I was thinking about it yesterday as codex was debugging app live on my phone about what it all really means long term. Note, while I have technical knowledge, I am not a programmer by trade. Computing was always a little ephemeral, but now it may become even more so.
And they're annoying and often screw up the review process.
Google is always going to make money off any work they do. That's just business. They're not going to put more money towards better reviews without taking more money. And without the reviews, even as crappy as they are, a lot of really crappy software would be on the store. And a lot more would be actively malicious
And you were making like 7x as much as they were taking. Without them, you would even get noticed and you'd have made nothing.
We know this because almost nobody installs FDroid, and the other stores like Samsung make basically nothing for developers, even though they're preinstalled on so many devices.
It's not just business - it's basically a monopoly. Enough to extract rent while providing a minimal service.
Imagine if all streets were owned by two large companies who charged you enough to use them that you'd be paying as much in fees as you are in paying for gas. People would still use cars. The streets could be in horrible condition, the two companies would be making an insane amount of profit, but there would still be people out there saying that if it wasn't for those companies we wouldn't be getting anywhere and it's just business.
Customer support has gotten so terrible. Now that all big companies have terrible support, none of them are punished for it. You can still occasionally find people who give a shit in small business, but that is it. Google is probably one of the worst offenders of all. I don't know what the solution is, it seems like the only way to get any satisfaction on an issue at a big corp anymore is a social medial call-out like this one.
If you are here, thank you for Conversations, Daniel, it has been my go-to for years for communicating with friends and family.
That's because you the user are not the customer of Google and such services. You are actually the product being sold to the customer, namely advertising companies, by Google.
The farmer take care of his pigs but only to the point they get slaughtered.
Google has captured what really is a public utility and should be either state-owned or heavily regulated.
(Long) distance communications, just like public roads, breathable air, potable drinking water and so on do not fit into a "free market economy" paradigm.
They simply don't fulfill the basic requirements that make the "market" idea work.
Specifically, a free market needs goods from different suppliers to be easily interchangeable. You cannot sensibly build multiple roads parallel to each other, or have multiple water pipes installed and you have only one airway to breath through.
> Tell me about the different OSes each of Samsung, Huawei, Tencent MyApp, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Honor etc. run then that we can choose from.
Other companies using Google's incredible R&D spend and selling phones that use it is not Google's failing.
And we're talking app stores. They all have app stores disconnected from Google's app store.
> It's like saying Windows doesn't have a monopoly in the PC space because HP, Dell, Lenovo, ASUS.
No, on two counts. One: - and it's the same with Android - Apple exists, and so there's definitely not a monopoly from a lowercase personal computing perspective. Two: the conversation is about app stores. There are many app stores. It's like saying Microsoft doesn't have a PC hardware monopoly because HP, Dell, Lenovo, ASUS.
it doesnt need to be a utility. they just need to crack down on every attempt google uses to kill the competition.
There should be an agency you can complain to for monopolies which has the power to dictate new rules to the monopolist with far reaching power to crack down on anything that smells like anti competitive behavior.
e.g.
- force banking apps that try to secure themselves with google play services to make that dependency optional.
- force google to stop blocking newpipe, aurora, etc.
- force google pay to make itself available on any platform that wants to integrate it.
- force google to allow alternative app stores to become first class citizens.
With such a perversion of definitions why not call the stock holders the true customers? Services can have multiple classes of users. Some YouTube users can be content creators. Some users can watch Shorts. Some can watch long term videos. Some can pay to run ad campaigns. This idea that there is only one true kind of "customer" is not how people think of these services.
I remember that once my flight was cancelled and I figured out that if I buy a bus ticket "right now" I'd be able to reach my destination in a sensible time. I quickly bought the ticket... for the wrong day.
I called the bus company, a native speaker of my language immediately picked up, rescheduled the ticket, and told me to pay €2 extra to the bus driver.
I was shocked that customer support could be so simple.
BTW I spent 6 hours total spread along 12 months calling an Indian customer service before I got my money back for the cancelled flight.
Receiving 1000 euros without having any real work or accountability is the epitome of free profit. No wonder these platform gatekeepers are fighting so hard to maintain it (at the cost of you, the consumer).
