Google Play permitting alternative billing systems for users in South Korea

Remember, people: the real lock-in with Android is not the Google Play. It is the push notification services that are bundled with it.<p>The Android OS is intentionally crippled to work only with Google Play push notifications, and there are no &#x27;stock&#x27; ways to use an alternative without modifying the OS. The best alternative is to do it via persistently running app, which is less reliable and bad for UX.<p>This notifications problem also applies to iOS: even if users will be eventually allowed to install apps bypassing the AppStore, these apps would just sit idly until opened by a user, which is unacceptable for a very wide range of communication apps.<p>However, there is a difference with Android: iOS was crippled from the start, but first iterations of Android were relatively open, apps could run in the background without much issues. But then Google started tightening the grip, so Android now closely resembles iOS in this regard.

This post is from Nov 4. (The dateline is written in Korean.)<p>The big surprise here is&#x2F;was that Google intends to charge a &quot;service fee&quot; to developers who use an alternative billing system.<p>&gt; <i>We recognize, however, that developers will incur costs to support their billing system, so when a user selects alternative billing, we will reduce the developer’s service fee by 4%. For example, for the vast majority of developers who pay 15% for transactions through Google Play&#x27;s billing system, their service fee for transactions through the alternate billing system would be 11%.</i><p>I was hoping that at some point in the weeks to follow, they&#x27;d clarify how this is supposed to work. Presumably Google will require me to send them a report of how much money I&#x27;d made?<p>And then I guess I&#x27;d <i>write Google a check</i> for 11% of my earnings…?? Quarterly? Monthly? What happens if I miss a payment?

Am I reading this correctly?<p>&gt; We recognize, however, that developers will incur costs to support their billing system, so when a user selects alternative billing, we will reduce the developer’s service fee by 4%. For example, for the vast majority of developers who pay 15% for transactions through Google Play&#x27;s billing system, their service fee for transactions through the alternate billing system would be 11%.<p>You have to pay a 11% fee for using someone else&#x27;s billing system when buying an in-app purchase, if that app was downloaded from the Play store?

When I was in college and threw parties I used to justify keeping all the money by saying it was for &quot;the house&quot;. Not one of the people involved (bartender, bouncer, etc) got penny and I consistently made lots of money<p>Google now says the fee is for the &quot;ecosystem&quot;. They are taking people for fools and hiding the real story: they are a monopoly and they only do this because they are forced by the people of South Korea

@dang @mods<p>Present title: <i>Google Play permitting alternative billing systems for users in South Korea</i><p>The title is editorialised and reads like this is something Google is doing of their own volition, whereas they’re merely complying with (new) law.

Time for open source alternatives to Google Play services to appear? So developers can use other stores or no store at all?

Good. I&#x27;m sure their billing and payments scam won&#x27;t see light in many other countries as well. Devs in India have &quot;until March 31, 2022 to comply&quot;? LOL, let&#x27;s see how that turns out. It&#x27;ll be amusing to see another instance of Google getting shown their place by responsible competition regulators, especially in one of their most valuable markets.

Curious how this will get resolved when a service like Netflix uses their own billing system and is forced to pay 26% access fee to Google and 30% to Apple.<p>Will Netflix have to raise their subscription rate by 120% or more?

I remember the cynical Reddit comments warning of Google leaving the Korean market before allowing for third party payments.

The fee is quite big, I do think that they should reduce it a little bit.