First-party trials annoy me since cancelation is instant, unlike trials from third-party apps (those cancel after the trial period if you cancel during). Fortunately, you can go to Report A Problem and just say you didn't mean to have the subscription charged and they'll refund it as long as it's a few days from the charge date.
And yet there are scams that are costing users $5 million a year, or more, on the iOS App Store[1].
Of course, the app's premise is a scam, but my comment was about the ease of canceling and managing subscriptions. Dare I say that apps like this would be even more bold and prevalent if alternative app stores were available.
1: https://youtu.be/VrKW58MS12g (it’s the Mark Rober phone scammer video)
More likely it's because Google takes a 30% cut. Adyen takes a ~4% cut. I still maintain that if Apple and Google took a 5% cut from their app stores, no one would have complained.
Be wary if a company avoids Google. For example Tinder started forcing users to subscribe directly instead of using Google. This is because most people cancel almost immediately since once you subscribe you find all your matches are bots.
The entire purpose is to make it just hard enough so you think ohh it's only 10$ a month. Another trick is to offer a month free. Hulu does this. If you cancel on their website you get several pages which try to convince you to stay.
Google also makes it easy to manage all your subscriptions in one place. What is all this crap I'm paying for, I can quickly see what and delete it. Also I'm much more likely to try a service ( I'm studying Chinese right now and have used various apps) if I can do it via Google Play .