Google requiring Android apps on Play store to use its billing system next year
9to5google.com
9to5google.com
[1] https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/09/listening-...
If they really do follow through with reasonable support for other app stores, that will be a good thing.
It will better, but it’s hardly “good”. It would still mean that Google gets to decide exactly which rights and protections their competitors should have on Android.
It should be the other way around: government regulators (to protect the interests of consumers and the health of the free market) should decide how much power Google has over its competitors.
I'm not sure government regulation needs to enter the picture unless courts decide there's an anti-trust issue, which open 3rd part app stores might make less likely. For Android, at least. Good still would face anti trust problems in other areas.
That's not true. They still have the power to restrict a third party store whenever they want without any immediate repercussions.
Let's say they remove all of the scary popups that Android shows when you try to install apps outside of Google Play right now. That would be a big win for competitors. But then any time in the future, Google can decide to slowly bring back those popups under the guise of "protecting users" or some other FUD.
The problem is that we might not have a company like Epic in the future, which is very well funded, willing, and able to fight them in court. When Google starts slowly clawing back control, we'll see some people complain about it on the usual channels, but it's likely nothing will happen.
That's true even today - you can install whatever the hell you want on an Android device by merely toggling a button. You can even root it and go further - much easier for Pixels - sure some apps will refuse to work on rooted devices but that's hardly Google's fault.
What are you trying to demand here - complete anarchy like PCs? I am not sure that's a good thing.
I can because I'm a computer geek. The majority of the population wouldn't know how to or care to learn how to go through the trouble of enabling "unknown sources" and ignoring all the scary malware warnings. Without that population, the prospect of running a commercial third-party store is hopeless.
> complete anarchy like PCs?
What anarchy? Software distribution on PC is great because users can, and regularly do, go straight to the vendor's website to buy their software. There is no middle-man.
From the security side, since Android and iOS have had sandboxing built in from day one, the risk of downloading software from a random website is much lower than it is on Windows. It's not zero, but it is lower, and it's not that much riskier than downloading a random app on Google Play (which has always been filled with malware).
But lets say it's still too risky for some reason. Fine. That's what anti-virus software is for.
I am not sure that's a good thing for majority of the population. Sandboxing does nothing if you download untrusted apps and give them permission to send SMS or setup a VPN or do whole lot of damage. If you aren't a geek you are saying ok to anything any app asks.
Android actually optionally, with rightful warnings allows PC like anarchy for geeks - if you are arguing that should be the default I am not sure many people will agree with that.
People already say ok to anything any app asks on Google Play. That isn't a problem unique to competing app stores, it's a problem with Android's permissions UI/UX. Just look at any non-tech-savvy Android user's phone to see that "anarchy" is already the status quo.
> if you are arguing that should be the default I am not sure many people will agree with that.
The only arguments I've heard against it have been FUD (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty,_and_doubt)
But Google can do any thing right? They could push an update that plays Matchbox Twenty on full blast every night at 2am.
What are you suggesting they do, and doesn't you argument apply to every software publisher?
Sure, but they are not incentivized to do that. Forcing out competitors is something they're directly incentivized to do because it makes them more money. You can't trust a company not to do what a company exists to do.
The problem is that Google (and Apple) are way too big and powerful, and their pursuit for higher profits is stifling competition, innovation, and hurting the economy.
> doesn't you argument apply to every software publisher?
Not every publisher is immune to market forces the way Google and Apple are. If Spotify started blasting Matchbox Twenty on full blast every night at 2am, they'd go out of business overnight. If Google did it, people would just put their phones in another room when they go to bed.
Then why even go through the motions of making life easier for app stores right now? Because of antitrust? I guess I'm just not sure why that would change later. Google will still be an antitrust target 5 years from now.
In an ideal world, what would you like Google to do here?
We can only speculate. Maybe it's a reaction to the legal issues they're facing right now, both from the DOJ investigation and the Epic lawsuit? Or maybe it's a more cynical plan to kill competitors by letting them think it's smart to invest in a competing store now, only to claw back control in the future and force them to lose customers and go out of business?
Maybe the upcoming changes don't actually make life significantly easier for third-party app stores (AFAIK they haven't shown what the changes actually are), and this is just a BS move to make them look better in the short term.
