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by wiradikusuma·4y ago·view on hn ↗
The wording in the announcement is not very straightforward. So meaning, if I use Stripe, I will pay Stripe fee and also (reduced) Google Play fee?
1 comments
Yes, google will charge a service fee for the use of their platform by taking a cut of every transaction, even ones not processed by them.

If we get a lawsuit that says “you can’t take a cut of every transaction” they’ll just charge a percentage of total revenue and audit developers, or find some other way of getting their cut. It is highly unlikely a path through lawmakers or courts is going to bring down apple and google’s cut. They’re running a platform and they’ve determined a price to be on that platform. They just happened to get that price through IAP, but they have many alternatives.

Laws can mandate a very rigid pricing structure for some services in many countries.

One example would be access to last mile internet cables and some insurances where profits are tightly regulated.

Lawmakers and regulartors could explicitly tell them what to charge (e.g. "at most x€ per gigabyte downloaded from the app store, at most x€ per store listing,..., No additional charges are allowed")

However, it's a very heavy handed measure and I'm not sure it will happen with mobile phone plattforms.

In my region last mile access for ADSL operators is enshrined in law, as well as how much the network owner can charge them for that last mile access, and in practice what they charge them is around 30%.

I am pessimistic of a legal path to reducing the 30% take. You would have to get a court or lawmaker agree it is onerous, and I think reasonable people can disagree on whether that cut is indeed onerous.