Ask HN: How is this legal that you must use Google Billing for Android apps?

25 points by whitepaint 2 years ago | 46 comments

How is this legal that if I want to publish an Android app on Play Market and charge for subscriptions, I must use Google Play Billing and pay 30% to Google? This is insane (because there are no alternatives to Play Market).

Is there a way around it? I have a website where you can buy a subscription through Stripe. Can I just redirect to this page from the Android app so they could pay through the web and that would automatically enable their subscription on the app as well?

behindsight 2 years ago |

You might be interested in the upcoming Digital Markets Act by the EU that is built to address this among other things.

https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/index_en

Notably you can check out their list of gatekeeper services

https://digital-markets-act-cases.ec.europa.eu/gatekeepers

panarky 2 years ago | |

When I sell products or services on a marketplace like eBay, Etsy, Airbnb, Uber, Lyft, Steam, Shopify, Apple Store, Amazon, etc., the marketplace handles the payment and the marketplace takes a cut for themselves.

How is Android any different?

behindsight 2 years ago | | |

It seems the 2nd EU link of gatekeepers in my original comment is no longer loading as it was before, but this link with "_en" suffixed to it does; can't edit my previous comment though.

https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/gatekeepers_en

In there you will find pdfs for each entity with not only the qualifiers/assessments, but also the counter arguments they presented.

For example, here is one from Alphabet that also brings up your point in the counter argument

https://ec.europa.eu/competition/digital_markets_act/cases/2...

coldtea 2 years ago |

>How is this legal that if I want to publish an Android app on Play Market and charge for subscriptions, I must use Google Play Billing and pay 30% to Google? This is insane

It's bad for the developer, sure, but what exactly is "insane" or "illegal" about it? They have created a product marketplace, and they let you sell there, and you must abide by their rules.

If you want to sell on Gumroad or similar services you also need to use their payment processor of choice, and give them a cut. If you want to sell on Ebay, you also need to use their payment processors of choice (and originally, iirc, you only had the option to use PayPal) and give them a cut.

And of course check the rules for selling your console game. They are 10x more restrive, and have been since forever. Not only you have to use the console markers marketplace, billing system, and pay a cut, for many wont even be able to do that, unless they accept your game.

The thing is, you don't "have" to sell in Play Market - even if it was the only marketplace for Android, it would still not be some basic necessity of life that you sell apps for Android. You could always find another trade, or sell PC software, or whatever. In other words, a marketplace for a mobile OS is not exactly a public utility.

bearjaws 2 years ago | |

> It's bad for the developer, sure, but what exactly is "insane" or "illegal" about it?

Anti-trust made it pretty clear you can't be the railroad company and the oil company that uses the railroad to harm competition.

Play store is the rail road, apps are the oil.

> The thing is, you don't "have" to sell in Play Market - even if it was the only marketplace for Android, it would still not be some basic necessity of life that you sell apps for Android. You could always find another trade, or sell PC software, or whatever. In other words, a marketplace for a mobile OS is not exactly a public utility.

1. The Play Stores's massive user base makes it a crucial marketplace for developers wanting to reach the widest Android audience, and opting out will limit market exposure and revenue significantly.

2. Mobile app development requires distinct skills, tools, and strategies compared to PC software, making transitioning between these fields challenging and resource-intensive.

3. While the Play Market isn't a basic life necessity, its dominance in the app economy raises significant concerns about market fairness and competition, as it acts as a gatekeeper to digital distribution. You're essentially arguing the same shit that we would hear in the 90s "you don't need a refrigerator", sure you don't but life sure sucks without it...

darklion 2 years ago | | |

> Anti-trust made it pretty clear you can't be the railroad company and the oil company that uses the railroad to harm competition.

Your analogy is flawed.

This is a private railroad company, who built their own private national railroad system, saying that if you want to use their railroads, you have to use their infrastruture (signals, switching, yards, etc.) and to do that, you have to pay a per-trip fee.

Your argument really is, “How is it legal that I am not allowed to use their private railroad track system unless I also use their switches/signals/yards/etc. that carry fees?”

coldtea 2 years ago | | |

>Anti-trust made it pretty clear you can't be the railroad company and the oil company that uses the railroad to harm competition.

No, but you can own the railroad and dictate that anybody putting their trains there and selling tickets have to do it by your rules and pay you a cut.

ensignavenger 2 years ago | |

Ebay originally had no preffered payment processor, you could use whatever system you wanted to. PayPal became the vast favorite among buyers and sellers, ebay bought PayPal, but for a long time at least, you could opt for an alternative. I'm not sure that ebay ever required PayPal payments. Ebay eventually jettisoned paypal and integrated their own seperate payment processing.

lxgr 2 years ago | |

> In other words, a marketplace for a mobile OS is not exactly a public utility.

Some jurisdictions would disagree on that, most notably the EU.

Qwertious 2 years ago | | |

>Some jurisdictions would on that, most notably the EU.

