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Google will lose $50M or more in 2018 from Fortnite bypassing the Play Store
- vosper 8y ago> In the process, it’s costing Google around $50 million this year in platform fees, according to a new report. It's not costing Google anything, and they're not losing money on this either. It's revenue that they might have expected to earn, which they're now not going to be earning.
- asdkhadsj 8y agoAlso, what solution would there be? Allow other companies to bypass Google's revenue system in this area? How much will they lose from other companies who want to be treated equal to Fortnite. edit: This is a question folks, I'm not sure why you're down voting a question.. ya'll are touchy as hell lol. To put it differently, since I think my first attempt just confused you all in mass: If Google were to lower it's take from 30% to 15% (fake numbers), for everyone, so that Epic would use their business - would that gain them money or lose them money? It's a question, yikes ya'll.
- Drakim 8y agoI don't understand the framing of this conversation. Does other companies owe Google money by merely existing?
- kodablah 8y agoDepending on who you ask and how they feel about their platform, the answer is "yes, on that platform".
- TremendousJudge 8y agoNo, it's the same writing that frames piracy as "costing" money to the developers. If something costs you some money there's the implication that you had the money, and then you didn't have it after that something happening. As much as they'd like to believe it, projected earnings aren't money you actually have
- bena 8y agoI'd say that the piracy does cost developers something. Not every pirated copy is a lost sale, but there are some number of people who are capable of buying software that instead choose to pirate it for any number of reasons and would buy it if piracy was not an option. I wouldn't say it's a high percentage, but it's not insignificant. I'd count that as a lost sale. But I do agree that this is a different situation. This is just a high profile application that has decided to forgo something completely optional.
- mcphage 8y ago> I'd count that as a lost sale. It's a lost sale, but that's still not a cost. It's just money they never got. If it had actually cost them, then I'd expect it would take away money they previously had, like I say lunch costs me $15 because after the transaction I'm down $15 (but up a lunch). At best, it's akin to opportunity cost.
- asdkhadsj 8y ago> No, it's the same writing that frames piracy as "costing" money to the developers. I hope you're not referring to me. I never once said anything about Google losing money. I merely asked the question, would they gain or lose given a scenario. I didn't state anything.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- asdkhadsj 8y agoI think you misunderstand me. In other words, the claim is that Google is "losing" money by their choices which cause Fortnite to choose to not use them. But it's those same choices which make Google money. So if Google were to, for example, take less of a cut - they might get Fortnite onto their system. But how much would they loose from all the other companies currently using Google at the current rate?
- Someguywhatever 8y agoWhat Google really should have done was allowed FortNite onto the play store at a reduced cut, as a one-off discount that only applies to this title and nobody else. Some percentage of 50M is better than 0%.
- TremendousJudge 8y agoShould they? Everybody would have complained that Google was giving them preferential treatment just because they're big and important. Is there a precedent for this?
- Someguywhatever 8y agoI think that everybody does this in almost every industry, huge players get different rules than everybody else. You might not like this but I can almost guarantee that if you were running a successful app store the amount of money involved would make you behave in the same manner and bend the rules for the big guys to get a piece of that big money.
- TremendousJudge 8y agolosing out on potential earnings isn't the same as losing money
- asdkhadsj 8y agoCorrect, and grass is green, water is wet, etc. Is there a point here? I never made the claim that they're "losing" money, so why are you citing it here? I made the question that, if Google were to make a pricing change to support Epic, would it gain them money? Or lose money due to other companies also giving less (since hypothetically that's what Epic wants, less cut taken by Google).
- thfuran 8y ago>Also, what solution would there be? Solution to what?
- asdkhadsj 8y agoHypothetically, to Google getting Epic's business. Is lost customers not a problem in your eyes? People are sitting here being pedantic about "lost" revenue, even though I said nothing about that. My point however, is that assuming Google would want Epic's business (which seems reasonable), would they gain or lose money by changing their pricing structure to fit something Epic would put up with. Ie, if they reduced Google's take from 30% to 15% (fake numbers), would they gain or lose money? It's a hypothetical question, one which I guess I should edit since clearly everyone is arguing about random shit lol.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> would they gain or lose money by changing their pricing structure to fit something Epic would put up with. I can't see any reason a company with an existing property with Fortnite's visibility would be willing to pay much of anything for App Store placement other than access to a pure walled garden like iOS. Not sure you can write a policy that fits that kind of product and most of what actually gets delivered vis the Appstore, and which doesn't have the overhead of a human-in-the-loop on pricing decisions.
