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Comment by napoleoncomplex | Hacker News Reader

I know Google's policy on this, but I completely understand where the developer is coming from.

Google has been taking a collective shit on every developer out of its list of seller countries[0], which is ridiculously short and hasn't been expanded in god knows how long, and even then, there were only a handful of countries added.

On Google's page about seller countries they say: "We're working hard to add more countries, but we're unable to provide any guidance on timelines."

No, you're fucking not working hard, you added the last ones a year and a half ago. EU countries are missing, for fucks sake. These are countries where Android has 70, 80% of the market, and you're killing any sensible chance of developers making a living on mobile. And you're not allowing any other payment option, because hey, fuck the developers, they don't need to make a living.

And then you send me fucking developer feedback polls year after year, which you seemingly throw in the trash, because every single Android dev I know tells you the same damn thing, let us sell apps, everything else is irrelevant.

Wake the fuck up Google.

[0]https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...

ps. sorry for the language, this has been boiling for more than two years now...

View on HN

It's interesting seeing Google as a grown up company, with many of the flaws they acquired early on still intact and at Google scale. You can be spending $100ks per monthon adwords and still not have a competent person to call when you need help. EVen if you do, they don't know much and can't do much. Realistically, it's not much better than an outsourced call centre and much worse than the far less profitable Big Ads platform.

When the Nexus 4 went live, they didn't have anywhere near the stock needed to match demand. If you now want to buy a current nexus phone or tablet, you have to be in a country where they allow purchase. They would deliver a much better customer experience (and sell many more phones) if they just let Amazon handle selling them. They even redirect you away to a sorry page and don't let you see the product page. It all feels very non-native to the internet experience and oddly insulting.

Google Wave, Hangouts, Play store (webapps, chrome apps, plugins & android apps) all have bad branding/clarity problems. People just don't understand what these things are, even when they really try. WTF is a hangout? Why does it want to have my SMSs go through it. What is a chrome app? I've heard salespeople in gadget shops assure buyers that any app on their android phone will also be available for their Chromebook. Google don't know how to create the necessary nouns and verbs people can use to understand what these things are. They have a serious tendency towards zombocoms.

This is just one more example.

This. Google needs one Jobsian hard-ass in charge of product marketing/quality to keep this swarm of ADD mayhem under control and set priorities.

Around Android 2.3 I was a huge fanboy because the platform had so much potential. Now? The platform still has so much potential, and I'm only a fan because it's an open-source platform with real consumer adoption - not because I think it's actually good. Microsoft shoveled a bunch of cash into the furnace and went from nothing to better in that time.

That isn't the Google way. The need someone tapping the right data on audience feedback, with the right internal priority to execute on solutions.

Because failing your customers is basically evil. We already have enough faceless companies.

Hanlon's Razor applies: it's not evil, it's incompetence. Specifically, it's lack of competence to apply discipline and make their hobby (Android) a reality.

It could be that they're afraid that mobile will subsume all other things at Google (look at how it's dominating at Apple), and make the company substantially different.

Just take away the ball pits, then they may get something done.

The impression I get is that they did get somebody in charge of strategy a few years ago; unfortunately the strategy he came up with was this daft nonsense about chasing Facebook of all things, which might explain why big chunks of their actual business are still floundering.

As much as I love Google, they still try to act like are in the startup phase.

> If you now want to buy a current nexus phone or tablet, you have to be in a country where they allow purchase. They would deliver a much better customer experience (and sell many more phones) if they just let Amazon handle selling them.

Disclaimer: I'm lucky to be in a country (UK) with good Google coverage. That said, their customer experience for buying a phone online (nexus 4) is superb and far above amazons. Their website is clean, fast, and usable, and I've had no problems through it, whilst cancelling and re-ordering, tracking my orders etc. Friends who have used it have all had great experiences too.

The availability/country thing is an issue, and lack of phone support etc., but their online presence is fantastic.

They're following a 80/20 (or maybe 50/50) rule of thumb. If they can serve you easily they do. Otherwise, they can live without your purchase. They didn't have that much stock anyway. That makes sense in one way, but it feels disrespectful in other ways. If you live in Ireland (where Google's non US headquarters is and where the damn phones ship from), they give you an error message.

