23 ms·

Decreasing service fees on subscriptions to 15%

302 points by aembleton 5y ago

Scoundreller 5y ago
Should be 0% or otherwise heavily discounted for your first $x in sales. More money in early products today will mean more revenue for google later.
ComodoHacker 5y ago
>The vast majority of developers could distribute their apps on Google Play for free (currently 97% do so at no charge). For the developers who offered a paid app or sold in-app digital goods (currently just 3% of developers), the flat service fee was 30%. Do they mean only 3% of dev accounts who ever published something became sustained? Nice corp speak!
- j16sdiz 5y ago
  Majority of the android app are ad supported.
- keewee7 5y ago
  >Do they mean only 3% of dev accounts who ever published something became sustained? It doesn't take much effort to make a dev account and publish Android apps. The vast majority of Android apps are free, ad supported, and made by hobbyists.
lwansbrough 5y ago
Wow Google must have done some major restructuring to cut their revenue in half! /s
heavyset_go 5y ago
More evidence of price fixing[1] from Apple and Google's mobile app distribution and payments cartel. If there was real competition in the mobile app distribution and payments markets, and not just Google and Apple working in tandem to protect their profits, then consumers would benefit from increased efficiency and lower costs when it comes to how they get and pay for apps. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_fixing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_fixing
concinds 5y ago
I don't see the point. Spotify's not willing to give up 10% of their Android revenue, they'll still use their own payment. Epic won't give up 15%. South Korea mandated that apps be allowed to have custom payment methods within apps. Why would any big company, whether Netflix, Epic or Spotify, still give Android 10%? It just seems that the "app store pay toll" is getting less and less justifiable; and it seems outrageous that mobile-first startups should give 15% of their revenues to rent-seeking by the #1 biggest company in the world and #5 biggest company in the world. BTW, this regulatory pushback may really harm Android, because according to Sundar, Google Play constitutes most of Android revenue. With those revenues gone, that's a big chunk of money gone for Google. App Store revenue is also 37% of Apple's profits, so obviously they're fighting tooth and nail, but it's easy to see where things are going. Apple/Google are going to be pretty desperate to prevent a total exodus.
- kumarvvr 5y ago
  Not everyone is as big as Spotify and the likes. A lot of smaller developers would benefit from this. Hopefully, some of the savings are passed on to users.
- thetrb 5y ago
  My view is that it's an effort to avoid regulation. It's easier to justify a fee of 10-15% to regulators than a flat 30% fee.
  - leucineleprec0n 5y ago
    Of course.
- joenathanone 5y ago
  Agreed, personally I think 3-5% would be fair anything more is rent seeking.
  - kfprt 5y ago
    The percentage should be set by the market. The problem is that there exists a rent seeking monopoly at present.
gdeglin 5y ago
Here are some non-obvious reasons why this is a big deal: 1. Regulatory and technology changes are making advertising a less effective business model. It's both more expensive to acquire users and less profitable to run ads. So each week more companies are switching to one-time IAP or subscriptions as a primary revenue source. This change will further accelerate this transition. 2. A lot of apps sell digital content at a low margin. For example, Spotify and other music apps have to pay record labels for content. You can also consider marketplaces for user generated content that have this issue. Apple and Google's high service fees have prevented a large category of businesses from existing on the app store. Yes, they could try to direct users to pay through the browser, but anti-steering policies made this nearly impossible for companies without an established brand.
ksec 5y ago
>Today, we’re also making changes to the service fee in the Media Experience program, to better accommodate differences in these categories. Ebooks and on-demand music streaming services, where content costs account for the majority of sales, will now be eligible for a service fee as low as 10%. And I think Google has always been taking 15% on the first million revenue on services. Which wasn't clear in the post. The 10% changes is welcome. But may be too little too late in terms of legal and regulation.
kumarm 5y ago
Great news for anyone building business based on IAP/Subscriptions on Google Play. It is really sad to see mostly negative views on the topic. Here are important benefits compared to previously made changes by google: 1. Subscription revenue share drops to 15% instead of 30% without 1 million/year limit. 2. E-Books and Music Streaming services will pay 10% instead of 30%. This is great news not only for developers on google Play but also iOS Developers, it will put pressure on Apple to cut Apple Tax further.
dcchambers 5y ago
I think people are focused on the wrong issue. The fee % is not the problem. The problem is the restriction against using other types of payment processors. I am 100% OK with Google, Apple, or whoever charging whatever price they want to charge for using their app store services. They are, after all, providing all of the infrastucture for software delivery, updates, payments, etc. Not to mention giving you access to a massive potential userbase. The problem is them preventing you (the developer) from allowing the user to use other forms of payment processing within the app itself. Apple is the worst offender of this. Google obviously allows side-loading of apps and other app stores for Android while Apple does not. Apple goes so far as to prevent you from linking to a website with an external payment option, or to even suggest in text within your app that there are ways to subscribe/pay outside of the app store. They claim it's about the user experience and security, which is legitimate, but it's almost certainly about keeping those nice profit margins. It's within their