It's not costing Google anything, and they're not losing money on this either. It's revenue that they might have expected to earn, which they're now not going to be earning.
The same "lose" language is often used when discussing tax cuts or tax breaks ("lost tax revenue"). I wonder whether those journalists misunderstand economics that much, or if it's done on purpose.
edit: This is a question folks, I'm not sure why you're down voting a question.. ya'll are touchy as hell lol.
To put it differently, since I think my first attempt just confused you all in mass:
If Google were to lower it's take from 30% to 15% (fake numbers), for everyone, so that Epic would use their business - would that gain them money or lose them money?
It's a question, yikes ya'll.
I wouldn't say it's a high percentage, but it's not insignificant.
I'd count that as a lost sale.
But I do agree that this is a different situation. This is just a high profile application that has decided to forgo something completely optional.
It's a lost sale, but that's still not a cost. It's just money they never got. If it had actually cost them, then I'd expect it would take away money they previously had, like I say lunch costs me $15 because after the transaction I'm down $15 (but up a lunch).
At best, it's akin to opportunity cost.
I hope you're not referring to me. I never once said anything about Google losing money. I merely asked the question, would they gain or lose given a scenario.
I didn't state anything.
In other words, the claim is that Google is "losing" money by their choices which cause Fortnite to choose to not use them. But it's those same choices which make Google money.
So if Google were to, for example, take less of a cut - they might get Fortnite onto their system. But how much would they loose from all the other companies currently using Google at the current rate?
I made the question that, if Google were to make a pricing change to support Epic, would it gain them money? Or lose money due to other companies also giving less (since hypothetically that's what Epic wants, less cut taken by Google).
Solution to what?
People are sitting here being pedantic about "lost" revenue, even though I said nothing about that. My point however, is that assuming Google would want Epic's business (which seems reasonable), would they gain or lose money by changing their pricing structure to fit something Epic would put up with.
Ie, if they reduced Google's take from 30% to 15% (fake numbers), would they gain or lose money? It's a hypothetical question, one which I guess I should edit since clearly everyone is arguing about random shit lol.
I can't see any reason a company with an existing property with Fortnite's visibility would be willing to pay much of anything for App Store placement other than access to a pure walled garden like iOS.
Not sure you can write a policy that fits that kind of product and most of what actually gets delivered vis the Appstore, and which doesn't have the overhead of a human-in-the-loop on pricing decisions.
Android freely allows you to circumvent the Play Store via manual installation or a third-party app store, which is an advantage in terms of user choice but less secure than the iOS walled garden. Google decide what can go on the Play Store, but they don't control what users can install. I personally prefer the Android approach, but there are merits to both.
> In other words, the claim is that Google is "losing" money by their choices which cause Fortnite to choose to not use them. But it's those same choices which make Google money.
> So if Google were to, for example, take less of a cut - they might get Fortnite onto their system. But how much would they loose from all the other companies currently using Google at the current rate?
I'm not sure what your point is, so I can only assume you're arguing what you thought I meant. My point was simple a question, hypothetically if Google were to chance it's pricing scheme to something that would fit Epic, would it be a net gain or a loss to them?
I'm unsure how anything in your post applies to my question.
One app is not going to change Google's approach to the Play Store, even a multi-million dollar app. The vast majority of apps don't have the marketing power to profitably circumvent the Play Store, so cutting fees across the board would be a huge net loss for Google. Offering special discounts on the Play Store fee is a very slippery slope - if you offer it to anyone, everyone is going to start demanding it. It would undermine the value proposition of the Play Store and create a two-tier system, with one rule for blockbuster apps and one rule for everyone else.
App developers begrudgingly pay the Play Store tax because it's preferable to the alternatives. They'd very much prefer to get all the benefits of the Play Store at lower cost, but Google has absolutely no reason to sell their service at less than the market rate. One outlier does not change that equation.
In reality it's more "this is costing us profit, because, with few exceptions, we get to skim the cream off of unspent premiums", which sure, capitalism, but they frame it from a position of "(un)fairness", as if they had some implicit entitlement to such.