Hacker News Reader

Comment by Andrew_nenakhov | Hacker News Reader

I resent Google's policy on insisting using their payments gateway, but this criticism is unfair: Google Play console has message about enrolment to this program on the most visible place they have, with a very noticeable red tint, so it is impossible to miss whenever you log into that console.

View on HN

Most app developers rarely visit Play Console once their app is published. Either they aren't making updates, or they are a larger operation and use the API to deploy. Unfortunately many of them also don't notice Play developer emails because they get in the habit of ignoring them. In some ways Google I/O and the press are vital in getting the word out to devs about important changes.

Source: Worked at Play on developer tooling.

As a full-time app developer who consequently follows all Android design, policy and direction changes, you are not going to miss that message. As a part-time / hobby project developer, I only read the news posts that made it look like it was an automatic fee reduction.

They've also sent me an email explaining that I need to enroll this program.

Apple requires enrollment in the small business program too, and it was much more involved in the Google one. For Google you basically just created a group and asserted which developer accounts were part of it, then approved it.

Just curious, what benefit does google get by making it opt in? Do they hope that developers missed the message and profiting on the difference?

IIRC when I signed up for it, you had to link any other accounts that your company owns and agree to some additional stuff (since they need to make sure people aren't using multiple accounts to get around the $1MM limit). The notice is very visible (plus emails).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com