> In an ideal world, what would you like Google to do here?
Google? Nothing. In an ideal world, tech giants wouldn't be allowed to self-regulate anymore. Google could do whatever they want, but sane and reasonable regulations would keep them in check.
I may be naive, but Google's move seems like evidence that the regulations are keeping them in check to some extent.
note that we still don't really know what exactly it is they're doing, since the blog post was vague on specifics. It could literally be nothing.
You aren't just making an argument against google, your line if thinking would vilainize all platforms. At the same time that you're implying that no platform should be allowed to dictate what gets on the platform. I fundamentally disagree. As-is, I think Android has exposure to anti-trust accusations. But an open system of allowing 3rd party app stores nullifies that. Of course they'll still have control, but the measure of abusing power isn't that you have it, it's how you use it. And Google might be smart enough to realize that their use of power until now has brought too much anti-trust scrutiny, and that needs to change. Or maybe they'll screw it up, but you seem to automatically believe whatever they do will be bad. That is a narrow view that assumes Google doesn't understand the dangerous position it's in right now.
That's not what I'm pointing out or focusing on.
> you're implying that no platform should be allowed to dictate what gets on the platform
I never said or implied that.
> but you seem to automatically believe whatever they do will be bad
I don't believe that, and have not said anything to suggest that I do.
The assumptions you are making about me or my argument to arrive at these conclusions seem to be inaccurate. I would be happy to continue this discussion, as long as you ask me to clarify something rather than attempt to arrive at your own conclusions, potentially derailing the whole conversation.
Proving a "trust" is a pretty arcane affair... and fairly tangential to actual monopoly issues.
In any case, available and viable are two different things. I doubt that they'd intentionally make them viable.
ndroid 9 released more than 2 years ago and is now and 52% of users are now on 9 or later whereas more like 80% are at least on 7 which was released 4 years ago.
Pragmatically if I was google I would SAY I am making it easier for users to do business with someone else while making it as daunting as possible to actually do so in order to pressure vendors to at best offer both their wares for sale on both stores if they want to actually have customers.
Your play store policy can then forbid say offering your goods for sale at a lower price elsewhere or advertising the existence of an alternative version in app on the play store version.
As long as you keep it available on the play store most users will check their first and you can keep the revenue in house without strictly forbidding competition.
For example, if we're talking about Fortnite, usage of the latest version is certainly higher than the general population. Older versions of Android are mostly used on cheaper devices, or users who seldomly upgrade their phone, and don't care that much about installing applications.
[1]https://gitlab.com/fdroid/privileged-extension/#how-do-i-ins...
"Google requiring Android apps on the Play Store"
Requiring all android apps (eg: from third party app stores, built in apps shipped with phones or from vendors) as implied by the HN title would be a huge leap and have a lot of implications. But this is not that. I'm very surprised though by this statement from their post about it:
> Less than 3% of developers with apps on Play sold digital goods over the last 12 months
That seems astonishingly low - while I understand the Play Store is very ad driven, I had thought IAP was still a decent component of monetization. From this it sounds like the Play Store is a bit of an advertising wasteland ... or am I misunderstanding?
Instead of play store, "Default app store" to cover what ever comes with chinese phones.
Or, US and Europe, what percentage...?
But just take stock of your surroundings. Think of everyone you know, and think who of them sideload apps on a regular basis. Now correct for the tech-affinity of your social surroundings (probably high if you hang out on HN...)
For me, only the most hard-core of my friends sideload at all. Everyone else goes with stock apps. So sideloading should be in the regime of "count the zeros before the first non-zero mantissa digit."
Don't confuse the US experience for the global one.
> That seems astonishingly low [...]
That depends. I would not be surprised if there were an order of magnitude more "developers with apps on the Play Store" than on the iOS store, simply because of the lower barrier to entry ($$ and lock in patterns pushed by Apple makes it harder to get started on iOS). So would that mean 3% is actually astonishingly high?
That sounds like a cherry-picked number to downplay the change but:
1) That's 90,000 apps
2) The amount of revenue those apps (like Spotify and Netflix) generate is probably in the 10s or 100s of millions
I'd bet that some of the largest revenue apps are the ones using their own billing -- the devs who make low-revenue apps probably don't want to spend the time or money to set all that up.