- jdietrich 8y agoAnyone can provide an APK download from their website and bypass the Play Store. Unlike iOS, Android is not a walled garden. For most app developers, the ease of discovery, installation and payment provided by the Play Store is worth the 30% fee. Epic Games clearly think that Fortnite is in such high demand that it isn't worth paying the Play Store tax; Fortnite players will make the effort to find the app, install it manually and provide their credit card details for in-app purchases. Android freely allows you to circumvent the Play Store via manual installation or a third-party app store, which is an advantage in terms of user choice but less secure than the iOS walled garden. Google decide what can go on the Play Store, but they don't control what users can install. I personally prefer the Android approach, but there are merits to both.
- asdkhadsj 8y agoI think you misunderstand me. As I said in another post: > In other words, the claim is that Google is "losing" money by their choices which cause Fortnite to choose to not use them. But it's those same choices which make Google money. > So if Google were to, for example, take less of a cut - they might get Fortnite onto their system. But how much would they loose from all the other companies currently using Google at the current rate? I'm not sure what your point is, so I can only assume you're arguing what you thought I meant. My point was simple a question, hypothetically if Google were to chance it's pricing scheme to something that would fit Epic, would it be a net gain or a loss to them? I'm unsure how anything in your post applies to my question.
- jdietrich 8y agoGoogle intentionally allow app developers to do this. They have chosen to leave this option on the table. They could have just as easily chosen to make the installation of apps from third-party sources impossible or prohibitively inconvenient. One app is not going to change Google's approach to the Play Store, even a multi-million dollar app. The vast majority of apps don't have the marketing power to profitably circumvent the Play Store, so cutting fees across the board would be a huge net loss for Google. Offering special discounts on the Play Store fee is a very slippery slope - if you offer it to anyone, everyone is going to start demanding it. It would undermine the value proposition of the Play Store and create a two-tier system, with one rule for blockbuster apps and one rule for everyone else. App developers begrudgingly pay the Play Store tax because it's preferable to the alternatives. They'd very much prefer to get all the benefits of the Play Store at lower cost, but Google has absolutely no reason to sell their service at less than the market rate. One outlier does not change that equation.
- BrandonM 8y agoI hate this sort of framing, and it's so common. "Google will miss out on ..." would have been accurate and still interesting. The same "lose" language is often used when discussing tax cuts or tax breaks ("lost tax revenue"). I wonder whether those journalists misunderstand economics that much, or if it's done on purpose.
- FireBeyond 8y agoHealth insurers are really bad for this, too. Notwithstanding the obvious need for any one of a variety of reforms, their messaging is "It's unfair that this is costing us money to pay for services which could have been better provided other ways", when in reality, it's costing their insured money, not them. That money is the insurance pool. The insurer is collecting a (healthy) admin fee off the top of the pool, and you can guarantee that's the last in line to face any challenges. In reality it's more "this is costing us profit, because, with few exceptions, we get to skim the cream off of unspent premiums", which sure, capitalism, but they frame it from a position of "(un)fairness", as if they had some implicit entitlement to such.
- plicense 8y ago"Unlike Apple, which only allows apps to be downloaded from its own storefront, Google’s platform is more open." Oh the irony. Android is more open than iOS and yet its Google that EU found to be at fault with Android. How is this not a classic example that, if anything, Android provides a more open platform?
- lucideer 8y agoIt's (unfortunately) not illegal anywhere to have non-open platforms. It is illegal in the EU to use the dominant market position of one product to push another product in an anticompetitive manner. The latter is what Google got done for in the EU. You might think what Apple does is worse, and should be illegal, but that would be a separate hypothetical law.
- lucisferre 8y agoIs this not what happens with the bundling of Mail, Calendar and Music in iOS and the fact that many default actions and integrations for these apps in iOS are not available to alternatives?
- kevinh 8y agoMy understanding is that Apple does not have a large enough market share in the EU to be considered for similar violations.