It's just one example though. In my opinion it's an example of below average competence. Equivalent to a bank website going down because of a traffic surge and taking 16 hours to come back. There are certain things that mature companies draw a line under. They don't just say 'we're not good at that.'

>You can be spending $100ks per monthon adwords and still not have a competent person to call when you need help.

We just got bit by this recently. One day our organic referrals just took a nosedive (4000 -> 1000 clicks/day overnight). We got in touch with our Adwords contact, who said they'd look into it, then ... left. No longer with the team. Now we have no contact and no way to figure out what went wrong and how we can fix it.

It didn't have a huge impact on us, but it did cost us ~$3k/month, which isn't negligible. The worst part is that there's seemingly no way for us to address this, despite spending a pretty significant amount of money on Adwords every month.

There is a very easy way to get support: https://support.google.com/adwords/

Theres a link to contact directly on this page.

Thanks for the link, but their response was to "check the product forums". I understand that they don't want to field calls from millions of site owners asking why they aren't ranked higher, but we spend probably $25k/month on Adwords. It'd be nice if they could give us a pointer to an actual person who could help us figure out what went wrong.

That was the response from the support line?

Also, you can always try the community

https://www.en.adwords-community.com/

Again, I appreciate your help. Yes, the Adwords rep I talked to on the phone said there was nobody who could help me figure out why our organic results tanked overnight, but that I could ask on the forums. I'm not prepared to do that at this time.

There were two changes that happened on the same day, at least one of which I'm sure is the cause: we pushed out a ton of pages we had generated from old data, and we had a regression whereby our international sites lost their canonical tags on links. It's pretty clearly our fault, but it would be nice to have someone spend 30s saying, "this is what triggered the issue; don't do this" rather than, "no we can't help you, maybe some random person on the Internet can".

I can't speak to their corporate support but as a consumer I've had issues with two Nexus devices and called them for support. The first was fixed by a factory reset and the second meant I needed a RMA. Both times the person on the other end of the line somewhat immediately recognized that I didn't need to be instructed to "plug it in." They asked me what I'd done already and moved forwards from there without making me (pretend to) re-do steps I'd already taken. While it's pretty crappy that I've had issues out of the box with 2 out of my 4 Google devices, the tech support has been great.

I had one of the first 100 apps ever published on Google Play (then called Android Market). After a few months being live, I eventually implemented my own in app purchases using PayPal. Back then Google had no support for any kind of paid apps (only free apps were allowed), and Apple hadn't introduced IAPs. Still, Google removed my app 3 times before I gave up republishing it. Also, in the classic Google style, when I tried to reason with them, I was simply ignored.

PS: my country still isn't allowed to sell apps, although it's an EU country.

EDIT: I want to add a clarification: Google always had this thing put in Google Play's terms and conditions. It was there when Android Market was unveiled, although another year and a half passed until they slowly started allowing people to sell apps. And they did it knowingly, just to push free apps which have ads as the only way of monetizing. Google IS an advertising company after all (98% of their revenue, right?)

Obvious question: which country?

Unsupported EU countries:

Bulgaria

Croatia

Cyprus

Estonia

Greece

Hungary

Latvia

Lithuania

Luxembourg

Malta

Romania

Slovakia

Slovenia

Romania.

I can understand your frustration. I am in a country from which you couldn't sell for a long time (but now can).

The thing that irked me was, when I signed up for an Android Market developer account there was no indication given to me that I won't be able to sell apps! I spent about two years developing an app and when it was time to publish the paid version, I discovered that I couldn't! That was one hell of a shocker! That was the first time I hated Google.

But not the last, I'll wager.

> Google has been taking a collective shit

The biggest issue with anything Google related is absolute lack of communication/transparency. They have been baning web pages from Google AdSense and never told the owners why, without any way to appeal decision. The oracle has spoken, You are not worthy. Take this automatic reply message based on some words from your email.

> They have been baning web pages from Google AdSense and never told the owners why, without any way to appeal decision.

This is actually a huge problem. But google does not care about the supply side, they have plenty of inventory, they only care about the demand side.

In the suspension notice I received I had a way to appeal it.

Did it work?

In my experience, I fixed the problem they reported, but then they still refused to reinstate the site. I was left playing 20 questions, trying to guess which other policy I might have violated.

I didn't bother - it would've taken me over a year to reach the payout threshold.

