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Characterizing app store fees as purely for payment processing is so disingenuous it's hard to even engage. The reality is these fees are for access to an audi

Characterizing app store fees as purely for payment processing is so disingenuous it's hard to even engage. The reality is these fees are for access to an audience. Google spends a lot of money developing Android and creating a storefront that huge numbers of people see every day. Casting that as "payment processing fees" is like complaining it's outrageous for a farmer's market to charge $200/day for a 10x10 booth because 100sf of parking lot can be had for $10/day somewhere else: you have to willfully misunderstand the business for the argument to make any sense.

freedomben 3y ago
I'm not GP, but that's a really good point and one to keep in mind. I suppose the question is, did the farmers market threaten all the other land owners if they allowed a competing farmers market to open up? Or throw metaphorical wrenches in the way to a competitor? Google's exclusivity agreement makes it much harder for alternatives to emerge. Even with this though, I get that they are funding open source development and need to protect it somehow lest it be stolen (cough by Amazon cough) and made a competing platform. I'm quite unsure where the balance should be.
- vkou 3y ago
  Your analogy is poor. App store monopolies aren't built on threats. A mall giving an anchor retailer a sweetheart deal isn't threatening nearby malls. They are, however, built on economies of scale.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    They're built on excluding competition. App stores, like payment processors, have economies of scale in the sense that you need a critical mass of users to sign up for them and trust them with their payment info, so you're not going to have a thousand of them, but you could certainly have a dozen. At which point they would have to compete on things like fees and keep each other in check. But not if each platform has only a single dominant payment processor.
  - freedomben 3y ago
    I don't agree the analogy is poor. Unless I'm mistaken, Google has made threats, such as "if you include a competing app store, then you don't get any of the google apps, google play services, etc, and you can't use the Android trademark. We saw in the early 00s a proliferation of "Android" devices that didn't have the Play store, and they were mostly DOA
    - vkou 3y ago
      An unwillingness to co-operate is not generally considered a threat. > and they were mostly DOA Maybe those stores should have invested a few dozen billion dollars in building up a comprehensive first-party app ecosystem that made them attractive to users. Economies of scale, and all. Nobody's going to your farmer's market, because everyone's going to the mall that has a Walmart.
bogwog 3y ago
I wasn't trying to say that those fees are only for payment processing. Anyways, to your point about audience: That's BS. The reason Google Play is the dominant store definitely has a lot to do with that, because nobody is going to publish on "My Awesome Android Store" if it doesn't have users. However, the reason they have that audience is because of their anticompetitive tactics. It's all a cycle that feeds into itself, and it's how they're able to become the only game in town and charge literally whatever they want. Epic has the ability and resources to potentially build a store with enough of an audience to attract more developers and compete with Google Play, but it won't happen as long as Google is allowed to continue acting anti-competitively.
AnthonyMouse 3y ago
> The reality is these fees are for access to an audience. This is called a monopoly rent and is the sort of thing antitrust law is intended to prevent, when it's working properly. > Google spends a lot of money developing Android and creating a storefront that huge numbers of people see every day. Google gives Android away for free. They choose to do that, and if they didn't then it would lose to a competitor that did, because operating systems are a classic example of somewhere that free software works in the absence of anti-competitive behavior. If Google didn't develop Android then Samsung and Amazon and Canonical and Mozilla would do it, and parts of it would be more like Debian, which would be better. > Casting that as "payment processing fees" is like complaining it's outrageous for a farmer's market to charge $200/day for a 10x10 booth because 100sf of parking lot can be had for $10/day somewhere else: you have to willfully misunderstand the business for the argument to make any sense. Does the farmer's market also take actions to interfere with you being able to build your own storefront?

freedomben 3y ago

I'm not GP, but that's a really good point and one to keep in mind. I suppose the question is, did the farmers market threaten all the other land owners if they allowed a competing farmers market to open up? Or throw metaphorical wrenches in the way to a competitor? Google's exclusivity agreement makes it much harder for alternatives to emerge. Even with this though, I get that they are funding open source development and need to protect it somehow lest it be stolen (cough by Amazon cough) and made a competing platform. I'm quite unsure where the balance should be.

vkou 3y ago
Your analogy is poor. App store monopolies aren't built on threats. A mall giving an anchor retailer a sweetheart deal isn't threatening nearby malls. They are, however, built on economies of scale.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  They're built on excluding competition. App stores, like payment processors, have economies of scale in the sense that you need a critical mass of users to sign up for them and trust them with their payment info, so you're not going to have a thousand of them, but you could certainly have a dozen. At which point they would have to compete on things like fees and keep each other in check. But not if each platform has only a single dominant payment processor.
- freedomben 3y ago
  I don't agree the analogy is poor. Unless I'm mistaken, Google has made threats, such as "if you include a competing app store, then you don't get any of the google apps, google play services, etc, and you can't use the Android trademark. We saw in the early 00s a proliferation of "Android" devices that didn't have the Play store, and they were mostly DOA
  - vkou 3y ago
    An unwillingness to co-operate is not generally considered a threat. > and they were mostly DOA Maybe those stores should have invested a few dozen billion dollars in building up a comprehensive first-party app ecosystem that made them attractive to users. Economies of scale, and all. Nobody's going to your farmer's market, because everyone's going to the mall that has a Walmart.

bogwog 3y ago

I wasn't trying to say that those fees are only for payment processing. Anyways, to your point about audience: That's BS. The reason Google Play is the dominant store definitely has a lot to do with that, because nobody is going to publish on "My Awesome Android Store" if it doesn't have users. However, the reason they have that audience is because of their anticompetitive tactics. It's all a cycle that feeds into itself, and it's how they're able to become the only game in town and charge literally whatever they want. Epic has the ability and resources to potentially build a store with enough of an audience to attract more developers and compete with Google Play, but it won't happen as long as Google is allowed to continue acting anti-competitively.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago

> The reality is these fees are for access to an audience. This is called a monopoly rent and is the sort of thing antitrust law is intended to prevent, when it's working properly. > Google spends a lot of money developing Android and creating a storefront that huge numbers of people see every day. Google gives Android away for free. They choose to do that, and if they didn't then it would lose to a competitor that did, because operating systems are a classic example of somewhere that free software works in the absence of anti-competitive behavior. If Google didn't develop Android then Samsung and Amazon and Canonical and Mozilla would do it, and parts of it would be more like Debian, which would be better. > Casting that as "payment processing fees" is like complaining it's outrageous for a farmer's market to charge $200/day for a 10x10 booth because 100sf of parking lot can be had for $10/day somewhere else: you have to willfully misunderstand the business for the argument to make any sense. Does the farmer's market also take actions to interfere with you being able to build your own storefront?