Google Announces Crackdown on In-App Billing, Aimed at Netflix and Spotify
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow639:
Google announces crackdown on in-app billing, aimed at Netflix and Spotify:
With a lot of focus lately on how smartphone app developers are treated on Apple's and Google's app stores, Google has decided right now is a great time to announce more stringent app store billing rules. A new post from the official Android Developer Blog promises a crackdown on in-app billing that sounds like it's targeted at big streaming services like Netflix and Spotify.
Google's post really beats around the bush trying to sugar-coat this announcement, but it starts off by saying, "We've always required developers who distribute their apps on Play to use Google Play's billing system if they offer in-app purchases of digital goods, and pay a service fee from a percentage of the purchase." This rule has not been enforced, though, and a lot of big developers have just ignored Google's billing requirements. Today, Netflix and Spotify don't use Google's in-app billing and instead kick new accounts out to a Web browser, where the companies can use PayPal or direct credit card processing to dodge Google's 30-percent fees.
[...] That's basically the meat of the blog post: everybody needs to use Google billing by this time next year. A look at the "Payments Policy" shows examples like "subscription services" that offer things like "music" and "video." It also warns readers at the top that "changes are coming to this policy!" and that "any existing app that is currently using an alternative billing system will need to remove it to comply with this update."
Google draws a clear distinction between Android and iOS by pointing out that on Android, developers have a "choice of stores" and that most Android devices ship with multiple app stores.
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