right to charge what they want to use their store, but the restrictive nature of not allowing competition is wrong. If Apple would even allow sideloading of apps this wouldn't really be an issue. They could keep things as-is and just tell developers "Don't like the app store rules? That's fine, but you can't list your app here. Good luck in the free market." Because mobile computing has become the primary form of computing for many (most?) people, the fact that these few companies have so much power about what people can and can not do on their own devices is scary. Edit: At a minimum, they could require developers to make all payments available via the official app store payment platform, in addition to any other types of payment processing they want to do. This would let the customer decide and would get rid of any regulatory concerns about monopolies. And you know what? I bet most customers would still pay via the official app store/play store payment method, but at least the other options are there. I also think the policy of not allowing apps from outside the app store to be installed is insane. It's your device, you should be able to use it how you want to.
- weyland108 5y ago
  As a iOS user I feel safer that all payments go through apple. I am assured of certain level of privacy and security which is very comforting.
  - 5y ago
shining373 5y ago
Do you know about “Payoneer Google Pay”? What you're seeing right is talking about two different online payment platforms for business. Basically, we have Google pay, PayPal and that of Payoneer payment processing service. Where do you think this article is driving us all to or what is it trying to review to us about. You can only know where the article is leading us all to only if you are still sitting down wherever you are and still reading the post. Payoneer Google Pay - Online Payment Processing Platforms For Business Payoneer Google Pay Just as explained earlier, that the topic is about two different platforms and we get their names mentioned. If you are to search about what you see above “Payoneer Google pay” there is nothing you will find about it. But searching after them one after the other, I assure you will be able to understand what you are looking for. In here, the two things we are discussing is what you are seeing as the key header of this post right now but beginning with the explanation below. Payoneer Vs Google Pay The reason why the words were appearing this way is for us to understand better. This is in other to get clear details of what we are looking into. However, what you see here is the one that tells you about the difference between them. Both starting with that of Payoneer and then over to Google pay. Payoneer Payoneer you see is a company known for the American financial services but not like BOA. This is made for providing online money transfer. Not just for a money transfer but also with a digital payment service for users with working capital. Particularly, there is also programs for cross-border payments platforms for empowering businesses, online sellers, and freelancers. Basically, for the platform to pay and also get payments worldwide. There are so many services on the platform that you will love, solutions, industries, resources, partners, and more. Under each of the service options mentioned here, there are sub-options for each one of them. You have to register on the site before you will be able to access the platform and do whatever you wish on the platform. The URL of the site if you are thinking of creating an account is www.payoneer.com. Also, when you visit this link on your browser, it will then link you to their homepage. This is where the registration link is. Google Pay Now, over to Google pay. Google pay is just like Payoneer, it is basically for sending and receiving money online. It is more like a digital wallet and a payment system which Google lunch by itself. For Android users, it allows them to make payments with their Android phones, tablets, or watches. It is not just for Android users alone. However, users in the United States and India can as well use it on their iOS device, albeit with less limited functions. For the website, it tells you of all the payment activity that you have used your Android device to do. Like those that love playing online games whereby you buy items, games like Call of duty mobile. We know it is a very well-known popular game. It also has an app free for download. The app is free just as mentioned and you can find it on your Android device Google play store. As for the website, we have something like www.pay.google.com and you don’t need to create an account before you can use it. As long you are a user of the Google platform, if you have your Gmail account, you are good to go. You can as well create an account if you don’t have an account, just visit www.gmail.com and you can create your account. Thanks for <a href="https://www.tipcrewblog.com/iflix-movies-watch-and-download-free-movies-tv-series-iflix-com/">sharing https://www.tipcrewblog.com/iflix-movies-watch-and-download-... </a>your thoughts. I really appreciate your <a href="https://www.tipcrewblog.com/paycor/">efforts https://www.tipcrewblog.com/paycor/">efforts </a>and I will be waiting for your next write ups <a href="https://www.tipcrewblog.com/">thanks</a> https://www.tipcrewblog.com/">thanks</a> once again.
CodesInChaos 5y ago
The google play subscription API is probably the worst I ever had to integrate with. For example * Response leaves out historic data (i.e. a subscription doesn't show it was paused, had a trial, etc. once they're over) * Fetching the subscription state frequently returns data inconsistent with previous results (e.g. the start date of the subscription keeps changing, the expiry date keeps jumping around), so piecing together a subscription's history by combining versions observed at different times is practically impossible * Each subscription is a singly linked list, but doesn't give you enough information to actually follow the link. And it's from newest to oldest * Authentication is a mess (it's half integrated into the google cloud, but not really) * Settings changes take about ~24h to take effect