- redbeard0x0a 8y agoNo, Google got in trouble for mandating other companies/products to include Google products (gmail, chrome, etc) in their products (Samsung Galaxy 9, LG whatever phone, etc). Apple doesn't mandate any other company to change something with their product (Apple installs mail, calendar, music on their own iPhone, iPad, etc). They aren't using their market position to coerce another company to do something in Apple's favor. (as far as Android vs. iOS and the associated hardware phones and tablets).
- 8y ago
- windows_tips 8y agoThat's a strange definition of lose. A third party doesn't contract with someone for their product launch, and that is considered a loss of money?
- Scarbutt 8y ago"$50m that google won't earn" sounds less cool.
- eximius 8y agoAnd yet the distinction is semantically important. I hate it when economists phrase missed opportunities as losses.
- TremendousJudge 8y agothese are journalists, not economists
- jandrese 8y agoAlthough IMHO that particular terminology leads to poisonous thinking in Economics. People start obsessing about missed opportunities because they are a loss, like that guy stole your opportunity away because he got there first.
- AlexandrB 8y agoYeah, that really got my goat too. Google getting a cut of Fortnite’s revenue would be pure rent seeking.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoThat is essentially what taking a large cut on your app platform is: rent seeking. It's your ecosystem, but it comes out of my pocket as the consumer (unless you're large enough to avoid, like Fortnite).
- 8y ago
- Skunkleton 8y agoI can't imagine that 100% of the people interested in fortnite for android are willing to sideload the apk. I would be surprised if this wasn't having a net-negative impact on the total number of android users. I wonder if this is just to avoid paying a percentage on in-app purchases? What else could it be?
- atburrow 8y agoI'm sure Epic doesn't mind given their savings of staying out of Google Play.
- skeetmtp 8y agoIt will be available on samsung galaxy apps store, so for all Samsung users (quite a lot) no need to side install an apk.
- Leader2light 8y agoYeah already have it installed.
- miguelrochefort 8y agoProbably less discoverable there than on Fortnite's website to be honest.
- PurpleBoxDragon 8y agoIf they can then leverage this to be a secondary app store that they get a cut (smaller than Google's cut to encourage people to use it), then they can come out making far more money even if they lose more than 30% of installs by doing this.
- jsgo 8y agoEpic, well Tim Sweeney, bemoaned Microsoft for pushing to get developers to release apps/games within their store. I think Epic feels, and probably rightly so, that they can go the direct route and come out okay. And if they judged incorrectly, they can always distribute it in the store later. Much easier to add it to Google Play than remove it from Google Play from a PR standpoint.
- microcolonel 8y agoGreat! For the odd app or two which can actually feasibly pull this off, it is good that it's on the table. I'm sure Google is not losing sleep over this (after all, they miss out on the expenditures as much as the revenues). "Lose" is really the wrong way to put it: it wasn't theirs to begin with.
- opencl 8y agoIt's wild how a company distributing an Android app in the exact same way that they already distribute the PC version of the same program has blown up into this huge and controversial news story.
- Impossible 8y agoYes, there are no headlines saying "Valve will lose $600M or more in 2018 from Fortnite"...
- jandrese 8y agohttps://thenextweb.com/gaming/2018/08/07/fallout-76-and-fortnite-pave-the-path-for-ditching-steam/ https://thenextweb.com/gaming/2018/08/07/fallout-76-and-fort... It is really impressive that these companies have been able to justify a 30% cut for running a hosting service with stripped down search engine and payment processor. It's like they say in real estate: Location Location Location.
- phobosdeimos 8y agoIts big news when Bethesda does the same with Steam.
- MiddleEndian 8y agoI think this is a good trend. Not that I have much of an opinion on how much Google makes off any particular game but I'm glad people are willing to install programs on their devices without getting anyone's permission.
- seanalltogether 8y agoOn the other hand, Epic will lose out on the easy-to-access money that users have available on the Play Store through gift cards or google pay. The only reason I downloaded Hearthstone on my ios device was so I could use store credit to purchase packs. Otherwise I would have just remained a solely F2P player.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y agoIt's incredibly pain free to spend money on the google store. Just throw your fingerprint on there and who knows how much you've spent.
