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> 30% of every sale is extortion This is either ignorance or delusion. Brick and mortar stores take a lot more of a cut than that, and it isn't like Google's d

> 30% of every sale is extortion This is either ignorance or delusion. Brick and mortar stores take a lot more of a cut than that, and it isn't like Google's distribution infrastructure is free or something. It's a bit like saying developers demanding 6-figure salaries is extortion. How the hell did we get to this point? Where ostensibly reasonable people feel entitled to shove their crapware on any storefront they want without paying for it? > but even worse, and further proving the point, is that they prohibit taking payments through any other channel. How so? Unlike with Apple, You can deploy Android applications without the store, or distribute on a different storefront for Android. > How is it not illegal for the platform to force the use of their own payment service? Companies choose what methods of payment they'll accept all the time. I can't buy a pizza with XBox Bux[0] or whatever the fuck either. > Isn't this classic misuse of a monopoly? No. For one, Android and the Google Play Store are not a monopoly. Android doesn't even have a majority market share in the US. I generally agree that giant corporate conglomerates like Google are a bad thing for basically everyone, but I don't think that diluting the meaning of "monopoly" helps anyone, and neither do silly entitled arguments against paying a commission for distribution. [0] As an aside, it is especially silly to me that people claim Google Play Store and Apple Store are bad but seem completely fine with the exact same practices on their game consoles.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago
Some of your points are very valid. I do think there is a big difference between Apple and Google. I also think there is a difference between consoles and general purpose devices that have not being properly explored by anyone and at some point should be identified by the law. That being said, digital rights are a disaster right now, it will take ages before it's fixed. Consoles might need to be fixed too: for some reason, digital items cost the same or more than the physical counterpart, but provide you with less (can't re-sell, can't lend). And this doesn't take into account yet the fact that digital libraries will disappear when people die (can't leave to family your account, in theory). So consoles are not a good example, they are the most abusive ones.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  > I also think there is a difference between consoles and general purpose devices that have not being properly explored by anyone and at some point should be identified by the law. I disagree and would say that today the difference between these devices is arbitrary. Game console manufacturers don't allow Outlook or Google Docs or whatever on their stores, but there's no reason they couldn't be there. Their absolute control over their platform is no different than Apple's except that Apple is less restrictive. > Consoles might need to be fixed too: for some reason, digital items cost the same or more than the physical counterpart, but provide you with less (can't re-sell, can't lend). And this doesn't take into account yet the fact that digital libraries will disappear when people die (can't leave to family your account, in theory). So consoles are not a good example, they are the most abusive ones. I am by no means defending this practice in consoles. I'm objecting to carving out an exception for them. If you believe that phones should be more open as platforms then you should also believe that the consoles should be too.
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago
    Good point. Yeah, I'd rather have the same rights digitally everywhere. Makes also things easier. I vote with my wallet and avoid buying consoles (but I can't stop my wife from owning one), but there isn't much more you can do about it, sadly. Politicians tend to be controlled by the money, everyone turns a blind eye to the idea of real digital rights.
mrweasel 5y ago
One small point: profit on retail games are at most 7% and frequently no higher that 3 to 4%. We often saw brick and mortar stores lose money on new releases as advertising and try to upsell electronics. Clothing, toys and electronics do have much higher margins. Toys are at least 40% and I worked with a team dealing with eletronics, if they couldn’t make at least 50% they didn’t want to deal with it. Gaming console is the exception, here margins are 0% or less.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  I stand corrected. I was only second-hand aware of the kinds of markups you see on physical goods like toys and electronics you see in B&Ms and didn't realize that software was different.
  - mrweasel 5y ago
    Please note that those 3-7% margins only apply to games. I never dealt with other types of software. To make money on reselling games from Blizzard, EA and others you have to be an insanely talented buyer and have very little overhead.
- judge2020 5y ago
  > Gaming console is the exception, here margins are 0% or less. For reference: https://www.gamesradar.com/ps5-is-being-sold-at-a-loss-but-has-generated-record-gaming-revenue-for-sony/ https://www.gamesradar.com/ps5-is-being-sold-at-a-loss-but-h... For both game consoles and phones (mostly on the iOS side) the post-sale revenue is part of the overall profit scheme - PS5 hardware is sold very near-cost but all the money Sony makes off PSN and their cut of game sales becomes profit. Apple makes up-front margin from the hardware but also expects profit from in app purchases - if that wasn’t guaranteed, they might raise prices to make up the difference. Is it anti-consumer? Probably, for both the game console side and the phone side since the consumer ends up indirectly paying more after purchase.
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
> Brick and mortar stores take a lot more of a cut than that But they do not prohibit the producer from selling their goods elsewhere, and they are not a monopoly intermediary, unlike google. Also, Google has intentionally crippled Android and background app running, so you have to depend on FCM to deliver notifications, and you can't deliver FCM notifications uf app is installed via apk or fdroid or other third-party appstore.
- kitsunesoba 5y ago
  > Also, Google has intentionally crippled Android and background app running, so you have to depend on FCM to deliver notifications, and you can't deliver FCM notifications uf app is installed via apk or fdroid or other third-party appstore. FCM could indeed offer support for non-play-store apps, but weren’t background apps on Android leashed in because abuse of the capability was rampant and was torpedoing users’ battery life? I remember this being a pretty big Android issue for less technical users and an annoyance to more technical users.
