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Google sees the writing on the wall. Their billing monopoly is under threat, and is probably not going to last forever. This situation looks like Google allowe
by bogwog 5y ago
Google sees the writing on the wall. Their billing monopoly is under threat, and is probably not going to last forever.
This situation looks like Google allowed Spotify to add their own payment system with some terms. The obvious one is that they need to keep Google's payment system alongside their own. A less obvious (but IMO likely) requirement may be that Spotify cannot offer a much lower price through their billing system to incentivize users to switch (100% assumption here).
From the outside, this looks like a pro-consumer move: consumers get more choices (even if the prices are the same). But the reality is (probably; I'm just assuming here) that Google still has the power to shove their billing system down developers' throats, since there aren't yet any laws or rulings to prevent it.
So even though the writing in this press release makes it seem like a pro-consumer move, I hope it doesn't take any momentum away from all of the antitrust lawsuits. Google's (and Apple's) monopolies need to end. In an ideal world, Spotify would add Google billing (and others) as options to attract more customers, not because Google is forcing them to.
- darkwater 5y agoAnd Spotify will probably also get less discounts in GCP to compensate part of that. I'm totally speculating, just to be clear.
- Traster 5y agoWhy on earth would Spotify be getting a discount on GCP?
- bowmessage 5y agoBulk/multi-year commitments to a single cloud provider often come with steep discounts.
- Traster 5y agoOk sure, but that's not likely to have anything to do with app store pricing etc. That's just GCP trying to acquire customers. They're not going to start trying to punish customers for other decisions because that would be an incredibly way to shoot yourself in the foot. This is a problem AWS already sees a lot.
- alpb 5y agoSmaller companies who partner with large companies like Google or Microsoft see these large co's as single entities and not through their sub-divisions. Spotify probably partners with Google in Ads, Android, Cloud areas at minimum. Spotify is already a publicly-known large GCP user. So they might be just playing their chips.
- darkwater 5y agoBecause in big contracts like that you try to negotiate everything, on both sides. But as said I have no real info, I was just thinking aloud.