- jsgo 8y agothe fingerprint reading API (not sure the name in Google's world) isn't dependent on Google Play Services, is it? If it isn't, in theory they could still implement it to be the confirmation for purchasing I'd imagine.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y agoTotally. I'm just saying google play is convenient.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y agoI wonder what sort of deal Samsung has - it's featured prominently on the Galaxy Apps main page.
- gkoberger 8y agoThe framing of this article feels weird to me. Google offers a service (distribution), and it just so happens Fortnite doesn't need it. It also completely ignores how much Fortnite will lose from people who don't install it because they can't figure out how. A better way would be "Fortnite is big enough to bypass Google and still make $180MM", rather than acting like this is Google's fault. I mean, the fact that phone OSes get a cut of everything on their platform is already an insane racket.
- oh_sigh 8y agoNot just a cut but 30%.
- SonnyWortzik 8y agoThat's up there with federal income tax.
- vetinari 8y agoCompanies pay taxes on profits, not on revenue. Google takes 30% cut of the revenue. That's quite a difference.
- SonnyWortzik 8y agosure, as a private company I have a running budget based on the profits of my application. 30% of that revenue which I will never get will be going to another company which has a record of paying little to no taxes. Now, how do you think the government makes up the difference in the tax loop holes? By raising taxes on companies like mine and restricting/regulating on how I structure my profits/income so that it can stay in business. So indirectly 30% off the revenue is affecting my tax situation with the federal government. Again, 30% is on par with federal income tax.
- dbt00 8y agoI think the comment was saying that it's way worse than income tax. I don't think you're disagreeing.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mrgoldenbrown 8y agoNext week on techcrunch, "Nintendo steals $50m by distributing games via cartridge and bypassing the Steam store."
- Freestyler_3 8y agoRather have no mandatory middleman, fortnite made the right choice. However the article is leaning towards a "google shouldn't allow this to earn more money" kind of view, but how much is this on the total that google makes from being a middleman?
- Hnrobert42 8y agoDid anyone else get a weird pop up add that you couldn’t x out of?
- PunchTornado 8y agoCan't google just block installs from websites in a future android update? I don't want my kid to install apps from websites...
- wvenable 8y agoBy default it is blocked although it's usually one of the first things I turn off. I always have at least one or two apps that aren't on the play store. I hope that Google doesn't block this feature and turn entirely into a walled garden.
- freedomben 8y agoAs soon as they do, they die with users like me. I am pretty tolerant of the eco-system lock in because I can so easily opt-over the wall when I want to. If they change that, I'll go to the next platform that respects my ability to make choices for myself, even if they don't match what some people in power in California thinks I should choose.
- wvenable 8y agoIf they make that change, there won't be another platform to jump to.
- PunchTornado 8y agoI'm curious to what platform do you go if they do that
- learc83 8y agoYou can use Google's parent control app (Family Link) to disable sideloading on your kid's phones.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jaxondu 8y agoJust curious why in China there are several app stores for Android (Tencent, 360, Baidu etc), while the rest of the world uses mainly Google Play Store?
- lern_too_spel 8y agoThe Google Play Store is outside the great firewall and therefore probably unusable in China. Phone makers aren't going to ship phones with unusable app stores, so they need to use alternatives. It's the same reason UC Browser and QQ Browser are so popular in China.
- jaxondu 8y agoI'm curious why there aren't more app store outside China, as evidently from China example, the app store business is sustainable, and Android outside China has a bigger market.
- lern_too_spel 8y agoSamsung, Motorola, Amazon, etc. have tried. The trick is to convince all the developers to publish on your app store, so the users will use your app store. They're not going to bother if the phones also have the Google Play Store. The phone manufacturers need to include the Play Store or users won't buy the phones. There is a large first mover advantage.
- jdietrich 8y agoPlay Store is the default app store on essentially all Android devices aside from the Amazon Kindle Fire. Adding a third-party app store involves enabling sideloading in the system settings and manually downloading an APK. Why would a user go to that effort, when essentially all Android apps are already available on the Play Store?
- kodablah 8y agoAlternatively, how much does Google gain by having a platform that allows companies to bypass the Play store? Myself, a tiny and possibly unrepresentative data point, counts as one customer who chooses them specifically for this reason.
