> (I think even 2-3% fee is too much for doing basically nothing, but that is another discussion). My guess is that the play store fee works more like a tax on

> (I think even 2-3% fee is too much for doing basically nothing, but that is another discussion). My guess is that the play store fee works more like a tax on a closed ecosystem than a price for a service. For example, when the government needs to pay for a more expansive healthcare bill, they may decide it makes more economic sense (or is more politically viable) to raise the additional funding through a tax that doesn't go back to most of the people who receive the benefits. So maybe they raise capital gains taxes, etc. Likewise, while Google is an ads company, and running Android does benefit them some in that regard (e.g. ecosystem lockin), they're not running it as a charity. Android being given away for free, and many phones being subsidized, both benefit a lot of people, and because Google has more or less complete control of the market, they've decided the best way to pay for it is to tax the Play store, instead of charging those people for the benefit. They important thing I'm trying to point out here is that they could do it differently - they could charge for Android, or require subscriptions to use more of their services, but they've decided the best way to monetize is through the store. In this case, the question of whether the fee is "reasonable" for what Google provides to app developers isn't quite as significant as it would be were Google simply providing a product on the free market. But in this case I suspect you're both right, anyway, and this likely has more to do with data collection.