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I'm really hoping someone wakes up and realizes the problem is not the fees but that consumers don't know about them. Let the consumer be informed about Google

I'm really hoping someone wakes up and realizes the problem is not the fees but that consumers don't know about them. Let the consumer be informed about Google and Apple's rake on all their in-app charges. The outrage will take care of the rest. Not sure about Google, but Apple has deliberately prohibited developers from itemizing the 30% fee for consumers. That simple rule is what keeps their money pipe flowing. Market forces don't work when pricing is opaque.

savant_penguin 5y ago
The prices aren't invisible to the companies putting the app on the Google store. In principle they could try and use a different store with lower fees and reduce their prices for the same margins couldn't they?
- donmcronald 5y ago
  They mean for the average app purchaser: $0.70 - App $0.30 - Apple Fee $1.00 - Total And I agree. The reason it’s obfuscated is because people would instantly realize it’s bad value.
  - SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
    Isn’t Apple’s fee 15% now? However, I do agree. It should be shown to the user like this.
    - gusgus01 5y ago
      Only for developers making less that 1 million in net sales per year will the fee be 15%. For every other developer, it's still 30%.
      - SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
        First million is at 15% for everyone I figure?
        wlesieutre 5y ago
        I believe that's how Google is doing it, but Apple is not
        banana_giraffe 5y ago
        Google does a 15% progressive fee for the first $1mil. Apple sorta does the same, though once you cross the $1mil threshold, you pay a 30% cut next year on all your sales.
        pascoej 5y ago
        Only recently in response to all this anti-trust stuff.
        extra88 5y ago
        This article [0] says the Play Store takes 15% from the first million but Apple's store takes 30% of everything once you pass one million/year. But it also makes it clear that only a very small percentage of apps in either store make more than one million/year. Another article [1] says 98% of developers in the Apple store would be below one million/year but also that that long tail generates only 5% of the store's revenue. There are a tiny number of apps that are enormous winners, games I assume, and there's everything else. [0] https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/18/data-shows-how-few-google-play-developers-will-pay-the-higher-30-commission-after-policy-change/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/18/data-shows-how-few-google-... [1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/18/21572302/apple-app-store-small-business-program-commission-cut-15-percent-reduction https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/18/21572302/apple-app-store...
        sim_card_map 5y ago
        > but Apple's store takes 30% of everything once you pass one million/year So it's much better to earn 999k instead of 1.1 million...
    - smolyeet 5y ago
      If your app doesn't make over a certain amount. Large apps still have to
    - donmcronald 5y ago
      > Isn’t Apple’s fee 15% now? I think both Apple and Google did that. It's a desperate attempt to avoid regulation IMO. I think both should be forced to facilitate competing app stores. There should be no mercy for them after a decade of anti-competitive price gouging.
  - ralph84 5y ago
    Meh. For a consumer with historical context it seems like an incredible value. Apps used to cost $49.95 at Egghead, and Egghead was certainly taking a bigger cut than 30 cents. Apple fucked ISVs by dramatically driving down the cost of apps, not by taking a cut for distribution.
  - 1000100_1000101 5y ago
    It's bad value for a few big actors who sell enough to be able to bulk aggregate a lot of international transactions. It's great value for most small developers, as far as I can see. Imagine you release your app, and you expect to hit a few thousands users... except those users are world-wide. Now imagine attempting to figure out how to process credit cards from 100 different countries, register your business enough to be able to file tax records for those 100 countries, actually file taxes for those 100 countries every year, etc. Sure $3,000 of your $10,000 went to Apple, Google Play or whatever, but it would have gone towards a huge number of other costs if you'd tried to go at it alone.
  - CubsFan1060 5y ago
    Reality -- nobody cares. The consumer is paying $1 in that scenario no matter what. If the Apple fee goes away, then the developer is going to keep the price at $1.
    - jpambrun 5y ago
