The whole concept of some action being "legal" is nebulous at best in the US. At the cutting edge of technology where there isn't any directly analogous precedent, it just means that someone with deep enough pockets or enforcement authority hasn't challenged the status quo. There is so much going on with Google, Facebook, Apple, the telecom/media mergers, and so on that clearly is worth investigating and litigating in courts but we're doing the bare minimum. Once they're a certain size, companies just do whatever they want, pay their fines, pull out their token gestures on Twitter, and keep steam rolling ahead as if nothing had happened.

At this point, the whole system of conglomeration, regulatory capture, "cost of doing business" penalties, and arbitrary enforcement looks like a total farce as do the rights it gives its "constituents".

/rant

Let's simplify. Let's say I sell lemonade. It's 100% legit with USDA approval or whatever BUT I'm having trouble selling it. Grocery stores are happy with their own brand but maybe I'm lucky enough to get 1 Wholefoods to set up a counter. I can see the analogy of whole foods requiring me to not sell while in their store. However whole foods does NOT require me to white label. And they would not require me to change my website to not have alternative buying choices. In fact I do this all the time with foods I find in Wholefoods - I go to the website of foods I love and see if I can buy directly in bulk.

This is the CORRECT analogy. It's not correct to say that everyone is going into Safeway and stealing shit off the shelves. The OP should know that, and you should know that.

And on Android, developers are free to list their apps on F-Droid, Amazon Appstore or just let people download & install it from their own website. Unlike iOS, the Play Store is not mandatory.

> However whole foods does NOT require me to white label. (...) And they would not require me to change my website to not have alternative buying choices.

Grocery stores can and do ask anything they want of suppliers. Trader Joe's buys many products from suppliers like PepsiCo under a white labelling agreement. Walmart will fully dictate the packaging and pricing of your product (eg. demanding that Vlasic sell a Walmart-exclusive $2.97 gallon jar of pickles). Don't like their terms? Tough luck, it's their store.

I'm not saying that the grocery store analogy is a good one but it clearly works against your point. Actually I've only seen it mentioned to support dictatorial app stores.

In practice, it is. Only the Play Store can update apps in the background.

> Downvotes are not replying so I'm assuming they are just pissed that my logic checks out.

It breaks the site guidelines [1].

[1] Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

While at least 50% of the random grocery stores you would see are under one of the big 5 (or so) many of these stores are generally able to carry additional products not even necessarily approved by the top. Part of that is simply competition with local chains. And that doesn't even cover the fact that you have gobs of local and regional chains to contact and sell goods to.

But basically as a seller of lemonade you are highly likely to be able to sell your product without insane restrictions - as well have the ability to choose a chain or store that has competitive markup or a markup that you agree with.

If you sell phone applications you are dealing with exactly 2 entities that you HAVE to go through.

If Google took a more reasonable cut, like 5%, maybe even 10%, then sure, I wouldn't be so bothered by them insisting that this app use in-app purchases for donations.

2. I don't think Google actually needs a 30%/15% cut to "support the Android ecosystem". I think they're charging way more than necessary, just because they can.

(Same arguments for Apple.)

But for 1, this has some significant downsides to consumers. As it stands assuming most of the support comes from the android platform (ads and fees), you get price discrimination. The people who just want a phone to use the internet or stay connected or whatever don't have to subsidize people who do more.

I generally think having power users subsidize non power users is an ethical form of price discrimination. Thoughts?

Both Google and Apple have been stockpiling money for some time. Each company has over $100B of cash sitting in a bank account doing nothing, and the number increases every year. This suggests a market failure has taken place. In a competitive market, they would either be cutting prices or reinvesting profits into their product.

In Google's case, Android is not their main business so it's admittedly a little harder to say whether Android specifically "needs" to take a 30% cut of app sales to sustain itself. But I don't believe for a second that Google chose that number based on any notion of "need", I believe they chose it because that's what Apple had already set as the standard. And when it comes to Apple, the iPhone is their core business, it is wildly profitable, and the evidence seems clear that they are not doing anything useful with the money (see above).

So yeah, I do actually believe there's pretty clear evidence that these fees are just greed and not needed to subsidize anything about the platform. Whether or not such subsidization is ethical is a moot point.

Also, a donation is very different than selling something from a legal point of view. When selling, you need to pay VAT.

One could keep two apps, one paid and one free, but then on the paid one you're essentially paying 30% to Google and about 20% more to VAT. So you're effectively losing half the money and having to do lots more work to maintain two apps, and their subsequent ASO.

You then have the problem of writing and maintaining the code for the IAP, which isn't always trivial. But yes, absolutely do-able.

At this point it's the same thing as selling an invisible skin for your app. The fundamental issue is that of selling vs donating.

What are these restrictions? I've heard this mentioned before, but I'm not finding information on what the restrictions are.

To reach Android users, you must go through the Play Store.

Realistically, these stores are not in competition. They have monopolies over their respective markets. If one store offers a better deal to developers, that doesn't meant the developers can all flock to that store and abandon the other one. Developers still must deal with both. As a result, the regular forces of competition aren't doing their job here. Neither store has any incentive to make their terms better because they won't gain any developers by doing so.

I think maybe its time to discuss what 'rights' mean in a purely digital economy.

Not to point out the obvious, but doesn't that mean that Google is providing a service that is providing you with value? I can't imagine someone saying that TV ads should be free because that's the only way to reach 70% of the market...

I'll even make it so that all apps are automatically available in both stores! And I'll use the revenue to buy out any competitors, or sue those who I can not buy.

would that still be fair? After all, I am providing a service, am I not?

I think the debate here is not about whether or not there is a service being provided -- but rather what kind of service fee would be "fair" in exchange for the service they provided, while acknowledging their (near) monopoly on android users.

When that revenue is labeled “donations”, it doesn’t make it not revenue.

> “you are not permitted to ask for donations to support your free art project”

The host is not in the business of differentiating art projects from non-art projects or donation-based payments from non-donation-based payments, which could easily be abused by developers offering in-app rewards for “donations.” That is a slippery slope that would be ripe for abuse and satisfy no one.

When we have a complicated system, like the US tax laws, people abuse it and everyone complains. When we have a simple system applied fairly across the board, people think exceptions should be made for them and complain. The lesson seems to be that someone will always be complaining.

Epic/Fortnite beg to differ. Unlike with Apple, no one is forced to use the Play Store to get apps for your phone.

I’m fine with the walled garden of my iPhone and Apple’s App Store. But I had hoped there was an alternative for those so inclined.

Google's actual infrastructure costs are not low, they're actually so high that many people don't think it's feasible to do it. It's so high that they're reduced to complaining about how difficult it is to do anything other than use Google's existing infrastructure.

Maybe that still feels unfair. I'm not totally unsympathetic to that perspective. But it's wrong to characterize Google's costs as trivial and claim that there are no options. Both you and the author imply that Google's 70% marketshare platform is a triviality worth far less than they charge, and that doesn't strike me as entirely fair either.

Not really if you consider huawei without a play store. Also consider the IE case where microsoft only was forced to allow a browser chooser window. I think if the same would happen on android all would be fine.

> There is no realistic alternative if you want to reach the 70% of the market Google controls.

I think just because they are big they shouldn't be forced to allow everyone to use their platform.