And yet people (in general) just dont care, because they don't truly feel the pain until it's too late - issues like privacy and such are like that.
It's the arrogance. "You wouldn't have made 10 euros if I didn't give you the storefront and the one click install". Unfortunately they are right about this too. Why would they then also provide customer support that costs them money. They have enough "happy" customers as it is. Literally millions of apps are there.
"Fortunately, I’m no longer economically dependent on Google Play Store revenue. Google doesn’t deserve me and my money anymore. I’m done. Fuck the gatekeepers."
Yeah that "there is no way to talk to a human at Google" is one of the reasons I never recommend a Google solution at current workplace... Or to family.
it's actually Google being parasitic on all the apps' infra. I paid for the app store infra when I bought my phone, and every time I open it and see ads, and with my tracking data for the NSA. They don't need to be allowed to quadruple dip.
I think it bothers OP less that they take a 15% tax than the fact that google provides terrible support for their own play store. If they would take that tax and provide good feedback and speedy version reviews, nobody would ever complain - it is expected to pay something since the play store doesn't run on good thoughts and prayers.
But because they're a monopoly (or a duopoly if you count apple, which is a different platform altogether) they can afford to act this way.
Of course people would complain, it's unrealistic to expect everyone to have the same expectation of what a fair fee is that somehow exactly matches the current fee (even if the service is great)
Author here: Indeed, 15% is fine. They do provide some services. They provide the CDN for downloading the APK. They handle sales taxes in the various countries, which would be a PITA to handle yourself. Similar-ish services like Patreon charge a fee too. The 30% they charged a couple of years back was bad. But I could live with 15% if the support were anything other than zero.
Apple recently submitted in court filings that you'd have to pay ~8% for off-the-shelf solutions like Stripe or Paddle to be Merchant of Record anyway so 15% isn't really bad but Google should be doing something for that extra 7%.
It's a level of service above their payment processing, where they also collect and remit certain taxes which I believe is built-in to that ~8%. This is the same service that Google and Apple provide for in-app payments.
> Stripe and Paddle are leading full-service, turnkey payment processing, and merchant-of-record providers handling all the services necessary for link-out, including payment processing, tax compliance, fraud detection, and customer service. Across the top apps, the mean implied processing and merchant-of-record fee based on Stripe’s and Paddle’s rack rates (which few, if any, large developers actually pay because they negotiate discounts or provision in-house) is 8.1% using Stripe rates, or 7.8% using Paddle rates.
> it bothers OP less that they take a 15% tax than the fact that google provides terrible support for their own play store.
The terrible support is really deeper than support. You literally stopped doing business here, because the lack of a feedback channel that allows Google to improve their business (i.e. realize they need a way to quickly correct stupid automated decisions) been Google's worst enemy and best friend. By ignoring support & feedback, the friction for internal decision making is low (no pesky customer demands, the product manager is king, management gets their way), but it leads to I think a lot of Google's products failing because they do not really understand their users, and the why behind the what they use.
I'm not sure being a monopoly alone explains Google's behavior here, but it could be as simple as that: who cares about one small customer... it's not like they have a viable alternative.
> the friction for internal decision making is low (no pesky customer demands, the product manager is king, management gets their way)
I'd like to support that this goes "both" ways for companies who destroy their customer service. Not only do they not know what their customers want/problems they're having, but they don't know what their customers wouldn't want/problems they're not having. Like you say, it "lowers the friction," so some dumb, destructive idea that somebody has gets implemented based on title and force of personality.
But that's a monopoly. Nothing they do is destructive, other than putting any more work in than is necessary. If the store went down for weeks at a time, they might have a problem. The problem would result from this personally irritating and inconveniencing a regulator/politician, judge, or major stockholder/owner.
I know this is a stupid question even before I ask it, but is there any chance at this point of seeing something out of the scope of Apple and Google for mobile?? Will the bank apps ever allow people out of these two players
Motorola is planning to release phones with GrapheneOS. So far only expensive models have been confirmed, but I assume cheapos should follow.
Of course they're not doing this out of good heart. My theory is that China wants to have a popular smartphone that is completely independent from US companies. But hey, once upon a time Google were "the good guys" too, so enjoy the party while it lasts.