- nicewarmvalley 5y ago
  +1
- mmahemoff 5y ago
  And the API has a huge omission: you can't get a list of all subscriptions! That's something every other subscription API provides and important for many reasons - planning, accounting, marketing, etc. There's no way to export a dump, feed, etc. I still think I'm missing something, but my StackOverflow question on it remains unanswered (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48606203/list-all-play-subscriptions https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48606203/list-all-play-s...).
  - CodesInChaos 5y ago
    Using push notifications should give you all (new) subscriptions. > That's something every other subscription API provides I don't think Apple and Amazon provide such an API either.
diebeforei485 5y ago
No need for complicated pricing tier systems. Here's what I think fairer pricing would look like: For anything that competes with the platform owner's paid apps (eg. Spotify, Netflix, Sweat with Kayla, Audible/Kindle, Fastmail etc compete with Apple Music, YouTube, Apple Fitness+, Google Books, iCloud+ Mail etc) - they should be allowed to use their own payment service in their apps just like Uber and Doordash do. Anything else should be no more than a 15% cut.
dataviz1000 5y ago
Can someone explain the subscription on Google Play and Apple App Store today? I launched an app for a B2B SAAS service that clients paid ten of thousands of dollars a year for. We put the app which was secondary to the web dashboard which the clients used mostly during business hours in the Apple App Store and on Google Play without mentioning any payment in the product description which both allowed. When I first submitted the app Apple said we had to remove the link to the payment form on our website after which they were cool with as long as it wasn't on the app description. We billed the users and maintained the accounts through the web application and web dashboard without giving any money to Google or Apple. Is this still allowed today?
- radley 5y ago
  Apple allows B2B to bill outside of the app store. Can't speak for Google's Play Store.
- rahimnathwani 5y ago
  Yes: 3.1.3(c) Enterprise Services: If your app is only sold directly by you to organizations or groups for their employees or students (for example professional databases and classroom management tools), you may allow enterprise users to access previously-purchased content or subscriptions. Consumer, single user, or family sales must use in-app purchase.
- zionic 5y ago
  Is your app Mixpanel?
greatjack613 5y ago
This will put a lot of pressure on apple to lower there fees. Overall this is a good thing as long as it doesn't take away from the anti trust cases made against these companies.
ineedasername 5y ago
Maybe I'm a pessimist, but it feels like all of this "fine, we'll cut our commission fees" is all just leading up to another shoe about to drop... "But now you have to pay $x/month to have your app hosted on the app store"
- habosa 5y ago
  That seems like a good trend to me. The app stores do incur serious hosting and review costs. Let’s pay for those. I’d much rather pay Apple/Google a fixed amount per download and per app update than pay them a lifetime cut of my subscriptions.
Osiris 5y ago
On my Android phone this website is just a title and blank. It feels a bit ironic.
johnny35 5y ago
This seems like a significant milestone in what I really hope is the path toward the app ecosystem opening up to the level of freedom we’ve enjoyed in the web and desktop software space for decades now. Needing the recurring approval from two mega-corps scrutinizing whatever details of your business and customer relationships they wish, forcing their way in between… feels terrible compared to hooking up to a standard payment processor and doing your thing on the open web. I don’t want your help marketing and distributing my app, I just want to be able to serve my customers and I’d prefer if you mostly ignored us. The phone calls with Apple begging for them to see our point of view and interpretation of their deliberately vague requirements, the stories about companies hiring someone whose personal Google account activities become toxic for the company’s Play Store account, it all just sucks. I didn’t dedicate my life to doing business in software and the internet to be this directly under any one thumb. Crossing my fingers for more moves in the right direction.
- judge2020 5y ago
  Even if this came to fruition, someone is still the gatekeeper. Many often forget that safe browsing gates access to every domain you type in and will throw up an error page if it's been flagged as malware. The same already happens for side-loading apps via Play Protect[0], iOS would surely have a similar system with Apple collecting samples of side-loaded apps and continuously scanning & expanding their blocklist of malicious apps. 0: https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/2812853?hl=en https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/2812853?hl=en
  - johnny35 5y ago
    I get that - it’s not like traditional payment processors never shut anyone off. Reality is all in the squishy gray area, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a meaningful difference between what it’s like selling a service on a website vs. with an app.
  - f1refly 5y ago
    Even this system would be a huge leap forward, because we'd go from a whitelist model controlled by a monopoly to a blacklist model controlled by a monopoly. The sheer effort of keeping up to maintain the absolute user abuse by apple and google is infintitely higher than what we have now.
flohofwoe 5y ago
Wow, that first sentence is something to unpack: "When we started Android and Google Play more than a decade ago, we made a bet that a free and open mobile ecosystem could compete with the proprietary walled gardens that dominated the industry." Do people today really believe that "the industry was dominated by proprietary walled gardens" in the past? The whole thing pretty much started with iOS and Android (Android isn't exactly an open ecosystem compared to Windows, Linux or even macOS).
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

