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Comment by ForkMeOnTinder | Hacker News Reader

> And although Google permits third-party app distribution platforms, it still requires apps to use its billing system.

Can someone explain this line? If you publish an app on an alternative app store and someone downloads it on their de-googled phone, how in the world would Google prevent it from making a few API calls to Paypal?

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This is incorrect, if you distribute an app outside the play store you do not need to use their payment system, even by the letter of the law. The rule specifically applies to play store apps. It's common for developers of more technical apps (like VPN apps) to publish two nearly identical versions - one to the play store that doesn't support iap and one to f-droid/their website that takes payment via credit card.

It's possible the people writing this complaint may be referring to the fact that you can't link to or reference those options from the play store edition of the app, but I think they might just be misinformed.

There is a compounding effect of this though, the fact that the Play Store doesn't allow this greatly dampens development of libraries that would make it much easier for developers to add this functionality to their apps, making people more likely to rely on the Google's payments and just dealing with its cut.

I believe it's fair:

* Unlike Apple App Store on iOS, you are under no obligation to sell on Google Play Store on Android.

* If you choose to sell on Google Play Store, it's reasonable to "pay rent" so to speak.

If you don't want to accept payments through Google Play Store, you simply don't sell through Google Play Store.

You can believe it's fair, what you can't do is claim they support aftermarket app stores while they also take actions to stamp them out. You have to acknowledge that the situation Google has created conveniently and heavily discourages aftermarket app stores on multiple levels. You are effectively obligated to publish on the Play Store, and in doing so you face increased maintenance burden for creating non-Play versions.

Google doesn't "stamp out" side-loading. They don't make it immediately obvious (and they don't have to), a user so concerned needs to dive a little into the operating system and permit them, but the option is there for anyone interested.

This is in stark contrast to Apple where you may not do anything outside of the One Apple Way(tm), which in this case means you will go through the Apple App Store or pound sand.

Google knows that they just have to make it inconvenient enough that 99% of people won’t do it (or really even know it’s an option). So yes, if you squint really hard you can kind of make it look like Google is a good guy here. But if we’re talking about how it actually pans out in reality, Google is no better than Apple.

They have deliberately and knowingly made it difficult by showing warnings and making users jump through hoops. I think evidence that it was deliberate and intentional was revealed in one of the many lawsuits in the form of meeting notes and reported speech, if I remember right.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/6/23948990/and-were-on-to-s...

Not stamping out side-loading, although that is heavily impacted by many of the same issues, but stamping out aftermarket software stores.

Apps installed from aftermarket stores:

- Cannot auto-update themselves, it requires user intervention for every individual app for every individual update.

- Cannot update at all if they were initially installed from the Play Store without uninstalling and losing all data in the process.

- Require multiple hoops and scary messages for the average user.

- Require extra maintenance burdens for the developer who essentially has to maintain two forks of the same application, further complicated by point 2.

- The payment issues mentioned upthread.

All of this makes aftermarket stores second-class citizens, all the while Google claims it welcomes them with open arms. Aftermarket stores aren't the only area where Google does this, either. Plenty of Android-of-yesteryear's customizability and openness has atrophied heavily while Google continues to profit off the bitrotting scraps that are left.

This appears to be factually incorrect both for apps installed from third-party app stores and from Google Play itself.

See "Alternative billing systems for users" on https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/11174377?hl=en-...

I would assume that it means that if you're publishing an app on both the Play Store and alternative stores, and your alternative-store versions of the app offer alternative payment methods, then Google will shut down Play Store distribution of your app as punishment for that.

Apple (briefly) tried to do something like this previously, where they tried to force apps that offered no free-to-paid conversion through the mobile app, only through the web, to pay the "Apple tax" on the subscriptions made through the web, because they were for a backing service that had value for customers almost exclusively due to its use through the mobile app. Nobody was willing to put up with this, though, and they quickly walked it back.

It’s a commercial/legal requirement imposed on developers, not directly enforced through the technology. It comes down to the review process in practice. At some point a human reviewer will need to detect the app is allowing the user to pay with PayPal and therefore block it from distribution.

They’ll probably have some technology to help prioritise apps for review if they’re likely to be violating (by scanning the APK statically for PayPal SDKs or running robot scripts to see if they can be presented with a PayPal form).

> At some point a human reviewer will need to detect the app is allowing the user to pay with PayPal and therefore block it from distribution.

But on Android I can just release the .apk or publish to Fdroid app store, etc. I don't think Google would be reviewing the app at all.

You can and correct Google won’t review it - that’s why Android shows a warning when you enable sideloading about only using APKs from trusted sources (to my recollection).

Those alternative channels typically provide a tiny percentage of active installs compared to Google Play installs, however.

I took it to be a subtle (but important) grammatical error. I figure it meant "although you CAN use another store on Google, if you use Google play you need to use it's billing system".

But maybe Google has something much more insidious than I expected

No, you are correct

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