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Comment by shimfish | Hacker News Reader

As an app developer, I'm looking forward to having to answer all the emails asking for me to transfer their purchases to Google Play.

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Do free promotions (https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...) still work ? And how would you even validate the emails against Amazon Appstore purchases?

I'd assume they would have a record of the user in their database. How else would they earn money from the data harvesting their app is a cover for? For the small number of apps that aren't solely data harvesting, surely they still have records of their users in a database as well? This question almost reads as if you're assuming the only record of an app would be through the store and not by the app developers themselves. I would find that truly shocking and quite comically sad if true.

It seems like it would be trivial for a user to login to the app acquired from a different store to be able to display a "welcome back" or even something along the lines of a "restore purchases" type of thing.

This can't be reinventing the wheel kind of a thing.

In google play the purchaser information is mostly privatized and hidden from the developer. I assume Amazon is the same.

The only way a developer would know a person is an existing user is if they have a user sign up process inside the app itself.

Using android.content.SharedPreferences, set one singaling the user purchased a license from the Amazon copy of the app, read it from the Google Play app.

It is doable, the main issues is: 1. Getting users to redownload the app from the Play store 2. Maintaining this registration transfer mechanism

I think issue #1 is a big one, how to download a paid app without paying for it? Not everything is freemium.

Shattered Pixel Dungeon was a good example of me paying on one platform, and then applying the upgrade to the free app after downloading on another.

That's on the dev of the app. They should absolutely have the ability to see that you download the app, and allow full access again.

This isn't any different from a user switching to a new device and having to download apps again. Not everyone restores from backup and prefers clean installs. Downloading an app again should not be the point of friction

Is there a major barrier to just doing it for all your paid purchases?

The major barrier is that I have no idea who my paid purchasers are.

out of curiousity, how do you know that google is paying you the correct amount?

What I actually get: a list of completely anonymized per-transaction data that contains the country in which the purchase was made, the time and date, the currency in which the transaction was made, and the .. something to do with exchange rate, and... about 12 columns of data in total, none of which remotely resemble an email or a credit card number or a globally unique account ID. Actually, multiple records for each transaction -- there's a separate record for various stages of clearing of the payment (or failure to clear as the case may be).

I suppose I could analyze that data, although I can't think of an actual good reason to do so. I have no idea whether those records are real or fabricated. So no real way to verify that google is paying me the correct amount. Since you asked.

Thanks for taking the time. I figure if you run a non-hosted app that costs money (i dunno, a flashlight or camera app for instance.) there's no way to know for sure if google is being honest. I guess if you run a hosted app they would almost certainly have to be honest otherwise a user that paid wouldn't have access to your service.

It was an idle curiosity. If i ever make an app, it'll have a trivial authenticated hosted back end, just to keep google honest!

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