302 points by aembleton 5y ago

Should be 0% or otherwise heavily discounted for your first $x in sales. More money in early products today will mean more revenue for google later.

ComodoHacker 5y ago

>The vast majority of developers could distribute their apps on Google Play for free (currently 97% do so at no charge). For the developers who offered a paid app or sold in-app digital goods (currently just 3% of developers), the flat service fee was 30%. Do they mean only 3% of dev accounts who ever published something became sustained? Nice corp speak!

j16sdiz 5y ago
Majority of the android app are ad supported.
keewee7 5y ago
>Do they mean only 3% of dev accounts who ever published something became sustained? It doesn't take much effort to make a dev account and publish Android apps. The vast majority of Android apps are free, ad supported, and made by hobbyists.

lwansbrough 5y ago

Wow Google must have done some major restructuring to cut their revenue in half! /s

heavyset_go 5y ago

More evidence of price fixing[1] from Apple and Google's mobile app distribution and payments cartel. If there was real competition in the mobile app distribution and payments markets, and not just Google and Apple working in tandem to protect their profits, then consumers would benefit from increased efficiency and lower costs when it comes to how they get and pay for apps. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_fixing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_fixing

concinds 5y ago

I don't see the point. Spotify's not willing to give up 10% of their Android revenue, they'll still use their own payment. Epic won't give up 15%. South Korea mandated that apps be allowed to have custom payment methods within apps. Why would any big company, whether Netflix, Epic or Spotify, still give Android 10%? It just seems that the "app store pay toll" is getting less and less justifiable; and it seems outrageous that mobile-first startups should give 15% of their revenues to rent-seeking by the #1 biggest company in the world and #5 biggest company in the world. BTW, this regulatory pushback may really harm Android, because according to Sundar, Google Play constitutes most of Android revenue. With those revenues gone, that's a big chunk of money gone for Google. App Store revenue is also 37% of Apple's profits, so obviously they're fighting tooth and nail, but it's easy to see where things are going. Apple/Google are going to be pretty desperate to prevent a total exodus.

