Unfortunately, as of September of last year, Google Play's terms and conditions match Apple's App Store's terms and conditions, in that apps must use Google's payment method and cannot advertise or include links to alternate methods of paying for the app or distributing it.
Ultimately, these policies are meant to further restrict viability of competition by either company.
> Google Play's terms and conditions match Apple's App Store's terms and conditions
This is the type of damage the people who say "it's their store, they can do what they want" inflict. Apple got away with their dreadful behavior, Google would be foolish not to follow.
Just a few days ago Google announced that you could use Spotify's payment method as an alternative to Google play. The top-rated HN comment for that article was: "As a user, why would I choose this?"[0]
Competition only works if the competition is effective enough to change user habits. For the average person not educated in monopolies or tech regulation, is there any incentive for them to switch to paying Spotify instead?
Other examples of frustration induced by competition are:
- Epic Games Store timed exclusives (people would rather just use Steam)
- The fragmentation of streaming video across a dozen different paid services, each with their own exclusive licensed content (people would rather just save money by paying for a single service with everything on it).
> For the average person not educated in monopolies or tech regulation, is there any incentive for them to switch to paying Spotify instead?
If it's 30% cheaper, that may be enough of an incentive. Though I don't know if that's the case here or if Spotify just eats the fee when you pay through Google.
I'm not sure of Google's policy, but with Apple, after the court order, dating apps using alternative payment methods must give Apple a 27% commission on all purchases made using the method[1], so that there is little to no difference in cost to users choosing to use the non-Apple payment method.