I received a notification in adsense that I was in violation of a policy and clicked the "ok", or "fixed" button when I removed the page. They don't just ban people and walk away unless you plain didn't read the TOS and are breaking big rules like clicking your own ads, doing shady stuff, etc.

But they do, you simply haven't experienced the scenario yet.

"They don't just ban people and walk away unless you plain didn't read the TOS and are breaking big rules like clicking your own ads, doing shady stuff, etc."

Simply not true. I was banned from adsense for "manipulating ads" or some such thing. I of course had never done this, and had actually put a LOT of effort into making sure that there was no way I could be flagged for click fraud. I actively told any family or friends that knew about my project to NEVER click on an ad on my site. It just wasn't worth the risk of getting banned from adsense, since most other networks pay significantly less for significantly more headaches. I had a high traffic site that was bringing in a lot of money without any need to cheat (so why risk everything for a few bucks?).

Well I ended up getting banned regardless for who knows why, maybe someone had it out for me and committed click fraud on the site through a bunch of proxy servers, I have no idea. Google refused to give me any information whatsoever. They did allow me to "appeal" to them, but it was clear in their automated response that no human read my appeal.

Anyways, I'll never trust Google again for anything business critical. By which I mean any project that relies heavily on Google in some way is very high risk. If something goes wrong (ie they shut down a service you rely on etc) they won't care to work with you in the slightest (unless you already have SV connections like rap genius).

On a side note, I did have a Google sales team reach out and contact me about a year later asking if I wanted to get involved in some new ad product they were working on. It was quite a slap in the face when I had to tell them that I was actually banned from adsense. Of course they responded by telling me there was nothing they could do to help overturn my ban. I guess even people who work at Google can't get actual feedback from Google.

I was banned for invalid click activity. I NEVER clicked any of my ads intentionally and never asked anyone else to either. One time I misclicked and hit an ad and immediately looked up whether I needed to report it and found a page saying that an accidental click was fine and didn't need to be reported. I mentioned this in my appeal after getting banned and got a nonanswer that they couldn't help me and I would stay banned.

You get one single appeal, and in my experience they don't give you any additional information on what you may have done to get banned and just tell you you're going to stay banned.

> Take this automatic reply message based on some words from your email.

And hopefully you didn't make the mistake of publishing things with your personal google/gmail username, because that might get permanently closed with no recourse.

> We're working hard to add more countries

I hate this bullshit, they've said exactly the same about my country for 3 years before actually adding seller support. They were about 3 years slower than Microsoft and Apple.

Also, Windows Phone seems to be the only one to allow IAPs without needing to pay the 30% cut.

See section 2.1.2 in http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop...

They lay out rules like clarity in showing the product and the payment processor and having PCI-DSS which are good things to protect users.

However, this doesn't imply that they won't give in to greed and change the rules midway like Google did if Windows Phone becomes more popular.

They had to though. You can't come in to an entrenched marketplace and play by the same rules as everyone else when you have 0 traction. They're trying to get any and all developers to start adding to the Windows Phone offerings.

An expansion may never come. When they created their new policy requiring use of Google Play for all IAP, they could have easily carved out an exception for app teams not based in countries served by their payment system. Anyone bright enough to be hired by Google to write app store policies would have been smart enough to anticipate this scenario.

Since Google doesn't make glaring mistakes like this, it was intentional. The only logical conclusion is that Google wants all Android development outside of the countries it has named to cease immediately.

> The only logical conclusion is that Google wants all Android development outside of the countries it has named to cease immediately.

What would be the motive? More likely they didn't want to risk carving an exception (leading to e.g. scammers taking advantage of the loophole, breaking users' payment expectations, etc.) .

Restricting third-party payment methods within a curated store is related to but distinct from the issue at hand: the limited number of countries supported by Google Wallet. For that, lack of experience and/or lethargy is a simpler and sufficient explanation. No need to invent a more complicated theory.

To clarify, if it was allowed, all someone would have to do is register their app in a country that didn't require Google's IAP, then they wouldn't have to pay Google's 30% cut.

I have no idea what the motive would be. But I do know that without financial incentive, it is difficult to believe that Android development will continue outside of Wallet-supported countries. They could still use in-app banners, but those revenues tend to be abysmally low vs. IAP and in many cases will destroy the user experience. There may be a few people that code them for pleasure or practice in these countries, but if there is no money in it, people will find better things to do.

