
Google Play cut payments to developers in Argentina - pmtarantino
http://www.celularis.com/google/pagos-de-google-play-en-argentina/
======
fmariluis
"Currently, developers in the below countries may register as Google Checkout
merchants and sell paid applications. We're working hard to add more
countries, but we're unable to provide any guidance on timelines.

    
    
        Australia
        Austria
        Belgium
        Brazil
        Canada
        Czech Republic
        Denmark
        Finland
        France
        Germany
        Hong Kong
        India
        Ireland
        Israel
        Italy
        Japan
        Mexico
        Netherlands
        New Zealand
        Norway
        Poland
        Portugal
        Russia
        Singapore
        Spain
        South Korea
        Sweden
        Switzerland
        Taiwan
        United Kingdom
        United States"
    

Source: [https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-
developer/answ...](https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-
developer/answer/150324?hl=en)

That leaves out Chile and Uruguay as well, so this change appears to be
unrelated to the current situation in Argentina.

~~~
molmalo
Exactly, they left those countries out too. We'll have to wait until Google
tells us why, if they ever do it.

~~~
spikels
You will wait in vain. Google has no incentive to explain. It would only
damage any chance of other and/or future business in Argentina.

But not every company is so timid. Brazil's Vale recently pulled out if a
giant potash project and according to Reuters: Vale said the inflation and
exchange rate could make the project unviable.[1]

[1][http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/27/us-vale-
riocolorad...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/27/us-vale-riocolorado-
idUSBRE93P1BL20130427)

------
seppo0010
Also covered in theverge [http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/24/4363960/google-no-
longer-a...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/24/4363960/google-no-longer-able-
to-pay-developers-in-argentina-for-apps-pulling)

~~~
Groxx
> _The move appears to be related to new, restrictive regulations the
> Argentine government has imposed on currency exchanges, which The
> Telegraph[1] detailed this past September._

Note that [1] is titled "Damming dollar flood comes at a huge cost to
Argentine economy". Seems like it's a reasonable possibility, though I can't
say I understand Argentine economics.

[1]
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatlife/9565126/Damming-d...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatlife/9565126/Damming-
dollar-flood-comes-at-a-huge-cost-to-Argentine-economy.html)

------
braco_alva
This is really bad news for latin american developers, as far as I know,
Argentina was one of the few latin american countries that were able to sell
in the Play Store and now it's gone. It kind of kills my hope that they may
eventually give support to my country.

I know I can establish an LLC in US to fix this, but it is something that we
would rather not to do. It is kind of a bummer that Google makes it so
difficult to do business in certain countries.

------
jstalin
The Kirchners continue to work wonders for the Argentine economy.