So if you have a formula how the e.g. train service gets money from a selling tickets app for iOS in a country with zero iPhone presence, you have our attention.
https://deviceatlas.com/sites/deviceatlas.com/files/images/m...
Just like authentication, there will be abstraction libraries that take care of it soon enough, or somebody like stripe will build a SDK and do some consolidated billing management for you.
Want to prorate upgrades? Well google play doesn't offer that. Want to allow switching from monthly to annually? Does Apple offer that? Want to issue a partial refund? Want to credit an account? Etc.
It goes further, a customer emails and asks "how do I cancel?". Instead of having easy instructions for them, it's now a switch block for all the different IAP solutions. If that customer forgets how they signed up, now they need to dig through all the IAP steps for cancelling.
And it's not just Google Play and Apple. There's web, Windows store, amazon app store, android, ios, chrome payments (deprecated), something for linux, etc.
While revenuecat seems decent for Google/Apple, it doesn't touch any of the others.
I'm not saying it's not possible. All I'm saying is it's a whole lot of extra work just to allow the largest companies in the world to scalp 30% from an indie dev, and force a poor experience down users throats.
Abstractions are not excuse for the underlying payment grab both the vendors are forcing on the devs. Just saying such problems and abstractions are not new and indie devs will get some relief with an abstraction
The important part of this discussion is not on the user side. Yeah they can sideload but really they won't do that because of IAP, of all things.
The important part of this discussion is on the developer side. Going through Google will mean they get to shape what apps developers can even economically build without falling back to sideloading (which just won't happen, see above) and we already see how "great" that in the iOS ecosystem.
Of course, you are in camp "IAP means clear and central subscription management, it's great for me!" then you might not care or even welcome this.
I happen to be in camp "What is good for the user should not be contingent on the business model allowing for a 30% cut going to google." There are and will be products/services users want, but not at 1.30 times the price, and those will simply become impossible now.
On the other hand... Let's just watch Rome burn and then see what we do with the ashes?
I imagine there are a ton of garbage apps that were created automatically for spam, seo, whatever reasons.
I've done it too.
I think Android App development culture is extremely different than iOS Development.
Then again I guess you can interpret basically any fact in your favor if you prefer a certain interpretation.
edit: Also I might add that Google is almost certainly being disingenuous. They say that only 3% don't use the system say that includes "Netflix, Spotify, and other big services". It seems pretty obvious that it's not 3% of revenue. This explains that Google is actually doing this for money and simply lying about their intentions.
It’s not lying to promote other perspectives or positives - that’s called marketing.
It can only affect the apps that users don't know they need.
There's no limit to interest to Netflix, Stranger Things won't watch itself.
But for all those that might mistakenly look for it in the Play Store, you can have a stub app there that just redirects them (opens a browser page) to where to get the real, outside the store app,
* you don’t need Google to sign every app. You can allow external apks and even keep Play monitoring for malicious apps.
* you can add another App Store.
* the fact you can say a user there’s another purchase way and it is relevant information.
Android feels like a democratic country vs Apple’s meritocracy.
The past few years I’ve switched back to Apple. But I still miss the ability to just compile something and run it without it being expired after a week (Apple’s free developer certs expires after a week)
They've updated the rules. You will need to sign every app on Play Store with the certificate provided by Google. Just like on App Store.
You MUST register a namespace (com.mycompany.MyApp) and get a it a certificate from them.
For paid - that's 1YR for your app to run. For free - that's 1week for the cert.
There's no way running YOUR code on YOUR device without it being signed by Apple (or jailbreaking).
>“After 18 months of operating Fortnite on Android outside of the Google Play Store, we’ve come to a basic realization,” reads Epic’s statement. “Google puts software downloadable outside of Google Play at a disadvantage, through technical and business measures such as scary, repetitive security pop-ups for downloaded and updated software, restrictive manufacturer and carrier agreements and dealings, Google public relations characterizing third party software sources as malware, and new efforts such as Google Play Protect to outright block software obtained outside the Google Play store.”
https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/21/21229943/epic-games-fortn...
Then Epic attempted to cut deals with device makers to preinstall their App Store on devices.