      I care. For the same price I buy CD Projekt red games on gog, and I buy games on epic store rather than steam because I know more money goes to those who did the real work.
      - CubsFan1060 5y ago
        Ok, that's a fair point. I'll say "very few people care". Epic store is an interesting example. They are losing massive amounts of money. We will see if that is sustainable or not. At least from a consumer point of view, this doesn't seem to change the price much: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/05/why-lower-platform-fees-dont-lead-to-lower-prices-on-the-epic-games-store/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/05/why-lower-platform-fe...
- lvzwilson 5y ago
  Some companies already do this, at least on iOS. For example, the perks you can buy on Tinder are cheaper on its webapp than on its iOS app.
- socialist_coder 5y ago
  In principle, yes, but in reality, you can't use a different app store or payment provider. If you buy a Google Android phone, you have the Google Play Store. That's it. Maybe you can install some other store but 99% of consumers will never do that. On Apple, you have to use the App Store. It's the only game in town. This is why its a monopoly. They could charge 50% and devs would still be forced to do it. The developers and people who complain about this just want to be able to use other payment providers in their apps. They don't want to be forced to use Google Play or Apple. Let other payment providers in so they can compete on fees, customer satisfaction, chargebacks, security, etc.
shadilay 5y ago
Absolutely. Let consumers have the choice of paying for the convenience of paying via Apple/Google or paying another way. People still buy games on steam even if it's cheaper elsewhere and they know they're paying for convenience.
jollybean 5y ago
This is an interesting point but it would apply to almost every line of business. Retail charges 60% markup. Imagine the outrage. 30% is a gross margin and doesn't take into consideration a lot of thigns. It'd be nice if Americans were exposed to the margins of everything but I'm not sure how much would change. The 'end price' for consumers is fair enough - the issue is one of competitiveness and that Android phones are oriented towards Google's stores is the root of the problem.
- pcurve 5y ago
  I tend to agree that most people wouldn't care about Google's cut. The only way to bring the fee down is to create more 'stores' where developers can sell their apps. Then the margin will completely collapse from 30% to near 0.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    All in the credit processing and transactional costs and overhead (i.e. charge-backs) will be pushing 5%. If there is remotely any manual intervention for support, or even validating apps, that's going to be real money for any entity, then there's cost there. Then business overhead, marketing support, campaigns etc.. And then profit margins. I suggest a normal markup is going to look something like 8-12% for digital distribution. That's where I think the fee would sit if there were no Google Play and maybe 4 or 5 major competitors all specializing a little bit differently.
    - simondotau 5y ago
      Precisely. Epic hasn't even demonstrated that they can run their own digital store profitably with a 12% commission—and the Epic Store isn't exactly the most sophisticated bit of infrastructure. Barely more than a half-baked Windows downloader with DRM. Google and Apple now offer a 15% rate to the overwhelming majority of developers. Whether you call it a response to the market or a cynical ploy to stave off Government intervention, it means small and medium developers can no longer be seen as a profit centre for these mega corporations. Apple actually has an additional compelling argument, which is the near-total elimination of software piracy on the iOS platform. I don't know what the real-world numbers are, but I honestly wouldn't be surprised if iOS developers ended up earning substantially more from the absence of piracy than they lost paying a 30% commission to Apple.
maxpert 5y ago
At risk of sounding idiot and down votes. Can you explain me when was the last time you saw the itemized breakdown of a toy, or a T-Shirt you bought in Target/Walmart? Same is true for Nintendo, Sony, and Xbox systems. Why do we think it's fair for Walmart to not show exact breakdown on how much commission they are charging for keeping something on shelf and Google is wrong about it?
- rebelos 5y ago
  I strongly believe that Nintendo, Sony, & Xbox should also disclose their rake. However, it's also well understood that they take heavy losses on consoles that are made up on game margins. The same cannot be said for Google and Apple. Retailers have substantial costs associated with distributing products and physical shelf space is a scarce resource. There are, by comparison, no limits to the number of apps on Apple and Google's "stores" and we know that the costs of maintaining them are quite low because the respective business units are wildly profitable. The points you raised are the rather beguiling false equivalencies that have been propagated largely by people with a vested interest in preserving this system and averting scrutiny.