An interesting point is that it's important to have powerful China around because they're a capitalist competition to the US.
> An interesting point is that it's important to have powerful China around because they're a capitalist competition to the US.
Semi-capitalist at best. They're good for cloning things invented in the West, but the problem is that that is much cheaper than inventing, so things get commoditised and the places that can do expensive R&D have to find other ways to make money all the time.
1. That's not true. More and more segments of technology are being dominated by China. China sells lots and lots of everyday objects that are wholly desgined in China, with quality beating western products. They're just small improvements over existing designs of relatively simple things, so nothing makes the headlines.
2. Lots of Chinese technology never leaves China for political reasons, rather than economic/technology ones.
3. If you want to buy a semi-professional machine as an advanced hobbyist, often your only option is China.
4. Apple is wildly known for taking existing designs and improving on them. Why is it good for Apple to do that, but bad for China to do that?
Isn't graphene completely dependent on what Google ships though? Ok they may be able to support Motorola devices longer than Googles releases facilitate supporting Google devices, but it's still ultimately android, which is still ultimately controlled by Google.
I'm not saying it isn't an improvement but this feels like choosing centos because you don't like the direction fedora is taking.
If you are referring to banking apps, I just don't use banking apps that don't work on my degoogled phone thus granting them the low fraud risk they so strive for with forcing locked devices.
> your bank 100% has a checkbox on your account they can click to disable any phone hardware requirements
I was going to thank you. I still thank you if this is true.
How do you know about the bank checkbox?
My bank is huge and I’m skeptical they give a crap about me any more than Google. Their app certainly doesn’t look like it.
(I noticed your account has been posting a lot of what I consider to be “garbage comments” in this article, so I’d like some kind of claim to fact check.)
No, because it is near impossible to compete with "free" and totally impossible to compete with "free-and-you-can-use-ad-block."
The truth is that these corps are so entrenched because people love love love the ad model. I mean, they hate the ads, but they are so sold on access being free that introducing a cost would come off like charging money to walk in a public park. Totally confusing.
And frankly the other path wouldn't be all roses either. There would be a wealth divide in technology where poor people wouldn't be able to afford to use all the stuff available to them now for free.
> This effectively means I’m paying Google more than 1000 Euro per year for their services. 1000 Euro per year is 1.5x what I’m paying for my internet access. It’s roughly what I’m paying for my notebook per year if you assume I use it for three to four years. When my internet breaks, someone drives to my house and fixes it. When my notebook breaks, someone drives to my house and fixes it.
Couldn’t have said better. We all allowed it to come to this.
Unfortunately google is now a massive juggernaut that has 20+ layers before you can ship anything, and thats bled out to the users of their services. I wish we had better alternatives. In fact, I now just focus on shipping a PWA.
Btw thanks to the author. I got Conversations to work with Micro (https://micro.mu), the personal assistant I'm building. Its a nice XMPP client. Now just need to figure out how to do encryption for queries going into the model itself.
Sorry this is a bit of a long rant. To many people here this will be a very old hut but I've only recently realized that Apple and Google are basically extortion rackets and have made the online world way worse and enshittified than it should be. Why? They deliberately make it as hard as possible to sell true cross-platform apps. "Buy one license, install our software on all of your devices." That should sound reasonable, yet it's impossible as a business model. If you put an app on the Apple Store or on Google Play, you cannot have it unlocked by a license code. So you have to sell it on their platform. That means that if you want to sell one license for all platforms, you'd have to force your users to buy the license in one of those stores, then generate desktop license from that store purchase. That's not just nonsense, it still wouldn't work because the user can still not switch from iOS to Android and vice versa.
Okay, so sell mobile platforms separately but make desktop platforms with one license. That would still be nice and comparatively hassle-free for your customers. Not so fast, though! Desktop app stores also prohibit free apps with unlock mechanism. So you have to put unlockable versions on your website. However, app stores explicitly prohibit even just mentioning that the user doesn't have to buy an app if they have already bought it elsewhere. They strictly prohibit pointing the user elsewhere to check whether they could use it for free. Consequently, unless your users are extremely well educated about those platform quirks, many of them will erroneously buy your app twice.