You accidentally a word.

zamadatix 2 years ago | |

It's not the presence of a marketplace with rules that's the root problem it's the bundling of said marketplace which forces its dominance. It has nothing to do with whether these things are public utilities either, not sure why it would as that seems like an odd criteria for a business practice to be either insane or illegal. "Everyone just start using an alternative on March 3rd" is an unrealistic way to break the cycle that everyone already has Play as their main store when they get a phone and all the apps are already in Play so neither users nor developers can easily leave play (though it is possible to do successfully if you're larger, see Fortnite).

I.e. it's not that people are choosing only 2 app stores because they've got the best policies they are stuck with whatever policies the 2 app stores give them until some separation between device and marketplace is made. Going between Ebay and Etsy is easy, everyone has to go to the URL bar and choose to type "Ebay" or "Etsy". If every browser shipped with the starting page of Ebay, browser integrations into Ebay, and popup warnings about using Etsy then I'd bet the same problem would exist there.

The situation on consoles is no better but that's not reasoning the situation everywhere else should be like consoles it's a reason console rules probably need to be updated these days too.

coldtea 2 years ago | | |

>It's not the presence of a marketplace with rules that's the root problem it's the bundling of said marketplace which forces its dominance.

They're bundling with their own OS, though.

Not to mention Android already supports sideloading and other marketplaces.

beeboobaa 2 years ago | |

They created a phone and bully users into only using their one officially blessed store. Apple is the worst offender, Google is a little better in that they only warn you a million times when side-loading. But that is still far, far too much fear mongering. And it's obvious they do it so they can get that juicy 30%. It's just a shitty form of rent seeking.

coldtea 2 years ago | | |

>They created a phone and bully users into only using their one officially blessed store

Well, they did create their own phone platform (OS, libs for app creation and so on), not some public open infrastructure.

candiddevmike 2 years ago |

I wish folks would realize this has knock on effects for them--you're paying 30% more for things (or 15%, if it's a small developer). Is the "safety and curation" of the Play Store (or Apple App Store) worth 30% more to you?

(Full disclosure: I moved my apps off the Apple App Store/Google Play Store earlier this year. I wasn't seeing any value with distributing on them. After leaving, I've had better interactions with my users and almost all of the folks who discover my apps end up upgrading to the paid version. While my installs are lower, my conversion rate has never been higher.)

darklion 2 years ago | |

> Is the "safety and curation" of the Play Store (or Apple App Store) worth 30% more to you?

Yes, because as you said, there are knock-on effects.

With a first-party app store, I know I can easily cancel subscriptions, and from a single place; that the payment option isn’t going to be some no-name payment processor or that I’m not going to told it was one price on the screen and then charged another price in the backend; that at least one third party has done at least some minimum level of verification that it’s not malicious; that it isn’t circumventing privacy controls; that app updates occur in one place instead of having to individually launch and update each app (e.g., Sparkle); that, while app review has non-trivial flaws, it does catch certain kinds and amounts of crapplications, and tends to have a second-order consequence of improving platform consistency.

So while I may pay more and/or the developer might earn less, installing apps the old-fashioned way carries way more risk. The days of implicit trust that someone random Joe’s apps will behave themselves and act like good platform citizens are over.

throwaway62012 2 years ago |

There are alternatives to Play market. Play doesn't work at all in China. There is Huawei, Samsung and Xiaomi store, and probably others. Users can also install F-Droid or any other alternative store app.

I don't see why it should be illegal to have fees and terms of use on your platform. Don't like it? Don't use the platform. You're not entitled to others' work.

KronisLV 2 years ago | |

> Don't like it? Don't use the platform.

Many users don't even know that's possible, because all they've ever known is Google Play and it comes pre-installed on the majority of the devices, without a clear way to get something else.

Even their own store explicitly disallows other store apps: https://play.google.com/intl/ALL_uk/about/developer-distribu...

> 4.5 You may not use Google Play to distribute or make available any Product that has a purpose that facilitates the distribution of software applications and games for use on Android devices outside of Google Play.

This leads to the second point: developers will essentially be locked into using Google Play because trying to opt for any other platform that doesn't have many users is pretty much killing their own business. Unless you are explicitly targeting a demographic in an area where Google's service is unavailable, if you like putting food on the table then you basically don't have a choice.

It feels like a monopoly due to the network effect, especially with how third party APKs will throw warnings on Android by default.

throwaway62012 2 years ago | | |

> Many users don't even know that's possible

I was talking about the developer. Don't use the platform if you don't like its terms of use.

Sure, of course a platform forbids you from using it to promote its competition. What's weird about it?

Users often have the alternative stores pre-installed. Or you can use your marketing to promote your app through other channels.

> It feels like a monopoly due to the network effect, especially with how third party APKs will throw warnings on Android by default.

Well, there's a good reason for the warning.

ua741 2 years ago |

Sometimes, I feel it's a little unfair to products that directly compete with one of their SaaS offerings.