- mkhalil 8y agoI wonder if this becomes a norm in the Android freemium gaming community, will they start advertising more Android ads to iPhone users. Maybe even start offering free "trade-up" program if they spend enough. If a user spends $1000, and 30% goes to Apple, that's $300 that could of bought the user a dedicated gaming device that will allow them to avoid that 30% tax. I love Apple, but 30% for in-app purchases is something I will never find comfortable. I get the exposure, but a game like Fortnite already has enough exposure. Will freemium gaming companies eventually produce their own device to avoid this 30%. Only time will tell, but I can say that if I had a game generating $300 million in revenue, and 60 million went to Apple, I wouldn't mind spending a few million in research on how to get out of paying that 60 million for the next year.
- miguelrochefort 8y ago> If a user spends $1000, and 30% goes to Apple, that's $300 that could of bought the user a dedicated gaming device that will allow them to avoid that 30% tax. How many iOS users willing to invest $300 on a low-end Android device to play Fortnite in order to start saving 30% after spending over $700 in in-app purchases do you think exist in the world?
- grenoire 8y agoEnough to pay off more than a few annual developer salaries.
- charlesdm 8y agoProbably a significant amount
- miguelrochefort 8y agoIf you're rich enough to spend $1000 on mobile games, you probably don't care about a 30% saving.
- charlesdm 8y ago
- lunaru 8y agoThe funny thing about Google as a Gatekeeper is that it's already a Gatekeeper via search. Even in a world where there are no 30% distribution shares, most products still live and die by their ranking on search results for either brand searches or long tail keywords. It's not uncommon to see brands buying their own name as keywords just to rank #1 on search results pages that are more and more fully loaded with ads above-the-fold, including competitors who buy keywords against well know brands. The Play store is just additional icing on the cake. They're not losing sleep over the one unicorn exception known as Fortnite. 99.9% of other companies do not have the word of mouth to overcome the various gates, whether it's Google or Apple or Steam.
- baybal2 8y agoWell, biggest apps are the ones strongarming platform vendors. Weixin, for example, threatened to quit apple app store because of in app purchases. Apple's Chinese C-levels were personally sent to Shenzhen appeasing Tencent when they began intentionally degrading weixin's functionality for users with Chinese IPs.
- phobosdeimos 8y agoI wonder how much Google regrets not being a walled garden like iOS.
- Teknoman117 8y agoAmazon Video / Prime Video takes the exact same approach. You have to sideload Amazon's app store to install the player.
- learc83 8y agoLooks like it's on google play right now, and I have it installed and don't remember sideloading.
- Teknoman117 8y agoInteresting. It wasn’t always there. https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/splash/sd/t/appstore https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/splash/sd/t/appstore
- m52go 8y agoI hope this becomes a trend but there should be an easy way for non-savvy users to check keys & hashes to make sure they're not duped with tainted binaries.
- 0xakhil 8y agoI understand the perspective of most of the comments here. Yes, google is not really loosing 50 million bucks. But, isnt a major fraction of what would be spend on fortnite is a lost income which otherwise would have been spent on playstore? And this lost income would be significant since fortnite is massively successful?
- ghostbrainalpha 8y agoWhat's crazy to me is that the 30% fee is standardized across every app in the exact same way. As an Indi game developer, the 30% fee is totally worth the trade for help in discovery. The play store has received about $1000, for their distribution service with my game. But a game like Fortnite receives almost the identical service from Google and is charged 50 million? Sure some costs scale, like bandwith.... so its not exactly apples to apples, but WAY to close in my opinion. Would Fortnite be on the Play Store if Google charged 5%, or even 10%. The real issue is the unreasonableness in this pricing structure.
- znebby 8y agoIt was my understanding that Google / Apple do not charge a fee on in-app purchases which are not platform specific and which use third-party payment processing. Never having played Fortnite, I assumed that in-app purchases are specific to your account and would carry-over if you moved from Android to iOS. Is that not the case?
- zakkeg 8y agoWhat would be a reasonable split between Google and app developers? Or is there a better method that Google should use, like charging X% for individual services?
