Highly unethical step from Google! Need to know logic based on value-addition what google is doing that makes it eligible to charge 30% commission. It purely looks like exploiting its market leading position.
BS. Seller quotes a price. He does not have to reveal any logic for it. Buyer accepts it or not. That’s how free markets work.
Sorry but free markets don’t let that happen. They’re far more versatile and have provisions for taking care of virtually all problems. If one company can make a service free, so can hundreds of companies. TCBS proponents keep talking about monopoly but struggle to quote too many examples of actual monopolies, which is defined as single sole supplier of a given product.
All markets are free per se. It’s regulators who tamper with it and make it unfree. “Take advantage of situation” is feature, not bug, of free market. Right to Work does not mean Constitution will provide jobs to everyone. Likewise, free market does not mean every Tom Dick and Harry can become as successful as Google, Facebook, etc. It means every Tom Dick and Harry can compete with Google Facebook. If they have the caliber, they may one day become as successful as Google Facebook, if not free market lets them die. Once upon a time, Google was the only player in Online Advertising. Today, there’s Facebook quite on par with Google, with others like Amazon, Twitter, Snap, TikTok strongly in the reckoning. That’s the beauty of free markets. If they have what it takes, anyone can become successful.
Create that alternative to rise and shine. Use Bing or whatever instead of Google. Advertise offline. There are always choices in free market.
I specifically left out all of your options because they’re not workable or can backfire. (1) Promote direct download was the first thing companies should have done ages ago. When I finished my product management engagement, I’d ask app owners, 8-10 years ago, what about marketing the app. 99% of them would say, if we publish on Play Store, it will sell automatically, no need for promotion. They followed the herd, published their apps on Play Store, created the Play Store hegemony. They are now paying the price of that stupid belief. (2) Google pays a Fixed Fee of $9B per year to burn Google Search on iPhone home screen. When app owners hear the Fixed Fee for reaching such arrangements with handset owners, they will realize that the 30% Variable Fee charged by Google is more cost effective because “we pay only when we get paid” (3) Govt intervention can work both ways. Google can lobby govt to shut down startups that don’t know the basics of running a company. We’ll see who talks about free market then!
Devs like EPIC did complain. Unlike Google, Apple is very intolerant of dissent. As it did with EPIC, it throws them out of AppStore and terminates their iOS Developer License within 72 hours.
Alternative app stores for Android have been around for years. App owners followed herd mentality and published their apps only to Play Store. They created the Google Play Store hegemony. Today they’re paying the price for their stupid actions.
LOL some lessons are never learned. App owners foolishly thought “If you build, they will come” and followed herd mentality by publishing their apps on Play Store without doing any Marketing. That created the hegemony of Play Store by ignoring other Android app stores (e.g. Galaxy Store). They’re facing the music today for their stupid actions. But that won’t stop them from refusing to learn from their mistake and once again believing naively that “if we build an Indian App Store, it will become popular”.