kumarvvr 5y ago
Not everyone is as big as Spotify and the likes. A lot of smaller developers would benefit from this. Hopefully, some of the savings are passed on to users.
thetrb 5y ago
My view is that it's an effort to avoid regulation. It's easier to justify a fee of 10-15% to regulators than a flat 30% fee.
- leucineleprec0n 5y ago
  Of course.
joenathanone 5y ago
Agreed, personally I think 3-5% would be fair anything more is rent seeking.
- kfprt 5y ago
  The percentage should be set by the market. The problem is that there exists a rent seeking monopoly at present.

gdeglin 5y ago

Here are some non-obvious reasons why this is a big deal: 1. Regulatory and technology changes are making advertising a less effective business model. It's both more expensive to acquire users and less profitable to run ads. So each week more companies are switching to one-time IAP or subscriptions as a primary revenue source. This change will further accelerate this transition. 2. A lot of apps sell digital content at a low margin. For example, Spotify and other music apps have to pay record labels for content. You can also consider marketplaces for user generated content that have this issue. Apple and Google's high service fees have prevented a large category of businesses from existing on the app store. Yes, they could try to direct users to pay through the browser, but anti-steering policies made this nearly impossible for companies without an established brand.

ksec 5y ago

>Today, we’re also making changes to the service fee in the Media Experience program, to better accommodate differences in these categories. Ebooks and on-demand music streaming services, where content costs account for the majority of sales, will now be eligible for a service fee as low as 10%. And I think Google has always been taking 15% on the first million revenue on services. Which wasn't clear in the post. The 10% changes is welcome. But may be too little too late in terms of legal and regulation.

kumarm 5y ago

Great news for anyone building business based on IAP/Subscriptions on Google Play. It is really sad to see mostly negative views on the topic. Here are important benefits compared to previously made changes by google: 1. Subscription revenue share drops to 15% instead of 30% without 1 million/year limit. 2. E-Books and Music Streaming services will pay 10% instead of 30%. This is great news not only for developers on google Play but also iOS Developers, it will put pressure on Apple to cut Apple Tax further.

dcchambers 5y ago

I think people are focused on the wrong issue. The fee % is not the problem. The problem is the restriction against using other types of payment processors. I am 100% OK with Google, Apple, or whoever charging whatever price they want to charge for using their app store services. They are, after all, providing all of the infrastucture for software delivery, updates, payments, etc. Not to mention giving you access to a massive potential userbase. The problem is them preventing you (the developer) from allowing the user to use other forms of payment processing within the app itself. Apple is the worst offender of this. Google obviously allows side-loading of apps and other app stores for Android while Apple does not. Apple goes so far as to prevent you from linking to a website with an external payment option, or to even suggest in text within your app that there are ways to subscribe/pay outside of the app store. They claim it's about the user experience and security, which is legitimate, but it's almost certainly about keeping those nice profit margins. It's within their right to charge what they want to use their store, but the restrictive nature of not allowing competition is wrong. If Apple would even allow sideloading of apps this wouldn't really be an issue. They could keep things as-is and just tell developers "Don't like the app store rules? That's fine, but you can't list your app here. Good luck in the free market." Because mobile computing has become the primary form of computing for many (most?) people, the fact that these few companies have so much power about what people can and can not do on their own devices is scary. Edit: At a minimum, they could require developers to make all payments available via the official app store payment platform, in addition to any other types of payment processing they want to do. This would let the customer decide and would get rid of any regulatory concerns about monopolies. And you know what? I bet most customers would still pay via the official app store/play store payment method, but at least the other options are there. I also think the policy of not allowing apps from outside the app store to be installed is insane. It's your device, you should be able to use it how you want to.