- jpdus 8y agoI have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I am still a big fan of Android´s openess (at least compared to the walled garden that is iOS) and I think it should the right of every company or developer to NOT use a closed platform to distribute its app. However on the other hand, this move by Epic sets a dangerous precedent: Factually, Google get´s economically punished for being more open than Apple. This does not feel right for me. From a business point-of-view (when sideloading becomes more common) the "right" move for Google would be to fork AOSP, make new Android versions as closed as iOS (while still distributed for free) and prevent any sideloading. No sane CEO who is measured by increasing shareholder value could justify stayig open if this jeopardizes the revenues without providing major benefits. I, as a user, think this is a sad and alarming development. However, apparently most comments and media do not share this opinion? Are there any reasons why Google deserves no revenues while Apple get´s 30%? When there are none, this situation can't be sustainable from an economic point of view.
- stale2002 8y agoNo. Neither of the companies "deserve" anything. If I bought a phone, it is my phone, and I am free to do what I want with it, including installing software that these companies don't approve of.
- potta_coffee 8y agoI currently tolerate Google apps on my phone because Android is just open _enough_ for me to get by. If Google were to put walls around Android in this way, I'd never use anything Google ever again.
- youseecomrade 8y agoI can't find the article but I remember reading how Google is closing the platform more and more. That's the reason why many people are forced to use MicroG since things are routed through Google Play Services. So in many ways you already "need" Google in your phone for certain apps to work correctly. There's also a rant from CopperheadOS' twitter about how Google make things worse and worse for ROM developers. I would love to see an updated article about this whole subject.
- zakkeg 8y agoI doubt this would change anything for Epic Games because of Tim Sweeney's opinions on stores but what is a good revenue split between developers and Google?
- bdz 8y agoCEO of Epic >The 30% store tax is a high cost in a world where game developers' 70% must cover all the cost of developing, operating, and supporting their games. There's a rationale for this on console where there's enormous investment in hardware, often sold below cost, and marketing campaigns in broad partnership with publishers. But on open platforms, 30% is disproportionate to the cost of the services these stores perform, such as payment processing, download bandwidth, and customer service. We're intimately familiar with these costs from our experience operating Fortnite as a direct-to-customer service on PC and Mac. https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2018-fortnite-on-android-doesnt-use-google-play-confirmed https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2018-fortn... And another interesting quote from him >If you look at it, the stores on the smartphone platforms actually do very little. They’ll put ads up in front of your game. When you search for Fortnite on iOS you’ll often get PUBG or Minecraft ads. Whoever bought that ad in front of us is the top result when searching for Fortnite. It’s just a bad experience. Why not just make the game available direct to users, instead of having the store get between us and our customers and inject all kinds of cruft like that? It’s a general criticism I have of the smartphone platforms right now. https://venturebeat.com/2018/08/03/tim-sweeney-epics-ceo-on-fortnite-on-android-skipping-google-play-and-the-open-metaverse/2/ https://venturebeat.com/2018/08/03/tim-sweeney-epics-ceo-on-...
- ksec 8y agoHow about the 30% of store tax must cover the cost of developing, operating and supporting their Open Platforms Operating System? Along with payment processing, download bandwidth, and customer service? Google doesn't charge them a cent for using Android. As a matter of fact if you don't like the Google Store, Maps, and Search it has to offer for free, you could have forked the whole thing and tidy up all the loose end and call it something else.
- Pissompons 8y ago> How about the 30% of store tax must cover the cost of developing, operating and supporting their Open Platforms Operating System? > Google doesn't charge them a cent for using Android. Why should Epic care about Android's development costs? They don't pay Microsoft a cent for Windows, why should they pay Google for Android? Google chose this business model, software developers certainly have no obligation to support it. > Along with payment processing, download bandwidth, and customer service? Epic has all this infrastructure already, they need it for their PC customers. Why overpay for Google's?
- solarkraft 8y ago"Google will lose" what? They won't gain from that particular source. They'll still make fucking BILLIONS. Epic Games will save 50M$.
- ssalka 8y agoThis article title bugs me because it implies that Google _inherently deserves_ to make $50m from a game that they neither developed nor previously offered through the Play Store. IMO, they're not losing _anything_ - they're just not gaining the extra revenue they would have gotten had Epic chosen to go the "usual" route.
- gok 8y agoI wonder how many people won’t buy Fortnite hats because getting their CC out is so much more friction than just charging it to your Google account.