  - Talanes 5y ago
    Exactly how profitable does a market need to be to require showing margins to the customer? Where are you drawing the threshold?
    - rebelos 5y ago
      Who said anything about a requirement? It suffices to make it illegal to prohibit disclosing the fee. Businesses can decide if they want to do so. The point is that this 'invisible rake' model is being exploited to nullify free market forces in service of obscene profit. Many businesses (not just Apple and Google) have realized they can leverage this to make considerably more money than they otherwise might.
      - Talanes 5y ago
tehjoker 5y ago
Why would consumers care? Maybe for an indie developer they think is getting screwed, but if an app costs a dollar, the consumer's price point is a dollar. They know that if the developer makes more money they aren't going to decrease the price of the app. Market forces produced consolidation, as they always do. Consolidation and capture of distribution, which happens in most industries, sets the pricing of products using cartel and gangster tactics. App stores aren't any different from the railroads of the 1800s or Walmart or Amazon inflicting all kinds of pricing tricks on suppliers. The question we should be asking is: Why should the owner of a distribution network get to retain all that power to themselves? Distribution networks should be highly regulated, price controlled, or state owned. All else just yields completely unaccountable power to an unelected private entity that gets to control the material state of the world.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
serial_dev 5y ago
I strongly disagree, the problem is that the users and developers don't have any other (viable) option for distributing their mobile apps on these platforms (iOS and Android). I cannot practically create my "Awesome Store" where I have the best ranking system and I ask 0.1% for fees. As a consumer, I don't care if the fee is 30%. I have no idea of that's a lot or just the right amount of money for the services that the stores provide. I don't know if it makes the app devs life much harder or if it's just a slight inconvenience. Do you know or do you care who is making the profits (and how much) when you buy a coke in your local grocery shop? I don't, and no matter of math and public information could make me care about it as a consumer.
- rtpg 5y ago
  Is this true for Android? I guess rooting is a _bit_ of a problem, but otherwise you could do run alternative stores? I mean it's hard to actually make money off of that, of course. For iOS it's essentially impossible, from my understanding. But there's stuff on android to let you install apps, after all?
  - 29083011397778 5y ago
    Sure! But your notifications are liable to be killed off in the background, as you shouldn't be relying on Google Play Services while shipping on Super-Awesome-Store. And if you want your users to install your app store, they'll have to know where to go and tell the OS "I want this installed, it's not malware". And every time any single app through there requires an update, it must be manually approved and installed by the user. Google's evergreen background updates are exclusive to them. And if Google Play Protect decides you store is malware because it distributes apps that Google thinks harms users, any user with (the heavily pushed) Google Play Protect turned on likely won't be using your store for long. But it is technically possible.
- malwrar 5y ago
  "Google and etc won't even let us tell you about how insane their tax is" is a much easier fight to win than "...also please legally mandate they allow us to run whatever we want on their phones, thanks" and both fights will probably lead to the same outcome.
jussij 5y ago
> Market forces don't work when pricing is opaque. Since the service is a monopoly there are no market forces at play. That monopoly means it's a 'take it or leave it' situation.
mclightning 5y ago
Oh really? Tell me how did outrage over Youtube ads fixed it so far? or, outrage against Facebook?
deviledeggs 5y ago
You're not even allowed to tell people about the fee on a page soliciting donations. Google and Apple are a monopoly. We need antitrust.
xboxnolifes 5y ago
I agree with this a lot, even with other markets. Price transparency doesn't solve all issues, but I fail to see how it would ever hurt the consumer. That, and it feels like a much easier win to fight for than most anti-competition issues.