weyland108 5y ago
As a iOS user I feel safer that all payments go through apple. I am assured of certain level of privacy and security which is very comforting.
- 5y ago

shining373 5y ago

Do you know about “Payoneer Google Pay”? What you're seeing right is talking about two different online payment platforms for business. Basically, we have Google pay, PayPal and that of Payoneer payment processing service. Where do you think this article is driving us all to or what is it trying to review to us about. You can only know where the article is leading us all to only if you are still sitting down wherever you are and still reading the post. Payoneer Google Pay - Online Payment Processing Platforms For Business Payoneer Google Pay Just as explained earlier, that the topic is about two different platforms and we get their names mentioned. If you are to search about what you see above “Payoneer Google pay” there is nothing you will find about it. But searching after them one after the other, I assure you will be able to understand what you are looking for. In here, the two things we are discussing is what you are seeing as the key header of this post right now but beginning with the explanation below. Payoneer Vs Google Pay The reason why the words were appearing this way is for us to understand better. This is in other to get clear details of what we are looking into. However, what you see here is the one that tells you about the difference between them. Both starting with that of Payoneer and then over to Google pay. Payoneer Payoneer you see is a company known for the American financial services but not like BOA. This is made for providing online money transfer. Not just for a money transfer but also with a digital payment service for users with working capital. Particularly, there is also programs for cross-border payments platforms for empowering businesses, online sellers, and freelancers. Basically, for the platform to pay and also get payments worldwide. There are so many services on the platform that you will love, solutions, industries, resources, partners, and more. Under each of the service options mentioned here, there are sub-options for each one of them. You have to register on the site before you will be able to access the platform and do whatever you wish on the platform. The URL of the site if you are thinking of creating an account is www.payoneer.com. Also, when you visit this link on your browser, it will then link you to their homepage. This is where the registration link is. Google Pay Now, over to Google pay. Google pay is just like Payoneer, it is basically for sending and receiving money online. It is more like a digital wallet and a payment system which Google lunch by itself. For Android users, it allows them to make payments with their Android phones, tablets, or watches. It is not just for Android users alone. However, users in the United States and India can as well use it on their iOS device, albeit with less limited functions. For the website, it tells you of all the payment activity that you have used your Android device to do. Like those that love playing online games whereby you buy items, games like Call of duty mobile. We know it is a very well-known popular game. It also has an app free for download. The app is free just as mentioned and you can find it on your Android device Google play store. As for the website, we have something like www.pay.google.com and you don’t need to create an account before you can use it. As long you are a user of the Google platform, if you have your Gmail account, you are good to go. You can as well create an account if you don’t have an account, just visit www.gmail.com and you can create your account. Thanks for <a href="https://www.tipcrewblog.com/iflix-movies-watch-and-download-free-movies-tv-series-iflix-com/">sharing https://www.tipcrewblog.com/iflix-movies-watch-and-download-... </a>your thoughts. I really appreciate your <a href="https://www.tipcrewblog.com/paycor/">efforts https://www.tipcrewblog.com/paycor/">efforts </a>and I will be waiting for your next write ups <a href="https://www.tipcrewblog.com/">thanks</a> https://www.tipcrewblog.com/">thanks</a> once again.

CodesInChaos 5y ago

The google play subscription API is probably the worst I ever had to integrate with. For example * Response leaves out historic data (i.e. a subscription doesn't show it was paused, had a trial, etc. once they're over) * Fetching the subscription state frequently returns data inconsistent with previous results (e.g. the start date of the subscription keeps changing, the expiry date keeps jumping around), so piecing together a subscription's history by combining versions observed at different times is practically impossible * Each subscription is a singly linked list, but doesn't give you enough information to actually follow the link. And it's from newest to oldest * Authentication is a mess (it's half integrated into the google cloud, but not really) * Settings changes take about ~24h to take effect

nicewarmvalley 5y ago
+1
mmahemoff 5y ago
And the API has a huge omission: you can't get a list of all subscriptions! That's something every other subscription API provides and important for many reasons - planning, accounting, marketing, etc. There's no way to export a dump, feed, etc. I still think I'm missing something, but my StackOverflow question on it remains unanswered (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48606203/list-all-play-subscriptions https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48606203/list-all-play-s...).
- CodesInChaos 5y ago
  Using push notifications should give you all (new) subscriptions. > That's something every other subscription API provides I don't think Apple and Amazon provide such an API either.