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    > weren’t background apps on Android leashed in because abuse of the capability was rampant and was torpedoing users’ battery life? Yes, you can still run in the background but you need to show a persistent notification to that effect. The user can then choose whether to hide it.
    - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
      If the user hides it, the app loses background capabilities. Also, notification area becomes unusable if there are too many persistent notifications. Syncthing, VPN, xmpp client, and you almost have no space for regular notifications, they become stacked.
      - zozbot234 5y ago
        > If the user hides it, the app loses background capabilities. That seems quite incorrect to me. Source?
ehnto 5y ago
> How the hell did we get to this point? Where ostensibly reasonable people feel entitled to shove their crapware on any storefront they want without paying for it? Apple and Google have a duopoly with their respective app stores, they hold the keys to the majority of the customers since the customers only buy through their platforms. So it's different in at least that way. It's not as if I couldn't host my own downloads, take my own payments and give my own authentication, but no one could install my app without a long-winded process they are very unlikely to go through. It's not like they don't provide services for their cut, I get it, they host the infrastructure, maintain the platform and so on, but I only have to use their services because otherwise I'm selling to a void, a void that they created. This would not be the case had they not captured the entire consumer market with their app stores, and had all their default OS settings on their market leading phones default to only accept their app stores. If there was a vibrant ecosystem of third-party installer capabilities, say the ability to install something from a website easily with all my own infrastructure like in the wild west days, it wouldn't be an issue (customer easy, not tech wiz easy). But they lock it all up and funnel everyone through their stores, and so as a seller you're coerced into their ecosystem and they get to take whatever cut they want. We have no negotiating power, we are locked out of customers if we don't participate, and we are regularly screened and bullied by the app approval processes, so the comparison to extortion isn't as far-fetched as you're making it out to be. Here's a thought experiment, whenever someone complains about the app store banning their app and them losing all their income, tonnes of people reply with "You shouldn't have put all your eggs in one basket!" so okay, where are the other baskets? Where else can I sell an app? And be reasonable, be sensible, it's nowhere. There are no other options for a real business operating in a commercial reality. You can technically sell elsewhere, but I can technically sell chocolate bars in the desert, that doesn't make it a reasonable option.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
"Brick and mortar stores take a lot more of a cut than that" And feudal lords used to take even more. Apple is neither the former nor the latter. They dont maintain a physical supplt chain, or need to raise a fyrd
pgcj_poster 5y ago
> It's a bit like saying developers demanding 6-figure salaries is extortion. Developers don't typically make that much in any country except the US, and that seems mostly attributable to protectionist immigration laws. So I would agree with your analogy in that Google and US software developers are both in an unfairly advantageous bargaining position that one might call "extortionary" with some degree of hyperbole.
the_duke 5y ago
> This is either ignorance or delusion. Brick and mortar stores take a lot more of a cut than that This is a completely false equivalence, for two reasons. A) stores have very limited shelf space they need to allocate. They also carry the cost of logistics, keeping inventory and the risk of bad sales. The cost to app stores for reviews and distribution in comparison is tiny per unit and easily scalable. The only context where this could apply is highlighting of apps, but that is handled via separate advertisement. B) The high fees do not apply only to app sales but also to in-app transactions. This is where the cost is truly ridiculous and can be called extortion. Credit card companies, for comparison, charge a few percent. The EU has even limited the maximum interbank exchange fees to 0.2% in 2014. Visa and Mastercard seem to be doing just fine with that cut... (there are additional fees, but it still only a mounts to a few percent) The equivalence would be Walmart getting 30% for every in-game transaction for games that were bought at Walmart. On Android you can at least use other payment providers, but on Apple you have to use Apple Pay. > No. For one, Android and the Google Play Store are not a monopoly. Android doesn't even have a majority market share in the US. They are a duopoly. Many concerns that are relevant for monopolies apply to duo or oligopolies as well. The companies split up the market and arrive at a comfortable equilibrium where they can milk the customers. They might squabble for market share, but they also coordinate (directly or indirectly) to not hurt each other too much. This can be seen in the matching of the cut they take. The only reason the stores get away with their pricing is because there is no practical alternative for the average consumer for Android, and no alternative at all for iOS. The Google/Apple situation is indeed a classic economy textbook duopoly. Calling something "ignorance or delusion" is quite a strong statement with such shallow insight.
- tzs 5y ago
  > Credit card companies, for comparison, charge a few percent. The EU has even limited the maximum interbank exchange fees to 0.2% in 2014. There are fees other than those to processes a credit card payment. Each card brand has its own assorted assessment fees. Some are percentage based and some are pre transaction. Your payment processor also has fees, typically per transaction. For small transaction, such as a $1 app or song purchase, those fixed fees bring the processing cost to a lot more than 0.2%.
- 5y ago
freeflight 5y ago
> I generally agree that giant corporate conglomerates like Google are a bad thing for basically everyone, but I don't think that diluting the meaning of "monopoly" helps anyone, and neither do silly entitled arguments against paying a commission for distribution. Google and Apple very much represent a duopoly, that's just calling a spade a spade. Nor did I see anybody here argue they should just distribute other people's apps for free. The issue is over the size of the fee they demand and how they also demand to exclusively use their payment services, so they can extort their 30% fee on every single transaction even past the original distribution. To apply that example to a brick and mortar store would be the equivalent of the store getting a cut off attachments/replacements the customer directly orders from the manufacturer because the customer bought the original device in the brick and mortar store.
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
Sellers can sell at other stores.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago

Some of your points are very valid. I do think there is a big difference between Apple and Google. I also think there is a difference between consoles and general purpose devices that have not being properly explored by anyone and at some point should be identified by the law. That being said, digital rights are a disaster right now, it will take ages before it's fixed. Consoles might need to be fixed too: for some reason, digital items cost the same or more than the physical counterpart, but provide you with less (can't re-sell, can't lend). And this doesn't take into account yet the fact that digital libraries will disappear when people die (can't leave to family your account, in theory). So consoles are not a good example, they are the most abusive ones.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
> I also think there is a difference between consoles and general purpose devices that have not being properly explored by anyone and at some point should be identified by the law. I disagree and would say that today the difference between these devices is arbitrary. Game console manufacturers don't allow Outlook or Google Docs or whatever on their stores, but there's no reason they couldn't be there. Their absolute control over their platform is no different than Apple's except that Apple is less restrictive. > Consoles might need to be fixed too: for some reason, digital items cost the same or more than the physical counterpart, but provide you with less (can't re-sell, can't lend). And this doesn't take into account yet the fact that digital libraries will disappear when people die (can't leave to family your account, in theory). So consoles are not a good example, they are the most abusive ones. I am by no means defending this practice in consoles. I'm objecting to carving out an exception for them. If you believe that phones should be more open as platforms then you should also believe that the consoles should be too.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago
  Good point. Yeah, I'd rather have the same rights digitally everywhere. Makes also things easier. I vote with my wallet and avoid buying consoles (but I can't stop my wife from owning one), but there isn't much more you can do about it, sadly. Politicians tend to be controlled by the money, everyone turns a blind eye to the idea of real digital rights.