~~~
rpgmaker
It has nothing to do with them. Read the article and try again.

~~~
jstalin
Of course it has everything to do with them. The current administration
consists of former Marxist guerrillas who openly state that they don't believe
in the quantity theory of money, that, in fact, it's the stores that are
causing inflation. They clamped down hard on dollar exchanges in 2011 and now
there is a black market dollar rate (vs the "official" rate).

Certainly, if you're happy with the situation and you're an Argentine, by all
means, continue to support Kirchnerismo.

------
rorra
Its not a big issue since we (Argentines) can open a company in Uruguay which
is pretty close, or even a LLC online (U$S 250 per year). And probably most
people doesn't know, but then we can get U$S in a bank account in Uruguay, and
instead of change them for Argentine pesos in the Argentine banks (AR$ 5 = U$S
1), we can sell it on the street (AR$ 9 = U$S 1), and earn a 80% revenue
because of stupid laws, crazy, right?

The main problem we have now, is that the government spends a lot of money on
social plans to get people to vote them (instead of creating real jobs, obama
care?), and they steal too much money as well (google for "Lázaro Báez", "Raúl
Copetti", "Rudy Olloa" among others) that they ended with an artificial
inflation of 25% every year. So people started to buy U$S and other currencies
to be able to save their money, and the government cut this right from the
people (so they make you by law, to save your money in AR$, and your money
will be devaluated 25% every year, you can invest if you have enough money, if
you do well, the government takes 50% on your earnings, if you do bad, the
government doesn't give you the 50% of the looses, and good luck having enough
revenue from your investments in order to avoid loosing the annual 25% :P).

I also have to mention that even when we are in a capitalist economy, the
politicians in Argentine says all the time that we have a big economic problem
because of evil business people, who run the business and increase the prices
and make all this inflation problem, so while most of the countries in Latin
America got thousands of millions of dollars in investments (and like Uruguay,
they are starting to create laws to avoid so much money getting into the
country so quickly), we don't know what to do or how to get foreign
investments into the country. Why would you invest in Argentine if they are
going to tell you that the inflation is your fault, that you are evil and most
important, they won't let you to get your revenue to other country if you want
to? So they had a brilliant idea on the last week, they are creating a law
where everyone can get U$S to Argentine, they are going to give you a "bond"
in exchange, and if the money came from drug deals, terrorism or whatever, it
doesn't mind, the government is going to do the laundry service that the mafia
usually do, for free!!!

Anyway, Argentine is getting aligned to countries like Cuba, Iran, Venezuela,
and its following their politics, nothing good can came from that, but what
can you expect from a government that used to put bombs on the street and kill
innocent civilians? I would never ever understand how these people got into
the government, or how these people ended giving "Ethic" classes in public
universities, real story. Our last defense minister was an active member of
"Montoneros", a terrorist organization in Argentine, they killed members of
the military, they put bombs on the street where they killed civilians,
tortured military members (google for "coronel Larrabure") and she ended being
the defense minister? Can you imagine Al Qaeda member managing the USA Army?

Our president, who talks all the time about the last military government and
human rights, made a lot of money with that government by using the "Martinez
de Hoz" law, so she worked for the banks, she put pressure to the poor people
that couldn't pay his house loans, and told them "You are going to loose your
house, and you won't get any money, or you can sell me the money for pennies,
and I'll take care of the debt", and then went to talk with his clients (the
banks) and get a better deal for the current house loan, that's the way she
got rich, after stealing money from the poors, she and her husband got into
politics, being a governor of a State (Province, Santa Cruz) they sold by law
a company that is call YPF to private holders, and took all the money under
their name out of the country in U$S (and now she said that U$S is an evil
currency), we never saw that money again, she got elected president, and now
she said that Menem government was worng (another dumb ass who gave all the
government companies away and did a lot of corruption things), and bough YPF
back for a lot of money. Now the company is filled with a lot of persons that
just support her government, they steal a lot of money and we import most of
the petroleum we consume (being a petroleum producer, we have to import
petroleum).

And most people in Argentine loves Kichner (54%) in the same way most people
here loves Obama, so start paying a lot of attention to what's going on in
Argentine, because you have the same kind of "Populist Government" that we had
on many countries in Latin America for over the last years. I also forgot to
talk about security, it doesn't exist, a uncle of my girlfriend (crazy uncle)
made her wife to starve to death, he tied her to bed and waited until she
died. He got 14 years on jail, then he went out and formed a new family.
People who does violent robberies or whatever, they got into the police
station and get released to the next day, last day, one person went with a gun
into a federal court, the police got him, and he spent on the police station a
couple of hours, threating all the people saying that we belonged to "La
Campora", an organization that supports Cristina Kincher and was founded by
his son. If you get robbed in Argentine, you usually say "Thank you" to the
robbers because they didn't take your life, and they do it a lot, all the
time, common business in Argentine. At this point, we would love to have a
"Second Amendment", the right to have a gun and defend ourselves, pretty bad
we never had it. You have this right and you are going to give it away, smart
move.

And by the way, if you start seeing a lot of smart Argentine developers in
USA, don't get surprised, we are trying to get away from the country while we
still have the right to do it (if we leave the country, then we loose all our
money, no way to buy foreign currency even if you decide to leave the
country).

