UK Android app devs to get choice of billing system on Google Play

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) says Google has promised to allow developers in the country to use alternative payment options after investigating the tech giant's control over Google Play in-app purchases. Under the new UK proposals, if the CMA signs off on the commitments, instead of obliging devs to use …

[heyrick]

say they sink a lot of resources into maintaining their respective stores

That may be true, but here in France (the EU?), I cannot purchase digital downloads (music, for example) from either Amazon Music or the regular Amazon app.

Why? Because Google (*) want their 30% cut, for a purchase that they had nothing to do with, hosted on infrastructure that they have nothing to do with, and not even supplied or maintained by them.

In essence, "it's digital and it's on our platform so cough up a third" appears to be Google's (*) attitude.

Bastards.

The sooner somebody puts the boot into this, the better.

* - I don't imagine Apple is any different, my experience is with Android.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: say they sink a lot of resources into maintaining their respective stores

It's (un)fairly consistent - If I want to buy a Kindle book, I can't do it on iOS or Android. I have to use the Kindle itself, or a computer. It's consumer-hostile.

[sketharaman]

Kudos to Google

In the early days of Play Store, app developers would tell us, "We're on Play Store, Google is doing our marketing, why do we need you?" Now they have conveniently forgotten about that and are trying to pretend that the only value provided by Play Store is payments, which others provide for 3-4%. By giving a takeoff of 3-4 percentage points for alternative billing, Google is making it clear that it also charges only 3-4% for payments and reminding them that, while they're free to take their payments elsewhere, they still need to pay for marketing and other value provided by Play Store. Fair is fair.