savant_penguin 5y ago

The prices aren't invisible to the companies putting the app on the Google store. In principle they could try and use a different store with lower fees and reduce their prices for the same margins couldn't they?

donmcronald 5y ago
They mean for the average app purchaser: $0.70 - App $0.30 - Apple Fee $1.00 - Total And I agree. The reason it’s obfuscated is because people would instantly realize it’s bad value.
- SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
  Isn’t Apple’s fee 15% now? However, I do agree. It should be shown to the user like this.
  - gusgus01 5y ago
    Only for developers making less that 1 million in net sales per year will the fee be 15%. For every other developer, it's still 30%.
    - SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
      First million is at 15% for everyone I figure?
      - wlesieutre 5y ago
        I believe that's how Google is doing it, but Apple is not
      - banana_giraffe 5y ago
        Google does a 15% progressive fee for the first $1mil. Apple sorta does the same, though once you cross the $1mil threshold, you pay a 30% cut next year on all your sales.
        pascoej 5y ago
        Only recently in response to all this anti-trust stuff.
      - extra88 5y ago
        This article [0] says the Play Store takes 15% from the first million but Apple's store takes 30% of everything once you pass one million/year. But it also makes it clear that only a very small percentage of apps in either store make more than one million/year. Another article [1] says 98% of developers in the Apple store would be below one million/year but also that that long tail generates only 5% of the store's revenue. There are a tiny number of apps that are enormous winners, games I assume, and there's everything else. [0] https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/18/data-shows-how-few-google-play-developers-will-pay-the-higher-30-commission-after-policy-change/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/18/data-shows-how-few-google-... [1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/18/21572302/apple-app-store-small-business-program-commission-cut-15-percent-reduction https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/18/21572302/apple-app-store...
        sim_card_map 5y ago
        > but Apple's store takes 30% of everything once you pass one million/year So it's much better to earn 999k instead of 1.1 million...
  - smolyeet 5y ago
    If your app doesn't make over a certain amount. Large apps still have to
  - donmcronald 5y ago
    > Isn’t Apple’s fee 15% now? I think both Apple and Google did that. It's a desperate attempt to avoid regulation IMO. I think both should be forced to facilitate competing app stores. There should be no mercy for them after a decade of anti-competitive price gouging.
- ralph84 5y ago
  Meh. For a consumer with historical context it seems like an incredible value. Apps used to cost $49.95 at Egghead, and Egghead was certainly taking a bigger cut than 30 cents. Apple fucked ISVs by dramatically driving down the cost of apps, not by taking a cut for distribution.
- 1000100_1000101 5y ago
  It's bad value for a few big actors who sell enough to be able to bulk aggregate a lot of international transactions. It's great value for most small developers, as far as I can see. Imagine you release your app, and you expect to hit a few thousands users... except those users are world-wide. Now imagine attempting to figure out how to process credit cards from 100 different countries, register your business enough to be able to file tax records for those 100 countries, actually file taxes for those 100 countries every year, etc. Sure $3,000 of your $10,000 went to Apple, Google Play or whatever, but it would have gone towards a huge number of other costs if you'd tried to go at it alone.
- CubsFan1060 5y ago
  Reality -- nobody cares. The consumer is paying $1 in that scenario no matter what. If the Apple fee goes away, then the developer is going to keep the price at $1.
  - jpambrun 5y ago
    I care. For the same price I buy CD Projekt red games on gog, and I buy games on epic store rather than steam because I know more money goes to those who did the real work.
    - CubsFan1060 5y ago
      Ok, that's a fair point. I'll say "very few people care". Epic store is an interesting example. They are losing massive amounts of money. We will see if that is sustainable or not. At least from a consumer point of view, this doesn't seem to change the price much: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/05/why-lower-platform-fees-dont-lead-to-lower-prices-on-the-epic-games-store/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/05/why-lower-platform-fe...
lvzwilson 5y ago
Some companies already do this, at least on iOS. For example, the perks you can buy on Tinder are cheaper on its webapp than on its iOS app.
socialist_coder 5y ago
In principle, yes, but in reality, you can't use a different app store or payment provider. If you buy a Google Android phone, you have the Google Play Store. That's it. Maybe you can install some other store but 99% of consumers will never do that. On Apple, you have to use the App Store. It's the only game in town. This is why its a monopoly. They could charge 50% and devs would still be forced to do it. The developers and people who complain about this just want to be able to use other payment providers in their apps. They don't want to be forced to use Google Play or Apple. Let other payment providers in so they can compete on fees, customer satisfaction, chargebacks, security, etc.

shadilay 5y ago

Absolutely. Let consumers have the choice of paying for the convenience of paying via Apple/Google or paying another way. People still buy games on steam even if it's cheaper elsewhere and they know they're paying for convenience.

jollybean 5y ago

This is an interesting point but it would apply to almost every line of business. Retail charges 60% markup. Imagine the outrage. 30% is a gross margin and doesn't take into consideration a lot of thigns. It'd be nice if Americans were exposed to the margins of everything but I'm not sure how much would change. The 'end price' for consumers is fair enough - the issue is one of competitiveness and that Android phones are oriented towards Google's stores is the root of the problem.

pcurve 5y ago
I tend to agree that most people wouldn't care about Google's cut. The only way to bring the fee down is to create more 'stores' where developers can sell their apps. Then the margin will completely collapse from 30% to near 0.
- jollybean 5y ago
  All in the credit processing and transactional costs and overhead (i.e. charge-backs) will be pushing 5%. If there is remotely any manual intervention for support, or even validating apps, that's going to be real money for any entity, then there's cost there. Then business overhead, marketing support, campaigns etc.. And then profit margins. I suggest a normal markup is going to look something like 8-12% for digital distribution. That's where I think the fee would sit if there were no Google Play and maybe 4 or 5 major competitors all specializing a little bit differently.
  - simondotau 5y ago
    Precisely. Epic hasn't even demonstrated that they can run their own digital store profitably with a 12% commission—and the Epic Store isn't exactly the most sophisticated bit of infrastructure. Barely more than a half-baked Windows downloader with DRM. Google and Apple now offer a 15% rate to the overwhelming majority of developers. Whether you call it a response to the market or a cynical ploy to stave off Government intervention, it means small and medium developers can no longer be seen as a profit centre for these mega corporations. Apple actually has an additional compelling argument, which is the near-total elimination of software piracy on the iOS platform. I don't know what the real-world numbers are, but I honestly wouldn't be surprised if iOS developers ended up earning substantially more from the absence of piracy than they lost paying a 30% commission to Apple.