>Epic claims that Google forced phone manufacturer OnePlus to break off a deal that would have seen a special Fortnite launcher preinstalled on OnePlus phones — and demanded that another Android phonemaker, LG, abandon any plans to do the same.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/13/21368395/fortnite-epic-ga...
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/09/listening-...
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/09/listening-...
(They quoted it twice yet didn’t link to it - what’s up with that?)
> Less than 3% of developers with apps on Play sold digital goods over the last 12 months, and of this 3%, the vast majority (nearly 97%) already use Google Play's billing.
The only way I see to read that is: 97% of 3% already comply, and 3% of 3% don't comply.
They've been around for over a decade in various incarnations and they are always clunky, poorly designed and developed for the lowest common denominator.
And often what developers are vocal about wanting is anti-consumer e.g. most people like a single point for all subscriptions/payments.
And then they get into dispute with Google and get their account terminated as the result along with their only email etc etc. Thanks but no thanks. I do not know about most but personally I prefer freedom of choice.
While I am on the native side, what brings money home are cross platform projects, and for CRUD stuff mobile Web is just fine, provided one doesn't download a SPA over 3G to display static text.
Both have ensured that's the actual experience of using web app remain terrible on their platform.
The mobile market is not at all a competitive market and it's really starting to show.
This is not true at all - e.g. Samsung ships their own browser as default on all their devices.
Come on, not true at all ?
Admittedly Samsung might be able to ship with their browser as default. I don't remember what browser was the main one when I bought my last phone. They most definitely have to have Chrome installed (and probably as the system web view) like the rest of the Google apps if they want to ship with the Play Store.
I don't think it significantly impacts my main point.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/09/apple-vs-epic-hearing...
If we look at this plaintiff and industry, walled gardens have existed for decades, Nintendo has had a walled garden. Sony has had a walled garden. Microsoft has had a walled garden... In this particular industry, what Apple is doing is not much different... It's hard to ignore the economics of the industry, which is what [Epic is] asking me to do."
I know that the deep down answer is that many of the people in these discussions think gaming is frivolous. But my PS4 is objectively far, far more powerful than any phone I've ever had, and comes with a selection of applications beyond just games - a web browser, photo/video editor, music and video streaming, a social messaging system (and social network, via the third-party Twitch). And going by hardware alone, it would be capable of much more than that if only it wasn't so prohibitively expensive to develop for.
How is that so different from what the vast majority of people use their phones for? Yet people are far more up in arms about the $100 yearly fee for the Apple Developer Program than about the thousands of dollars ($2500 for a dev kit) it costs to even build and run a game on the PS4 (plus you have to be a registered company).
Why should an iPhone be treated as an open, general-purpose computing device if a PlayStation is not? Why should Apple be forced to make it one?
The two arguments I have seen seems pretty weak to me: they are not general-purpose computing device and that's how they make money. I think you debunk the former pretty well, and as for the latter they are not entitled to a specific business model.
Even then, I'd be okay with Sony offering an "unlocked" version of the PS4 that's blocked from accessing the PlayStation Network; modding offline, single-player games is not cheating in any real sense of the word, and then at least more hobbyists could develop and run things on it without committing to becoming capital-G Game Devs (or being game devs at all - there's plenty of space for regular apps as well).
At the very least, they should allow (easily) unlocking the bootloader and installing a different OS, even if it would mean that that particular console can never install Orbis OS (which funnily enough is based on FreeBSD) again. It frustrates me to no end that my PS4 will become effectively useless to me if I purchase a PS5, when it would make a perfectly good desktop with a wipe and a Linux install (some people have managed to hack this on older firmware).
That actually mirrors my stance on Apple - I have no problem with iOS as it exists, but I do have a problem with not having any other easy OS option on iDevices.
App stores are more like Zapier, where your customers can find you, but you have to follow Zapier’s rules because you’re using Zapier’s platform.
Our app is leveraging this "loophole" as we provide license keys for self hosting as part of purchasing the app. It's also a TWA and Google hasn't published ANY guidance on how to use a TWA with Google Play Billing. What are we supposed to do, get off Google Play?
So, yes, it will have an impact, but potentially not as great as it might seem.