I couldn't have said it any better myself. In this instance, swearing is not only warranted: it's needed. I feel exactly the same way and have a friend who was burned by this exact policy all due to Google's inability to get off their billion dollar asses and make someone fix the problem.

It's not a coincidence that so many apps are iOS only. For example (I guess that) the recent success app Horizon is iOS only because the developers cannot sell from Greece through the Play store. The same happens for many apps from many countries.

Well I can tell you there's at least one country that has paid apps and isn't in that list, so maybe that list isn't updated either. I think you're right about them not moving fast enough with this, though. They've been historically slow with this since the Android Market days.

It also hurt them big time that their own payment option in the early days wasn't popular. Things could've been very different for Android revenue, if they wouldn't have forgotten about Google Checkout for virtually its entire life since they started it. They had to invent a whole new payment system (Wallet) to deal with Android payments, after they almost let Paypal be their default payment solution for the store, because their payment system situation was so incredibly pathetic at the time.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-13/paypal-said-to-be-i...

http://www.androidguys.com/2011/11/02/signs-of-paypal-found-...

Get an account in one of the supported countries?

> No, you're fucking not working hard, you added the last ones a year and a half ago.

I'm not even a Google fanboy, but what do you know about the challenges that Google might be facing? It's a really strong accusation to say that a company is not working hard just because you can't have exactly what you want.

Last I checked, neither Google nor Apple make guarantees about how much of a living a developer is going to make from their platforms. You're not getting shit on; you're getting impatient because the gravy train that you're banking on hasn't poured itself all over you. If you want to make money, stop waiting for other people to do the dirty work for you.

Anecdotes like this one do indeed suggest they're not trying as hard as they can:

>I hate this bullshit, they've said exactly the same about my country for 3 years before actually adding seller support. They were about 3 years slower than Microsoft and Apple.

I actually am a Google fanboy for the record. But it does seem like they just don't care about this.

Yes, but Microsoft and Apple have the advantage of having physical products, stores, agreements, etc. in the international market already.

Google seems really flakey. It's a bamboo platform. Discontinued services... a road-map that focusses on creepy glasses, self-driving cars and ditches Motorola for Nest.

This isn't a factor. Apple has no offices in South Africa - all retail sales, support, etc are handled through a distributor, Core Group - but local devs can still sell paid apps through the App Store. Google, despite actually having a large-ish local presence, didn't allow the same thing for years. The local office only handled ad sales, it seems.

To be fair, the developer did do the dirty work themselves - They implemented their own payment method using PayPal and then got banned for it.

I was more thinking along the lines of making a web app instead of a native app; IMO Google's implication is that, if you're not doing business in one of the supported countries, you're not allowed to conduct commercial transactions through your app. I'm guessing that this is more a legal issue than anything else (not to mention the developer getting around the kickback Google should be getting); I can imagine it sucking for Google to have accounts frozen because some auditor found out that Google was indirectly doing business in an unauthorized country. There could be tax issues, compliance issues, issues with trade agreements -- there are a TON of things to think about.

Each one of those ton of things have been solved by Apple, Samsung and BlackBerry in many of the countries Google doesn't support. They can copy what any one of these 3 did if they really wanted to help developers.

Can they? What if the process is patented?

By 3 different corporations?

licensing.

Then they can do the same thing. It's a non-argument, my favorite of the HN tropes.

Obviously PayPal, which is way smaller than Google, was able to pay to this developer.

You can't patent "compliance with the law", and you can't pass a law that requires licensing of a patent to be in compliance. So no, the "process" of being legally allowed to sell items in a country is not and cannot be patented.

> I'm not even a Google fanboy, but what do you know about the challenges that Google might be facing? It's a really strong accusation to say that a company is not working hard just because you can't have exactly what you want.

This argument works only because companies like Google prefer no communication with their user/developer base. If they took the time and posted a short note explaining which challenges Google faces in a specific country, this discussion would not take place.

I think it's time we stopped defending silent companies by hypothesizing scenarios where they are hard-working but can't tell us.

perfect

>If they took the time and posted a short note explaining which challenges Google faces in a specific country, this discussion would not take place.

If only Google had some kind of social media website or something where they could communicate en masse to their developers, like Orkut, but updated. Or even a website that could host a blog, like Blogger. If only...