maxpert 5y ago

At risk of sounding idiot and down votes. Can you explain me when was the last time you saw the itemized breakdown of a toy, or a T-Shirt you bought in Target/Walmart? Same is true for Nintendo, Sony, and Xbox systems. Why do we think it's fair for Walmart to not show exact breakdown on how much commission they are charging for keeping something on shelf and Google is wrong about it?

rebelos 5y ago
I strongly believe that Nintendo, Sony, & Xbox should also disclose their rake. However, it's also well understood that they take heavy losses on consoles that are made up on game margins. The same cannot be said for Google and Apple. Retailers have substantial costs associated with distributing products and physical shelf space is a scarce resource. There are, by comparison, no limits to the number of apps on Apple and Google's "stores" and we know that the costs of maintaining them are quite low because the respective business units are wildly profitable. The points you raised are the rather beguiling false equivalencies that have been propagated largely by people with a vested interest in preserving this system and averting scrutiny.
- Talanes 5y ago
  Exactly how profitable does a market need to be to require showing margins to the customer? Where are you drawing the threshold?
  - rebelos 5y ago
    Who said anything about a requirement? It suffices to make it illegal to prohibit disclosing the fee. Businesses can decide if they want to do so. The point is that this 'invisible rake' model is being exploited to nullify free market forces in service of obscene profit. Many businesses (not just Apple and Google) have realized they can leverage this to make considerably more money than they otherwise might.
    - Talanes 5y ago

tehjoker 5y ago

Why would consumers care? Maybe for an indie developer they think is getting screwed, but if an app costs a dollar, the consumer's price point is a dollar. They know that if the developer makes more money they aren't going to decrease the price of the app. Market forces produced consolidation, as they always do. Consolidation and capture of distribution, which happens in most industries, sets the pricing of products using cartel and gangster tactics. App stores aren't any different from the railroads of the 1800s or Walmart or Amazon inflicting all kinds of pricing tricks on suppliers. The question we should be asking is: Why should the owner of a distribution network get to retain all that power to themselves? Distribution networks should be highly regulated, price controlled, or state owned. All else just yields completely unaccountable power to an unelected private entity that gets to control the material state of the world.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

serial_dev 5y ago

I strongly disagree, the problem is that the users and developers don't have any other (viable) option for distributing their mobile apps on these platforms (iOS and Android). I cannot practically create my "Awesome Store" where I have the best ranking system and I ask 0.1% for fees. As a consumer, I don't care if the fee is 30%. I have no idea of that's a lot or just the right amount of money for the services that the stores provide. I don't know if it makes the app devs life much harder or if it's just a slight inconvenience. Do you know or do you care who is making the profits (and how much) when you buy a coke in your local grocery shop? I don't, and no matter of math and public information could make me care about it as a consumer.

rtpg 5y ago
Is this true for Android? I guess rooting is a _bit_ of a problem, but otherwise you could do run alternative stores? I mean it's hard to actually make money off of that, of course. For iOS it's essentially impossible, from my understanding. But there's stuff on android to let you install apps, after all?
- 29083011397778 5y ago
  Sure! But your notifications are liable to be killed off in the background, as you shouldn't be relying on Google Play Services while shipping on Super-Awesome-Store. And if you want your users to install your app store, they'll have to know where to go and tell the OS "I want this installed, it's not malware". And every time any single app through there requires an update, it must be manually approved and installed by the user. Google's evergreen background updates are exclusive to them. And if Google Play Protect decides you store is malware because it distributes apps that Google thinks harms users, any user with (the heavily pushed) Google Play Protect turned on likely won't be using your store for long. But it is technically possible.
malwrar 5y ago
"Google and etc won't even let us tell you about how insane their tax is" is a much easier fight to win than "...also please legally mandate they allow us to run whatever we want on their phones, thanks" and both fights will probably lead to the same outcome.

jussij 5y ago

> Market forces don't work when pricing is opaque. Since the service is a monopoly there are no market forces at play. That monopoly means it's a 'take it or leave it' situation.

mclightning 5y ago

Oh really? Tell me how did outrage over Youtube ads fixed it so far? or, outrage against Facebook?

deviledeggs 5y ago

You're not even allowed to tell people about the fee on a page soliciting donations. Google and Apple are a monopoly. We need antitrust.

xboxnolifes 5y ago

I agree with this a lot, even with other markets. Price transparency doesn't solve all issues, but I fail to see how it would ever hurt the consumer. That, and it feels like a much easier win to fight for than most anti-competition issues.