Google play movies and tv - likewise, essential?
Google play music
Google Hangouts
The list goes on...
And you're telling me the manufacturer decided I can't rid myself of these and google are as suprised as I am about that? Really? I mean you can make the same argument with Apple. They're happy for you to install/uninstall whatever but the manufacturer did it their way.
The answer (as with most Mac-related things) is to disable System Integrity Protection. For some strange reason, most of the people who complain about the loss of their freedoms on macOS leave SIP enabled and I wonder why.
(The difference is that APK is part of the RO partition which cannot be modified so that's the part that can't be cleaned up.)
My current flow is: 1 tap purchase icon, 2 remember that I'm banned, 3 navigate to apps website and feel better about not losing the developer 30% of their revenue.
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/09/listening-...
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
Regulators won’t act on this until it’s decided that App Stores are public utilities. Which might happen, but also would be a bit of an overreaction.
Now Google has several different ways to respond:
- Accept that this will happen and try to generate revenues based on other services. These services may be for developers, publishers, or consumers.
- Charge higher rates, perhaps differentiating the rates based upon the amount of exposure an app receives.
- Find a means to charge publishers based upon the revenues generated by the app. Using their own billing system is likely the best way of doing this.
Each approach has its own benefits and drawbacks, but I would be hard pressed to call any of them a racket.
You can imagine Netflix paying commission on in-app sign ups and then emailing the customer to beg them to hand over a CC# in exchange for a free month or something.
Since Mobian is bringing Debian to phones, I am playing with the idea to try it.
How easy/hard is it nowadays to just go to a store, buy a nice phone, go home and put Mobian on it?
I am not talking about how nice the phone experience is. Just how easy/hard the switch to Mobian would be.
I'm fully aware that Mobian is brand new. But I would like to have a phone where I can play with it and watch it's progress.
I don't want to say impossible, because that's not quite true, but close to. Mobian runs pretty much a stock Linux kernel, and there are only two recent devices on the market designed to do that: the PinePhone and the Librem 5. The alternative is to use libhybris to run on top of an Android kernel (including all the proprietary drivers needed for a typical Android phone), but... that's really something the distro developers would have to do, not you as a user.
Some Android devices are now mostly bootable with mainline Linux or something close to it (PostmarketOS has done a lot of great work here), but these are typically devices that are several years old, not the kind of thing you'd go out and buy in a store.
In short: unless the device you buy happens to be a PinePhone or Librem 5 or you are a dedicated kernel hacker or distro developer... no chance, for the vast majority of recent devices you might buy.
I d definitely recommend the pinephone for playing with it and watching it's progress though ;)
The thing with the PinePhone is that it is not very easy to buy. Say I get used to the PinePhone as my daily driver for having a terminal in my pocket. And then it breaks. Then I am f*cked and have to wait weeks or months for a new one to ship from Hong Kong.
If we were at the point were I can just go to a store, buy a phone and put Linux on it - I would start right now.
I mean, how many here are using F-Droid over the Play Store? And we're not exactly your average persons...
I wonder what percentage of customers use third party payment processors?
The duopoly means we get a race to the bottom. "Oh they got away with that, ok we'll do it to and then try going further in the ripoff."
We badly need real competition. The N900 was better than android back in the day. No locked in store. Microsoft killed it, I wish someone with money picked it up to hold their middle finger to apple and google. Maybe pine etc will get it done, but it seems like trying to fight a tank batallion with bb guns. Nokia got the N900 to the point where it was comparably as good in some ways, better in others. Microsoft utterly failed in their attempt but killed maemo and here we are commenting that their is no bottom on this race with both of the duopoly options equally repulsive.
If you have an issue with Steam's cut you can simply sell on one of its competitors. Many companies do.
I'd say that's a fairly big difference. Whether that's enough to be considered a different market, I do not know, that's for regulators to say.
--- start quote ---
Walled gardens have existed for 4 decades. Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony all had/have them. “What Apple is doing is not much different … they created a platform.”