But wait! There is an exception in Apple Store and Google Play Store. You're strictly prohibited from putting an app on there that needs to be unlocked by a license key, but you are allowed to ask the user to create an account or log into an existing account with a user name and email address. As long as users can also purchase the app on the respective store, that's allowed. So you can tie the app to an account and unlock it if the user already bought it for another platform. For some reason, unlocking an app with a code is strictly prohibited but unlocking it by providing your email and a password and then contacting a server is totally fine. That's why so many apps have those shitty login requirements. I wasn't really aware of that.
In a nutshell, apart from "freemium models" there are two major ways to sell cross-platform software that really is cross-platform. First, make the user pay individually for each platform, make them buy your app again and again with all the hassle that brings. Second, force them to login with an email and a user name with some direct contact to some centralized hub server.
IMHO, all of these options are strictly worse than just allowing your users to buy the app anywhere they like and unlock it for all other platforms.
All these stores, Apple Store, Google etc... must be
opened up. They constitute an illegal monopoly. Why does
the US government protect monopolies? This is against
the core tent of capitalism, aka more competition in
a free, open market, to have prices be as low as reasonable
possible for the customer. The USA shifted towards de-facto
monopolistic mafias. Financial kickbacks to the US government
must logically exist here - otherwise one can not explain
why the US government works for the interest of mega-corporations
only now.
To the author.
Go buy yourself some socks.Maybe a wallet, and go to the resturaunt that never fails you, or more generaly put in a concerted shameless effort to catch up, relax, fit the worst little personal bugs and recuring inconvieniences, essentialy put the same attention that you put into maintaining your product, into your self, remember to say fuck you google as you put the new
" toothbrush * " you got by the sink, that you have reminded yourself but failed to get for the last six months, because thats what we give up, when we are blamming ourselves for the rejections we get from nameless faceless functionaries, that doom loop of 'engagement' is the point behind the delays and mindless activity, and reversing it is almost magical.
* 'toothbrush', anything that is a constant tiny irritant going away can be absurdly triumphant
I get excited every time I learn about another E2EE messaging app where the server can be self-hosted. But as I understand it, the server that triggers push notifications for any android app must be hard-coded into the app's binary. Are there any good architectural workarounds for this? I've read a little bit about VAPID[1] but I don't know if it is actually a viable approach and I don't think I've ever seen it promoted in an E2EE messaging app with a self-hosted server.
It's possible for the app to poll the server for new messages. iOS also supports light background work that can poll server from time to time and trigger notification on the device, rather than using apple's push notification infra.
The trade off is that you gain some extra privacy with simpler architecture and accept that some notifications will be delayed as ios decides when to run the bg job for the app.
source: I develop e2e app with self-hostable server (145 lines of zero deps python for the whole server).
66 comments
[ 0.25 ms ] story [ 9.9 ms ] threadAnd they're annoying and often screw up the review process.
Google is always going to make money off any work they do. That's just business. They're not going to put more money towards better reviews without taking more money. And without the reviews, even as crappy as they are, a lot of really crappy software would be on the store. And a lot more would be actively malicious
And you were making like 7x as much as they were taking. Without them, you would even get noticed and you'd have made nothing.
We know this because almost nobody installs FDroid, and the other stores like Samsung make basically nothing for developers, even though they're preinstalled on so many devices.
Imagine if all streets were owned by two large companies who charged you enough to use them that you'd be paying as much in fees as you are in paying for gas. People would still use cars. The streets could be in horrible condition, the two companies would be making an insane amount of profit, but there would still be people out there saying that if it wasn't for those companies we wouldn't be getting anywhere and it's just business.
If you are here, thank you for Conversations, Daniel, it has been my go-to for years for communicating with friends and family.
The farmer take care of his pigs but only to the point they get slaughtered.
(Long) distance communications, just like public roads, breathable air, potable drinking water and so on do not fit into a "free market economy" paradigm.
They simply don't fulfill the basic requirements that make the "market" idea work.
Specifically, a free market needs goods from different suppliers to be easily interchangeable. You cannot sensibly build multiple roads parallel to each other, or have multiple water pipes installed and you have only one airway to breath through.