~~~
fmariluis
> The main problem we have now, is that the government spends a lot of money
> on social plans to get people to vote them (instead of creating real jobs,
> obama care?)

So, even when it's not clear what caused this change in Google Play, you're
blaming the government.

> what can you expect from a government that used to put bombs on the street
> and kill innocent civilians?

What?

> And most people in Argentine loves Kichner (54%) in the same way most people
> here loves Obama

It's called democracy. It works pretty well in most countries.

> At this point, we would love to have a "Second Amendment", the right to have
> a gun and defend ourselves, pretty bad we never had it

You can legally own a gun in Argentina.

Please, try to improve the quality of the information you bring here, so we
can have a rational discussion about this news, which in essence is a change
in Google Play that affects developers in Argentina. At this point, everything
else is speculation.

~~~
spikels
1) The reason Play can't operate in Argentina is because of government imposed
currency controls have made cross border payments very difficult (reread 1st &
2nd paragraphs).

2) Learn about the Montoneros and it's members participation in the Kirchener
governments (see paragraph 4).

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montoneros>

3) Democracy may be the least worst form of government but Kirchener's
populist policies are slowly destroying what should be a great country. This
is a weakness of Democracy - the government can buy votes at the expense of
future growth.

4) Gun laws are quite strict in Argentina and have become much stricter under
the Kichener government. There is no right to own a gun in Argentina.

You lecture the poster about the "quality of their information" and not being
"rational" but almost everything you say is wrong. Not cool.

------
seppo0010
Note that the article is in Spanish, but the full letter sent to the
developers in English is included.

~~~
demian
Nothing new.

"Educated" latin americans are expected to be able to, at least, read english.
More so in tech fields.

~~~
seppo0010
I know, I was saying that for English speakers that open the link and find an
article totally in Spanish, that there is something for them to read.

~~~
faboo
Google Translate actually doesn't do a terrible job on the article text (it's
not perfect, but it's understandable). It does kind of mess-up the English in
the email though.

------
jarjoura
Does anyone have any information to what actually changed in Argentina that
caused this?

------
marcosdumay
I'm sad for our neighbours... At the same time, I really hope we manage to not
do the same mistakes here at Brazil.

------
wslh
They can solve this opening a company abroad. It is cheap to establish an LLC
in US.

~~~
markdown
Citation needed.

You need a US bank account, social security number, a permanent address, etc.
I'd be pleasantly surprised if you could do it without spending at least 10k.

~~~
wslh
No citation is needed.

1\. Open an LLC: cheap.

2\. Open a Bank Account: travel to US and they will open one with the LLC
without a social security number.

3\. Transfer funds to the LLC.

You can do it for less than USD 2000.

~~~
tellarin
But USD 2k is a whole lot of money for people in some of the countries where
they'd need to resort to this to put something on the Google store. Not
something you'd easily have access to.

And there are also the issues in sending that money abroad. It's not so easy
in many of those countries too.

~~~
wslh
The USD 2k includes a travel so you can enjoy it. You need to do the bank
paperwork on situ.

And USD 2k is not a lot of money for an independent developer in Argentina.

~~~
alcuadrado
For a company or established independent developer it's not a big deal. But
for many people it is a lot of money, it's currently ~8 minimum wages at black
market dollar-peso price (which is the only one available for someone in that
situation).

~~~
wslh
Someone working as a semi sr. developer is earning $ 1K so in two months you
can afford it. And this is a long term investment.

In the worst case many people can join together to share the same company.

~~~
alcuadrado
$1k at the official dollar (non black market) value probably, which is not
available. That price is 50% of the black market's one, so it'd be $500.

I don't mean that this money will prevent anyone from getting their apps paid,
but it'd really discourage indie developers to start new apps, as it's now
more expensive and complicated.

~~~
wslh
They can use that account for receiving money for other jobs. I don't think
they make money at all in Google Play.

------
coopdam
There are still some options. Check this site: <http://www.coopdam.org/>