mrweasel 5y ago

One small point: profit on retail games are at most 7% and frequently no higher that 3 to 4%. We often saw brick and mortar stores lose money on new releases as advertising and try to upsell electronics. Clothing, toys and electronics do have much higher margins. Toys are at least 40% and I worked with a team dealing with eletronics, if they couldn’t make at least 50% they didn’t want to deal with it. Gaming console is the exception, here margins are 0% or less.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
I stand corrected. I was only second-hand aware of the kinds of markups you see on physical goods like toys and electronics you see in B&Ms and didn't realize that software was different.
- mrweasel 5y ago
  Please note that those 3-7% margins only apply to games. I never dealt with other types of software. To make money on reselling games from Blizzard, EA and others you have to be an insanely talented buyer and have very little overhead.
judge2020 5y ago
> Gaming console is the exception, here margins are 0% or less. For reference: https://www.gamesradar.com/ps5-is-being-sold-at-a-loss-but-has-generated-record-gaming-revenue-for-sony/ https://www.gamesradar.com/ps5-is-being-sold-at-a-loss-but-h... For both game consoles and phones (mostly on the iOS side) the post-sale revenue is part of the overall profit scheme - PS5 hardware is sold very near-cost but all the money Sony makes off PSN and their cut of game sales becomes profit. Apple makes up-front margin from the hardware but also expects profit from in app purchases - if that wasn’t guaranteed, they might raise prices to make up the difference. Is it anti-consumer? Probably, for both the game console side and the phone side since the consumer ends up indirectly paying more after purchase.

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago

> Brick and mortar stores take a lot more of a cut than that But they do not prohibit the producer from selling their goods elsewhere, and they are not a monopoly intermediary, unlike google. Also, Google has intentionally crippled Android and background app running, so you have to depend on FCM to deliver notifications, and you can't deliver FCM notifications uf app is installed via apk or fdroid or other third-party appstore.

kitsunesoba 5y ago
> Also, Google has intentionally crippled Android and background app running, so you have to depend on FCM to deliver notifications, and you can't deliver FCM notifications uf app is installed via apk or fdroid or other third-party appstore. FCM could indeed offer support for non-play-store apps, but weren’t background apps on Android leashed in because abuse of the capability was rampant and was torpedoing users’ battery life? I remember this being a pretty big Android issue for less technical users and an annoyance to more technical users.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  > weren’t background apps on Android leashed in because abuse of the capability was rampant and was torpedoing users’ battery life? Yes, you can still run in the background but you need to show a persistent notification to that effect. The user can then choose whether to hide it.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    If the user hides it, the app loses background capabilities. Also, notification area becomes unusable if there are too many persistent notifications. Syncthing, VPN, xmpp client, and you almost have no space for regular notifications, they become stacked.
    - zozbot234 5y ago
      > If the user hides it, the app loses background capabilities. That seems quite incorrect to me. Source?

ehnto 5y ago

> How the hell did we get to this point? Where ostensibly reasonable people feel entitled to shove their crapware on any storefront they want without paying for it? Apple and Google have a duopoly with their respective app stores, they hold the keys to the majority of the customers since the customers only buy through their platforms. So it's different in at least that way. It's not as if I couldn't host my own downloads, take my own payments and give my own authentication, but no one could install my app without a long-winded process they are very unlikely to go through. It's not like they don't provide services for their cut, I get it, they host the infrastructure, maintain the platform and so on, but I only have to use their services because otherwise I'm selling to a void, a void that they created. This would not be the case had they not captured the entire consumer market with their app stores, and had all their default OS settings on their market leading phones default to only accept their app stores. If there was a vibrant ecosystem of third-party installer capabilities, say the ability to install something from a website easily with all my own infrastructure like in the wild west days, it wouldn't be an issue (customer easy, not tech wiz easy). But they lock it all up and funnel everyone through their stores, and so as a seller you're coerced into their ecosystem and they get to take whatever cut they want. We have no negotiating power, we are locked out of customers if we don't participate, and we are regularly screened and bullied by the app approval processes, so the comparison to extortion isn't as far-fetched as you're making it out to be. Here's a thought experiment, whenever someone complains about the app store banning their app and them losing all their income, tonnes of people reply with "You shouldn't have put all your eggs in one basket!" so okay, where are the other baskets? Where else can I sell an app? And be reasonable, be sensible, it's nowhere. There are no other options for a real business operating in a commercial reality. You can technically sell elsewhere, but I can technically sell chocolate bars in the desert, that doesn't make it a reasonable option.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