And there are other companies: Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Tencent MyApp, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Honor, K Telecom T-Store, Jio, MTN Play.
Not even close to a captured utility. And if it were, which state on the planet should own it?
Tell me about the different OSes each of Samsung, Huawei, Tencent MyApp, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Honor etc. run then that we can choose from.
It's like saying Windows doesn't have a monopoly in the PC space because HP, Dell, Lenovo, ASUS.
Other companies using Google's incredible R&D spend and selling phones that use it is not Google's failing.
And we're talking app stores. They all have app stores disconnected from Google's app store.
> It's like saying Windows doesn't have a monopoly in the PC space because HP, Dell, Lenovo, ASUS.
No, on two counts. One: - and it's the same with Android - Apple exists, and so there's definitely not a monopoly from a lowercase personal computing perspective. Two: the conversation is about app stores. There are many app stores. It's like saying Microsoft doesn't have a PC hardware monopoly because HP, Dell, Lenovo, ASUS.
Pretending, some other company could come stroll along and take over Google's turf, completely ignores the underlying reality.
People don't talk on two phones at once, they only use one search engine regularly and they even only use one browser to surf the internet.
That bottleneck leads to market capture due to inevitable logical reasons, not because I say so.
If you want autonomous states, each one has to control their own infrastructure. Just don't forget to question your assumptions.
But try telling the internet that their "morally pure" addiction to skirting compensation is actually what is killing (killed?) the web.
Every competitor dies in the cradle because 40% of the internet won't pay them while using their service.
Youtube with ad-blocking is the best video service on the internet, and no one can touch that.
There should be an agency you can complain to for monopolies which has the power to dictate new rules to the monopolist with far reaching power to crack down on anything that smells like anti competitive behavior.
e.g.
- force banking apps that try to secure themselves with google play services to make that dependency optional.
- force google to stop blocking newpipe, aurora, etc.
- force google pay to make itself available on any platform that wants to integrate it.
- force google to allow alternative app stores to become first class citizens.
I called the bus company, a native speaker of my language immediately picked up, rescheduled the ticket, and told me to pay €2 extra to the bus driver.
I was shocked that customer support could be so simple.
BTW I spent 6 hours total spread along 12 months calling an Indian customer service before I got my money back for the cancelled flight.
And yet people (in general) just dont care, because they don't truly feel the pain until it's too late - issues like privacy and such are like that.
> For years I’ve felt like I was in a toxic relationship with Google, and the only reason I stayed was economic dependency.
Not slavery: one party makes you supply widgets or you aren't allowed to eat or sleep. Another party gives you widgets for picking cotton.
We should all be happy to participate in the not slavery society, right?
+1.
Free to read online - https://charleseisenstein.org/books/sacred-economics/
https://stripe.com/managed-payments
This is what Apple said about it:
> Stripe and Paddle are leading full-service, turnkey payment processing, and merchant-of-record providers handling all the services necessary for link-out, including payment processing, tax compliance, fraud detection, and customer service. Across the top apps, the mean implied processing and merchant-of-record fee based on Stripe’s and Paddle’s rack rates (which few, if any, large developers actually pay because they negotiate discounts or provision in-house) is 8.1% using Stripe rates, or 7.8% using Paddle rates.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.36...
The terrible support is really deeper than support. You literally stopped doing business here, because the lack of a feedback channel that allows Google to improve their business (i.e. realize they need a way to quickly correct stupid automated decisions) been Google's worst enemy and best friend. By ignoring support & feedback, the friction for internal decision making is low (no pesky customer demands, the product manager is king, management gets their way), but it leads to I think a lot of Google's products failing because they do not really understand their users, and the why behind the what they use.
I'm not sure being a monopoly alone explains Google's behavior here, but it could be as simple as that: who cares about one small customer... it's not like they have a viable alternative.
I'd like to support that this goes "both" ways for companies who destroy their customer service. Not only do they not know what their customers want/problems they're having, but they don't know what their customers wouldn't want/problems they're not having. Like you say, it "lowers the friction," so some dumb, destructive idea that somebody has gets implemented based on title and force of personality.
