Google Play To Pilot Third-Party Billing in New Markets Including US (techcrunch.com) 14
Google today announced it's expanding its user choice billing pilot, which allows Android app developers to use other payment systems besides Google's own. The program will now become available to new markets, including the U.S., Brazil and South Africa, and Bumble will now join Spotify as one of the pilot testers. From a report: Google additionally announced Spotify will now begin rolling out its implementation of the program starting this week. The company had first announced its intention to launch a third-party billing option back in March of this year, with Spotify as the initial tester. Since then, the program has steadily expanded. Last month, for example, Google invited other non-game developers to apply for the user choice billing program in select markets, including India, Australia, Indonesia, Japan and the European Economic Area (EEA). The company also introduced a similar policy for developers in the EEA region in July, but the new guidelines raised the commission discount from 3% to 4% for developers who opted in. With today's expansion, user choice billing will be made available to 35 countries worldwide. Google says it's been working with Spotify to help develop the experience and now the streaming music service will begin to put the new features into action in supported markets. The experience could still change over time, Google warned, as this is still the early days of the pilot test.
Apple Fanboys, crank up the excuse generator (Score:3)
Google is officially more developer and customer friendly than Apple now, when it comes to app stores.
I look forward to being able to buy content directly in apps soon, where iPhone users will still have to dick around with doing the purchase in a browser, then sync it into the app they actually want to use.
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That has always been the case. Google Play store doesn't review apps or anything, unlike the App Store which always has.
Heck, the Play Store (in the Marketplace days) in the beginning allowed all sorts o
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Offtopic and not to start a flame war but ever see what they did to Parler? [cnn.com]
Wait, there's more. This is also supposedly happening [tiktok.com] based on something about Ye or Kanye West or what he did and didn't say. If this is true, everybody with personal files on GDrive should get them off ASAP.
As close to the ministry of truth as you can get.
Don't trust big tech to protect nor defend your constitutional freedoms.
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I'm going to assume you meant to reply to someone else, because nothing you said has anything to do with what I said. Or, even the article.
We're talking about in-app purchases, and publishers that aren't giving Apple (or Google) 30% for payment processing.
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To be perfectly honest, I would rather Google had held their ground on this front. While this might eventually add pressure on Apple to do likewise, what I would far *rather* see Apple do is simply loosen the requirements that applications must only be installed via the app store, and have a (by default turned off) switch that is however deeply nested in the settings that Apple wishes to put it which would permit the side-loading of apps by non-developers, so that end users can install the applications
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Sideloading would be a nice thing to have, which there is very little legitimate argument against except that Apple really likes money.
However, removing the mandated extortion-priced payment processing is still a very good thing for everyone except Apple. This will make apps and services more useable everywhere except iOS until Apple follows suit, which is why it's a pretty good move on Google's part to hold up a halo over their head and let out a muffled snicker into their other hand, covering their big g
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Allowing side-loading makes disallowing mandated payment processing on apps from the official app store largely irrelevant, since people could distribute applications by other means and use whatever method of transaction processing was convenient for them.
Allowing other payment methods from apps purchased from the app store only cuts away one of the advantages of side-loading might offer, and while it might be the most significant, it's far from the only one.
Among the best examples I can think of are f
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I suspect if Apple were to do sideloading, it would be in the most inconvenient way possible.
Like you can turn it on, but then it would wipe your phone and then put it in a sideload mode where some things like iCloud and such won't work fully. If you're lucky, the App Store might work but only for apps that declare they can run on a sideload capable phone (so things like banking apps and other things requiring security won't work).
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Developers can already sideload to an iOS device if they have a Mac and run XCode, so allowing the end user to do so would not significantly change things in that regard.
Unless you jailbreak the phone, an app developed for iOS can't read or affect the data or operation of any other app on the phone, so nothing would need to actually change if Apple decided to allow it.
The upshot of it is that Apple could keep whatever restrictions they wanted on apps available from the app store. It would likely alway
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Yep. This more than makes up for the half-assed set of compromises and shitty choices that is Android.
"Android fanboys, crank up the excuse generator"
See what I did there? I don't actually believe that about Android. Or do I? Maybe I do... maybe I don't... but jackass labeling needs no honest intent.
An Alt. payment mechanism a day keeps the EU away. (Score:2)
They already are doing this in the EMEA, good for them to expand the program and still get their cut of course.
EASA LEARJET 45 LINE TRAINER (Score:1)