"Brick and mortar stores take a lot more of a cut than that" And feudal lords used to take even more. Apple is neither the former nor the latter. They dont maintain a physical supplt chain, or need to raise a fyrd

pgcj_poster 5y ago

> It's a bit like saying developers demanding 6-figure salaries is extortion. Developers don't typically make that much in any country except the US, and that seems mostly attributable to protectionist immigration laws. So I would agree with your analogy in that Google and US software developers are both in an unfairly advantageous bargaining position that one might call "extortionary" with some degree of hyperbole.

the_duke 5y ago

> This is either ignorance or delusion. Brick and mortar stores take a lot more of a cut than that This is a completely false equivalence, for two reasons. A) stores have very limited shelf space they need to allocate. They also carry the cost of logistics, keeping inventory and the risk of bad sales. The cost to app stores for reviews and distribution in comparison is tiny per unit and easily scalable. The only context where this could apply is highlighting of apps, but that is handled via separate advertisement. B) The high fees do not apply only to app sales but also to in-app transactions. This is where the cost is truly ridiculous and can be called extortion. Credit card companies, for comparison, charge a few percent. The EU has even limited the maximum interbank exchange fees to 0.2% in 2014. Visa and Mastercard seem to be doing just fine with that cut... (there are additional fees, but it still only a mounts to a few percent) The equivalence would be Walmart getting 30% for every in-game transaction for games that were bought at Walmart. On Android you can at least use other payment providers, but on Apple you have to use Apple Pay. > No. For one, Android and the Google Play Store are not a monopoly. Android doesn't even have a majority market share in the US. They are a duopoly. Many concerns that are relevant for monopolies apply to duo or oligopolies as well. The companies split up the market and arrive at a comfortable equilibrium where they can milk the customers. They might squabble for market share, but they also coordinate (directly or indirectly) to not hurt each other too much. This can be seen in the matching of the cut they take. The only reason the stores get away with their pricing is because there is no practical alternative for the average consumer for Android, and no alternative at all for iOS. The Google/Apple situation is indeed a classic economy textbook duopoly. Calling something "ignorance or delusion" is quite a strong statement with such shallow insight.

tzs 5y ago
> Credit card companies, for comparison, charge a few percent. The EU has even limited the maximum interbank exchange fees to 0.2% in 2014. There are fees other than those to processes a credit card payment. Each card brand has its own assorted assessment fees. Some are percentage based and some are pre transaction. Your payment processor also has fees, typically per transaction. For small transaction, such as a $1 app or song purchase, those fixed fees bring the processing cost to a lot more than 0.2%.
5y ago

freeflight 5y ago

> I generally agree that giant corporate conglomerates like Google are a bad thing for basically everyone, but I don't think that diluting the meaning of "monopoly" helps anyone, and neither do silly entitled arguments against paying a commission for distribution. Google and Apple very much represent a duopoly, that's just calling a spade a spade. Nor did I see anybody here argue they should just distribute other people's apps for free. The issue is over the size of the fee they demand and how they also demand to exclusively use their payment services, so they can extort their 30% fee on every single transaction even past the original distribution. To apply that example to a brick and mortar store would be the equivalent of the store getting a cut off attachments/replacements the customer directly orders from the manufacturer because the customer bought the original device in the brick and mortar store.

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago

Sellers can sell at other stores.