But that's a monopoly. Nothing they do is destructive, other than putting any more work in than is necessary. If the store went down for weeks at a time, they might have a problem. The problem would result from this personally irritating and inconveniencing a regulator/politician, judge, or major stockholder/owner.
Of course they're not doing this out of good heart. My theory is that China wants to have a popular smartphone that is completely independent from US companies. But hey, once upon a time Google were "the good guys" too, so enjoy the party while it lasts.
An interesting point is that it's important to have powerful China around because they're a capitalist competition to the US.
Semi-capitalist at best. They're good for cloning things invented in the West, but the problem is that that is much cheaper than inventing, so things get commoditised and the places that can do expensive R&D have to find other ways to make money all the time.
2. Lots of Chinese technology never leaves China for political reasons, rather than economic/technology ones.
3. If you want to buy a semi-professional machine as an advanced hobbyist, often your only option is China.
4. Apple is wildly known for taking existing designs and improving on them. Why is it good for Apple to do that, but bad for China to do that?
I'm not saying it isn't an improvement but this feels like choosing centos because you don't like the direction fedora is taking.
I was going to thank you. I still thank you if this is true.
How do you know about the bank checkbox?
My bank is huge and I’m skeptical they give a crap about me any more than Google. Their app certainly doesn’t look like it.
(I noticed your account has been posting a lot of what I consider to be “garbage comments” in this article, so I’d like some kind of claim to fact check.)
The truth is that these corps are so entrenched because people love love love the ad model. I mean, they hate the ads, but they are so sold on access being free that introducing a cost would come off like charging money to walk in a public park. Totally confusing.
And frankly the other path wouldn't be all roses either. There would be a wealth divide in technology where poor people wouldn't be able to afford to use all the stuff available to them now for free.
Couldn’t have said better. We all allowed it to come to this.
Btw thanks to the author. I got Conversations to work with Micro (https://micro.mu), the personal assistant I'm building. Its a nice XMPP client. Now just need to figure out how to do encryption for queries going into the model itself.
That just about sums up Big Tech
Okay, so sell mobile platforms separately but make desktop platforms with one license. That would still be nice and comparatively hassle-free for your customers. Not so fast, though! Desktop app stores also prohibit free apps with unlock mechanism. So you have to put unlockable versions on your website. However, app stores explicitly prohibit even just mentioning that the user doesn't have to buy an app if they have already bought it elsewhere. They strictly prohibit pointing the user elsewhere to check whether they could use it for free. Consequently, unless your users are extremely well educated about those platform quirks, many of them will erroneously buy your app twice.
But wait! There is an exception in Apple Store and Google Play Store. You're strictly prohibited from putting an app on there that needs to be unlocked by a license key, but you are allowed to ask the user to create an account or log into an existing account with a user name and email address. As long as users can also purchase the app on the respective store, that's allowed. So you can tie the app to an account and unlock it if the user already bought it for another platform. For some reason, unlocking an app with a code is strictly prohibited but unlocking it by providing your email and a password and then contacting a server is totally fine. That's why so many apps have those shitty login requirements. I wasn't really aware of that.
In a nutshell, apart from "freemium models" there are two major ways to sell cross-platform software that really is cross-platform. First, make the user pay individually for each platform, make them buy your app again and again with all the hassle that brings. Second, force them to login with an email and a user name with some direct contact to some centralized hub server.
IMHO, all of these options are strictly worse than just allowing your users to buy the app anywhere they like and unlock it for all other platforms.
Open ALL stores.
Google Play's app registration is so much more complicated now that Good Luck getting to production ever.
And even then the same thing on every update. If you're a small business and your livelihood depends on that then it's a nightmare to deal with.
And no, kicking them out won't be a problem. No sky is going to fall. Vacuum would be filled in very quickly.
* 'toothbrush', anything that is a constant tiny irritant going away can be absurdly triumphant
[1] (Disclosure: the AI gave me this link) https://unifiedpush.org/news/20250131_push_for_decentralized...
The trade off is that you gain some extra privacy with simpler architecture and accept that some notifications will be delayed as ios decides when to run the bg job for the app.
source: I develop e2e app with self-hostable server (145 lines of zero deps python for the whole server).