Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing

Re:Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing by lxgr on Wednesday March 23, 2022 @06:47PM (#30784566)

> Then let's focus on lowering that percent instead of making the situation worse for consumers.

The only viable path towards finding a fair price for this service (apparently deemed essential and basically a steal by Apple and Google, but worth less than nothing by many app developers) would seem to be competition.

Why not offer both, explicitly allowing for different prices, special deals only for non-store subscriptions etc.?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing by rswail on Thursday March 24, 2022 @03:42AM (#30787184)

Or regulation.

In Australia, the Reserve Bank regulates interchange fees and requires the end user to be made aware of card processing fees which can't exceed a percentage/value of the transaction.

Similar regulation applies in the EU.

There's no reason why Google/Apple/etc stores can't be similarly regulated.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing by lxgr on Thursday March 24, 2022 @12:36PM (#30792235)

That's possible too, but I believe there's much more uncertainty about the fair market value of app store compared to out-of-band subscriptions.

Of course it would also be possible to do both, i.e. to mandate either a fixed rate or alternatively allowing out-of-band payments.

[ Parent | on HN ]