Following regulation in South Korea last year and a somewhat more voluntary “User Choice Billing” in March, Google announced today that it would soon allow nongaming Android apps to offer users in Europe (European Economic Area) an alternative to Google Play’s billing system.
This is in response to the Digital Markets Act, with Google saying it’s “committed to meeting these new requirements while ensuring that we can continue to keep people safe on our platforms and invest in Android and Play for the benefit of the entire ecosystem.”
It’s almost like regulation works. We’ll have to wait and see if these changes are enough.
Like it matters? In SK the fee went from 30% to 26% if you use outside billing.
Right. Developers weren’t asking to be able use outside billing systems because they prefer other ones. They want to pay 0% in fees, and Google wants to make at least 12% in fees. The only developers I could see really benefitting from this are game developers with micro-transactions, where maybe they’ll float user transactions for a few days to combine them, in order to reduce per transaction fees. Fundamentally, this doesn’t solve the societal issue of whether Google (or Apple) has the moral right to take a share of transactions. Legally, it’s pretty clear that they do, but it’s also clear developers don’t want them to.
Which is the nuanced part of the whole issue: Should OSes have “default” (pre-installed) app stores?
– If no, remember that Symbian S60, Symbian UIQ and Windows Mobile didn’t have any “default” app stores (not before the iPhone arrived anyway), and it’s the reason they never managed to kickstart the “app economy” like iOS and Android did some years later.
– If yes, can the OS vendor charge for the app store service they provide? I mean, all those servers and curation aren’t free. And what is a fair cut for the service? And then there is the separate issue of whether the OS vendor should be forced to accommodate apk’s for other app stores in their app store.
I have a horse in the race. However, as a user, I would of course prefer more choice.
F-Droid and Amazon provides some of that choice, and I’m sure there are many others.
Yet, if this is taken away to enforce “no sideloading” by the headset developers, it would arguably be worse than the current situation.
Exactly, this is some utter BS.
How do you measure success? By the creation of a major third Mobile OS?
Here in the USA, the telecoms had all the power prior to the rise of the Iphone/android dualopy. Now Google/Apple/Samsung have it as opposed to Att, Version, Sprint What ever happens, I don’t want it going back to the telecoms.