Take Google or Apple Photos, for example. Due to this 30% cut, they always have an unfair advantage when it comes to pricing.

In the case of Apple Services, we don't know if, under the hood, they are using undocumented APIs or whitelisting internal apps to provide a better experience when it comes to background work. (Context: Apple claims that the iPhone performs backups and a bunch of other tasks during the night while the phone is charging. Personally, I haven't seen any app perform these long-running backups as smoothly as their in-house apps.)

JCharante 2 years ago |

> This is insane (because there are no alternatives to Play Market).

This is not true? Huawei uses android but is banned from the US so Google can't take their money. Guess what... you don't need Google Play to distribute apps.

lxgr 2 years ago | |

Name a popular Android app that's not distributed through Google Play outside of China.

Of course that could also just mean that the market agrees that Google's store is just the absolute best, and paying Google 30% (or 0% if you're really cool) is a steal – we just don't know since we haven't ran that particular experiment anywhere in the world.

We are probably about to, in the EU, though.

zamadatix 2 years ago | | |

Fortnite - alright that one may be stirring the pot a little... but it is honestly a good example. Installs are in the tens (hundreds total?) of millions and the revenue is regularly over 5 billion per year. Honestly it's not "what popular app" that's the problem, it's "what are unpopular apps supposed to do".

I still think it'd be good to de-bundle distribution fees from payment channels though.

dewey 2 years ago | | |

Fortnite?

https://www.fortnite.com/mobile/android/new-device?lang=en

JCharante 2 years ago | | |

YouTube Vanced until last year. Ad-free youtube client not distributed through the play store. Super popular as it gave youtube premium features for free.

2OEH8eoCRo0 2 years ago | |

Their issue doesn't seem to be with Google Play but being forced to use Google Billing?

JCharante 2 years ago | | |

You don't have to use Google Billing if you don't use Google Play Store

stetrain 2 years ago |

I thought a big benefit of Android was that you don't have to distribute your apps through the one official App Store.

_ea1k 2 years ago | |

It is more like the inverse. The big benefit is that as a user, you are able to acquire apps not distributed through the official app store. This can be useful for things like F-Droid.

For an app seller that needs revenue, the Play Store is the only practical option. Otherwise, they'd have to convince the user to tap the screen a half dozen more times, and that is too big of an ask. It'd ultimately hurt revenue more than the 30% tax.

lxgr 2 years ago | |

Yes, but if you do use Google's store, you have to use their payments system (which is roughly 10 times the price of normal online payments processing).

Except if you're too big for them to lose your business since it would make their store look bad as a platform, or too small for them to bother, or they are distracted by some other shiny trinket on that particular day.

wouldbecouldbe 2 years ago |

Under a million you can get it to 15% by applying to the small business program.

In most cases they allow users also to purchase subscriptions outside their app store, but you can't link directly to those purchases from within the app.

bearjaws 2 years ago | |

Unless you made a back door deal like Spotify

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/20/23969690/google-spotify-...

HumblyTossed 2 years ago |

It really sucks that we ended up with only two mobile OS's.

beardyw 2 years ago |

I am often directed out of the app to make payments via a browser (particularly well known streaming apps).

lxgr 2 years ago | |

That’s the thing, though: By the letter of Google’s rules that’s not allowed, as far as I know.

But apparently not all developers/anpp publishers are treated the same. Another example of that: https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/20/google-admits-spotify-pays...

sharts 2 years ago |

Well you are using their store-front and real estate at their shopping mall.

There are plenty of alternatives to the play store. They just don’t get the same amount of eyeballs or require slightly more technical users.

skyzyx 2 years ago | |

This is what Google’s and Apple’s (and Nintendo’s, and Microsoft’s, and Sony’s) cut covers. They built the platform, the system, provide straightforward billing, provide the “shopping mall” that draws eyeballs, etc.

It’s not just payment processing.

Fair fees for the exchange of value they provide is perfectly valid and fair in capitalistic societies. The percentage number is up for discussion, but “charging for value” by the platform vendors who built the thing and provide the platform itself is a valid point.

brudgers 2 years ago |

Why not raise your price to cover the cost?

Raising prices usually feels happier than reducing costs and half the customers at twice the price will probably reduce support costs as a side effect.

Good luck.

beeboobaa 2 years ago |

Wait until you find out about apple. They are worse in every way.

simonbarker87 2 years ago | |

Well their policies just ape Apple with about a three month delay so not worse really.

Also App Store review is waaaaaay quicker than Play Store review. I often get apps reviewed in 24 hours on Apple but Google can be literally weeks.

beeboobaa 2 years ago | | |

Odd, Google is always 1-4 hours for me (seems automated) while Apple tends to take anywhere between 2-14 days. And the Apple "reviewers" tend to whine about points they OKd the past dozen times. Or even better, sometimes they whine about things we changed because another reviewer asked for it. Must have wasted weeks worth of developer time just to appease these reviewers and their differing opinions.