diebeforei485 5y ago

No need for complicated pricing tier systems. Here's what I think fairer pricing would look like: For anything that competes with the platform owner's paid apps (eg. Spotify, Netflix, Sweat with Kayla, Audible/Kindle, Fastmail etc compete with Apple Music, YouTube, Apple Fitness+, Google Books, iCloud+ Mail etc) - they should be allowed to use their own payment service in their apps just like Uber and Doordash do. Anything else should be no more than a 15% cut.

dataviz1000 5y ago

Can someone explain the subscription on Google Play and Apple App Store today? I launched an app for a B2B SAAS service that clients paid ten of thousands of dollars a year for. We put the app which was secondary to the web dashboard which the clients used mostly during business hours in the Apple App Store and on Google Play without mentioning any payment in the product description which both allowed. When I first submitted the app Apple said we had to remove the link to the payment form on our website after which they were cool with as long as it wasn't on the app description. We billed the users and maintained the accounts through the web application and web dashboard without giving any money to Google or Apple. Is this still allowed today?

radley 5y ago
Apple allows B2B to bill outside of the app store. Can't speak for Google's Play Store.
rahimnathwani 5y ago
Yes: 3.1.3(c) Enterprise Services: If your app is only sold directly by you to organizations or groups for their employees or students (for example professional databases and classroom management tools), you may allow enterprise users to access previously-purchased content or subscriptions. Consumer, single user, or family sales must use in-app purchase.
zionic 5y ago
Is your app Mixpanel?

greatjack613 5y ago

This will put a lot of pressure on apple to lower there fees. Overall this is a good thing as long as it doesn't take away from the anti trust cases made against these companies.

ineedasername 5y ago

Maybe I'm a pessimist, but it feels like all of this "fine, we'll cut our commission fees" is all just leading up to another shoe about to drop... "But now you have to pay $x/month to have your app hosted on the app store"

habosa 5y ago
That seems like a good trend to me. The app stores do incur serious hosting and review costs. Let’s pay for those. I’d much rather pay Apple/Google a fixed amount per download and per app update than pay them a lifetime cut of my subscriptions.

Osiris 5y ago

On my Android phone this website is just a title and blank. It feels a bit ironic.

johnny35 5y ago

This seems like a significant milestone in what I really hope is the path toward the app ecosystem opening up to the level of freedom we’ve enjoyed in the web and desktop software space for decades now. Needing the recurring approval from two mega-corps scrutinizing whatever details of your business and customer relationships they wish, forcing their way in between… feels terrible compared to hooking up to a standard payment processor and doing your thing on the open web. I don’t want your help marketing and distributing my app, I just want to be able to serve my customers and I’d prefer if you mostly ignored us. The phone calls with Apple begging for them to see our point of view and interpretation of their deliberately vague requirements, the stories about companies hiring someone whose personal Google account activities become toxic for the company’s Play Store account, it all just sucks. I didn’t dedicate my life to doing business in software and the internet to be this directly under any one thumb. Crossing my fingers for more moves in the right direction.

judge2020 5y ago
Even if this came to fruition, someone is still the gatekeeper. Many often forget that safe browsing gates access to every domain you type in and will throw up an error page if it's been flagged as malware. The same already happens for side-loading apps via Play Protect[0], iOS would surely have a similar system with Apple collecting samples of side-loaded apps and continuously scanning & expanding their blocklist of malicious apps. 0: https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/2812853?hl=en https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/2812853?hl=en
- johnny35 5y ago
  I get that - it’s not like traditional payment processors never shut anyone off. Reality is all in the squishy gray area, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a meaningful difference between what it’s like selling a service on a website vs. with an app.
- f1refly 5y ago
  Even this system would be a huge leap forward, because we'd go from a whitelist model controlled by a monopoly to a blacklist model controlled by a monopoly. The sheer effort of keeping up to maintain the absolute user abuse by apple and google is infintitely higher than what we have now.

flohofwoe 5y ago

Wow, that first sentence is something to unpack: "When we started Android and Google Play more than a decade ago, we made a bet that a free and open mobile ecosystem could compete with the proprietary walled gardens that dominated the industry." Do people today really believe that "the industry was dominated by proprietary walled gardens" in the past? The whole thing pretty much started with iOS and Android (Android isn't exactly an open ecosystem compared to Windows, Linux or even macOS).

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