It's a lose-lose situation for Google to do such a thing. They're not making an argument; they're making policy. I'm under the impression that the policy isn't up for discussion, in which case it's wise for Google not to pay people to reiterate what we already know.

Why should moderate disclosure be a lose-lose situation? If Google has a problem with entering a country that is dependent on the country's laws or policies, explaining the problem to the local citizens could lead to public discourse about the laws and, eventually, change.

Zero disclosure is a winning strategy only because people will use their imaginations and think there are valid reasons for the progress being so slow. The people will argue that the reason Google is not telling us is the policy and not the fact that they don't have a good reason.

---

This discussion reminds me of the famous quote from Eric Schmidt:

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

Does that rule apply to Google disclosures as well?

In context, it was clear that Schmidt was referring to doing "it" using Google services, since Google is subject to the Patriot act, etc.

The point is, if a company wants the public to forgive them for terrible outcomes, they should have to give the public the evidence that they deserve forgiveness instead of having random people shill for everything they do on spec. It is possible for corporations to make mistakes, or to do bad things, and it's perfectly legitimate to call them out when that appears to be the case.

(I also think Google has long past squandered any right to the benefit of the doubt, but I don't see the need to get into that right now)

I can assume what challenges Google is facing based on how successful other companies in the space are in providing the same service, namely Microsoft and Apple.

Google: 32 countries Apple: 90 countries (probably more now, info from 2012) Microsoft: 127 countries

Yes, Microsoft and Apple had a head start, but the difference is just way too big, and Google hasn't moved that number in a year and a half.

I don't want Google to do the dirty work for me. They should just let me do the dirty work, and let me implement other payment methods. Don't you see how saying "You can only use our payment processor on Google Play" and immediately following it up with "Our payment processor is not available in your country" is rage-inducing?

Do you think that's good for users though? Especially with Google's lax oversight of the marketplace? If the developer using their own payment method changed their PayPal redirect to a phishing site, would users notice? What if you implemented your own credit card payment? Where's the guarantee that you're PCI compliant? I can tell you that 99% of your users won't know what PCI compliance is. If Google allows users to become accustomed to entering their credit card info to each individual app, there could be major liability issues that I'm sure Google doesn't want to deal with.

On that basis maybe Google should stop Chrome allowing credit card form submissions.

But instead of doing that, they now offer to remember your credit card numbers in the browser. That's a big no thank you from me.

Reeaally?

So, is Chrome now filtering the internet to catch you entering your CC number to some vague service online? Because that's what we're talking about. Shopping (for an in app purchase, but still) online, in a browser. I wonder how Google checked if Amazon is PCI compliant..

If you're entering your CC everywhere that's not something Google can (or should - no need for a nanny..) fix. There's no way in my world that Google _could_ be liable for these kind of things.

You're trying to understand their motivation for banning alternative payment methods. We both have a theory. Mine is 'greed', yours is 'protecting the user and protecting the company against evil worldwide'.

I really think you're giving them too much credit here.

There's a very clear difference between native apps and web apps in my mind.

EDIT: I should make very clear to non-developers out there that, with a native app, you're able to display a web browser without a URL bar or any other UI, which makes it exceedingly easy to trick people into thinking that they're at an official PayPal site or other shenanigans that the unscrupulous dev wants to try.

More information: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/webkit/WebVi...

> EDIT: I should make very clear to non-developers out there that, with a native app, you're able to display a web browser without a URL bar or any other UI, which makes it exceedingly easy to trick people into thinking that they're at an official PayPal site or other shenanigans that the unscrupulous dev wants to try.

Nothing's stopping a non-standard browser (Opera, Firefox, etc.) from doing that, and they're permitted on Android. Hell, you could do it on iOS, too.

are you trying to miss the point?

Are you? A custom browser can be designed to quietly send people accessing PayPal off to a phishing site just as easily as an app integrating a PayPal payment method. If Google's going to use that sort of attack as a reason to prevent non-IAP payments, they should be banning non-Google browsers too.

So where does that leave your "do the dirty work yourself" argument? Apparently you don't want developers to do the dirty payment systems work themselves. Neither does Google.

So I suggest you reconsider your rather hostile attitude towards the developer who complained about Google's inactivity.

Wait, now I'm the hostile one? lol ok.

