand, at least you don't actually have to load anything from the Play Store. You can sideload. In Android 12 you can grant a third party app store permission to silently upgrade apps in the background; In earlier versions this requires root and an Xposed module, but app stores still function and only require a bit more user interaction. I realize that most users w
Re: Lovely (Score:2)
To be fair, lower level transaction processors charge a full 8 cents plus interchange rate! I mean, obviously a tranaction with a few dozen bytes of data is worth 8 cents, right? (/sarcasm) (You'll only get this sort of merchant rate if you push a few million annually.)
and are dating apps at 0% cut like some other stuf (Score:2)
and are dating apps at 0% cut like some other stuff?
Some math (Score:4, Insightful)
So lets do some math, they get $270,000 out of the first $1,000,000 and then they believe they are "friendly" by reducing that to only needing another $120,000 off the next million? So out of basically $2,000,000 they will take $490,000 for basically being a middle-man-sucking gatekeeper.
Usually this won't help me or my company but rather instead force us to stay on our toes by deprecating all the API's we use, forcing us to recompile to use new permission models that we don't even care about, forcing us to disclose more code to review processes we don't want to follow, and essentially many other negatives.
I would totally 100% distribute my own application unless they weren't a bunch of profiteering gluttons.
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Ugh spotted the typo after submitting but you get the idea :)
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forcing us to recompile to use new permission models that we don't even care about,
Yeah but there are a lot of a-hole companies out there and although you don't like the gatekeeper, some (not all) of the gatekeeping is reasonable and necessary.
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Serious question, have you considered third party app stores? (e.g. Amazon, Aptoide) Do they have policies as problematic as Google's?
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I was interested on the technical side. Parent poster says on the Play store you get extra work due to frequent API changes and requests to recompile. If the alternative app stores require less work or zero work, whatever revenue you can get is still better than the 0% that the parent poster currently gets by not publishing the app at all.
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To be fair, antitrust regulations are pretty much the definition of "protecting the free market".
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> Governments can't manage economies.
They literally do that for the entire planet.
> So glad the UK left this nonsense.
The nonsense of breaking up monopolistic practices?!
I'm in Canada, so I have no dog in the brexit hunt. I for one am EXTREMELY happy the EU is doing this, because it means they'll go after Apple too, and the era of the walled garden will be a short one. The US doesn't care as long as it's MOAR MONEYZ!
Is this really progress? (Score:2)
So, AFTER I download the app from Google, I use my phone, my internet, by bank, a 3rd party payment processor (not Google) to pay for some app thing and Google still gets a 27% cut?
Also, the fee structure seems a bit like a backward economy of scale. The more the developer makes (over $1M) the higher the fee, while the less they make the lower the fee.
To me it seems we have a long way to go to break these artificial and stifling OS/app store fee structures.
My car analogy...
Imagine if the car you bought fro
Wrong title (Score:2)
The reality is they were forced to do this and any implementation in advance is simply to avoid rather harsh penalties if they fail to make the deadline.
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But well, and kind of progress is progress nonetheless, I suppose.
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Agreed, on both counts. BTW, love your .sig!
Progressive tax... (Score:2)
.. is a policy that develops under pressure of constituency paying said tax. What Google is now saying "Look, guys, we're basically your government now.". Can you sideload an apk from developer's web site? Absolutely. Can you sidestep real world government taxes via elaborate effort? You bet on it (see how "wealth management" in Monaco works).
The dark pattern set up by both in there is such that avoiding paying taxes is beyond the skill of average Joe Schmoe, and that's what counts. Not some "but achktually