“The 30% of what you complain seems to be the industry rate, right? Steam charges 30%. Microsoft: 30% … If you go to consoles: PlayStation, Xbox Nintendo all charged 30%. Physical stores: GameStop, Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart all charge 30%. Apple and Google charged 30%. It’s all 30%, and you just want to gloss over it. You don’t want to address it,” Judge Gonzalez Rogers says
--- end quote ---
[1] Quoted from https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/28/tech/apple-fortnite-epic-...
So don't be "surprised" please!
Songs/Movies/Digital Game code
Always wondered why Google was cool with that...
They are much more willing to research and change services based on price and performance.
I wonder if this could be the point Google loses their grip.
Keep in mind Google is supposedly opening up Android to better support third-party app stores.
Essentially, these two changes will motivate major apps like Netflix, Fortnite, Spotify, Tinder, etc to leave the Play Store next year (before the deadline).
They may start their own stores (like Epic), but they could also be available as exclusives for a major new, third-party Android app store (probably already in development). In turn, more app devs will jump ship and the Play Store could be a ghost town by the end of 2022.
Unclear if Google would be able to ninja that in to older phones as a Play Services update. My guess is that they probably couldn't since that's pretty fundamental to the OS's permissions system.
As Play Services already has an API and the permissions to replace installed apps (although this API is currently only available to the Google Play Store), and as Android already tracks from where an app was installed, this would be easily possible.
But knowing Google, they won’t allow this.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-outlaws-android-app-upd...
What's that now?
Obviously if people can't find Netflix, they're going to think 'whats up' and try to find it, but that comes with hurdles and it won't be good, it will mean lost downloads at some rate.
> no app updates starting Jan 2021
What's that? I haven't heard anything about that date.
In the email I received today from Google Play it states:
"Any existing app that is currently using an alternative billing system in violation of this policy will need to remove it to comply with this update. For these apps, we are offering an extended grace period until September 30, 2021 to make any required changes. New apps submitted after January 20, 2021 will need to be in compliance."
"But for those who already have an app on Google Play that requires technical work to integrate our billing system, we do not want to unduly disrupt their roadmaps and are giving a year (until September 30, 2021) to complete any needed updates."
This means Netflix, Spotify, and even Apple have a year to find another solution / store.
What Apple and Google are doing here is racketeering.
There's no inherent NEED for app stores. The world worked JUST FINE before app stores when people downloaded apps and installed them directly.
Apple disabling 3rd party downloads on their phones is just creating an artificial market that wouldn't exist normally - AKA the literal definition of racketeering.
We're about to release an app on iOS and Google and we'll probably just have to yield to their rules but we're going to really make a stink over this and write letters to congress and the EU saying we believe this should be illegal.
Only after you bought your antivirus from your local best buy valid for 3 years. Even now, Windows might as well be an app store but blacklist-based instead of whitelist-based since MSFT can effectively kill any app they want by adding it to their smartscreen filters.
https://www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/just-as-critics-feared-...
My best guess is this,
Epic app installer downloads an apk to the disk, malware app already installed swaps the apk with its own while its on disk, epic installer uses android system prompt to install the swapped apk.
From what I can see, this doesn't give any extra permissions that a normal sideloaded app would not have access to. The worst I can see is that the swapped apk grabs your payment details you enter in the app which was always possible as I pointed out.
Api version 23 added a new permissions model where instead of an app asking at install time what permissions are needed, a modal would show when the permission was used.
So there is nothing particularly horrible going on. Androids security and permission model was never broken. The user would see a modal at install time with all the permissions requested so there is no bypass of this.
In the end the data and integrity of your other apps is still protected and the worst case is you installed a malware app which can read your photos and capture your input while using the app. But since you required a malware app already installed to pull this off then this is a double low risk issue. Its good that it was reported and fixed but it says nothing about the security of Android.
As technical people we are instinctively infuriated when we aren't given a choice but for most users that's the best option. That's why the iPhone has a much smaller history of apps (and their installed base) that steal user data than Android's. Because too many users see some shiny exciting app description and click OK when the system asks them "are you sure to install this app? it's going to read your contacts, access storage, make phone calls and send SMS, etc".
It’s a retail markup with retailer restrictions for a captive market, which isn’t exactly new. It is a very well known and practiced economic model for 40+ years.
You’re free to try to declare it illegal (I think this would be a disaster) but thankfully I think the congress and EU might have bigger fish to fry.