> Google: 32 countries Apple: 90 countries (probably more now, info from 2012) Microsoft: 127 countries

Or the 196(?) countries the Amazon Appstore supports.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...

(* It appears that apps for China and, for whatever reason, Germany must go through amazon.cn and .de, respectively, instead of .com)

EDIT: I count 155 countries supported by the iTunes App Store, according to

http://support.apple.com/kb/ts3599

> Google: 32 countries

Where did you get this info? I'm not doubting you; I just find it crazy that they have offices in over 40 countries[1], but only allow app submissions from developers in 32 countries.

[1]:http://www.google.com/about/company/facts/locations

The list of all supported seller countries according to Google: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...

It is crazy.

Edit: To be clear, this is a list of countries which can publish paid apps in the Play Store. The list of countries which can publish free apps is of course significantly larger.

Sligthly related to the part you find crazy, Google has their main European HQ in Ireland, basically because of the very low corporate taxes here, but guess what? It's impossible to buy a Nexus on Google Play from Ireland. If you try you get this message:

-- Sorry! Devices on Google Play is not available in your country yet. We're working to bring devices to more countries as quickly as possible. Please check back again soon. --

They say they're working on it. But that's just a lie. This message has been there for at least the last two years (probably a lot more) and nothing has changed. And we're not talking about a small country in the middle of nowhere. Ireland is part of the the European Union. And they not only have offices here but their main European HQ. They just don't care at all.

Tell me about it. Or they do silly things like release sub-par Chromebooks to the Canadian market every other release, with the Canadian multilingual keyboard layouts nobody likes (because of the short enter key), and I have to ship and forward US models to get decent devices with the non-standard yet US english layout I want. (I say non-standard because they already changed the control key and caps lock, so they could care about localizing the keyboard improvements to other layouts, but they don't. Apple does.) Of course, I suppose I've the "advantage" of living so close to the US (2 hours drive) that I can go and pick up the latest devices from a US shipping address. But I shouldn't have to.

Here in South Africa for example, it has been possible for at least 3 years to sell apps on iTunes, on Samsung Apps, and BlackBerry Apps world. So there's most probably not some major stumbling block that prevents it, as these other companies overcame it.

>If you want to make money, stop waiting for other people to do the dirty work for you.

The dirty work developers like us have been doing up to now was to implement an alternative mechanism for receiving payments, like the developer in the article. When Google bans that, there simply is no other way to receive payments. Or are you able to come up with an alternative way for developers to do the dirty work themselves? I know I'm very keen to know of one, as are many other Android developers in South Africa, Kenia, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, etc.

Considering Apple allows developers from all countries supported by itunes to sell their apps in the App Store, I too keep wondering if Google is actually working to add more countries to their developer program.

There are many app developers from my country (Indonesia) that sell apps in Apple App Store, but none of them can sell their apps in Google Play store.

IOS marketshare in Indonesia is less than 3%, while Android's marketshare is more than 40% [source](http://www.ibtimes.com/android-vs-ios-whats-most-popular-mob...). Also, Indonesia has 285.0m mobile subscriptions (US 345.2m subscriptions). On the other hand, Brazil (268.4m subscriptions) is already in the list of supported nations for publishing paid app. [source](http://mobithinking.com/mobile-marketing-tools/latest-mobile...). Yes, Indonesia's GDP per capita is really low, but so is India. Yet, India is in the list too.

There are no challenges, they are either lazy or doing this on purpose. I have AdSense for a couple of my websites and receiving payments monthly from it, so obviously sending payments from Google to my country is not a problem. Why can't the Play Store earnings be delivered the same way?

From the colour of your post i can tell that a lot of people disagree with you. I know you are just trying to give everyone google's prespective, but you should reconsider. You raise the point that maybe there are legal issues, or trade laws etc that prevent google's growth to other economic markets. Well there are workarounds, if google bothers looking for them.

For example, they find that the economic service they are using to pay devs, is not available in country X. they do a little research and find that skrill (formerly moneybookers) is available in country X, and it is also available in their country. They get in touch with skrill and work something out to be able to pay in country X. I cant imagine a law that says they cant contact services which are legally allowed to do transactions from your country to country X. Yes, i buy the reason that google itself may not be allowed, but it certainly can employ other services to do that for them. That's what channels are for!

PS: having EU HQ in ireland and not being legally allowed to pay people in ireland? that makes zero sense

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