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Google To Devs: Use Our Payment System Or Be Dropped
Meshach writes "Google has been pressuring applications and mobile game developers to use its costlier in-house payment service, Google Wallet for quite some time. Now Google warned several developers in recent months that if they continued to use other payment methods — such as PayPal, Zong and Boku — their apps would be removed from Google Play. The move is seen as a way to cut costs for Google by using their own system."
For all the good that Google is supposedly trying to do, this begs a question I've been wondering for quite a while.
Why don't they implement a Payment API for developers? People could then use all sorts of services, from PayPal to BitCoin to pay to Google, and be paid by them. Google doesn't implement all the extant services out there because if it implemented a few of them, it would be considered responsible for implementing all of them. But it would make sense to enable developers to do so, and customers to use them.
Or so it seemed. They appear to be more interested in restricting payment types in order to increase their margins. If this is so, it will diminish their user-base as this sort of thing comes out. Granted, they've found innovative economies of scale that have allowed them to do things it would be difficult for others to do as cheaply - which appears to be something they're now leveraging to put unfair leverage on the marketplace. A lack of effective competition becomes a monopolization.
The Wolfpack Project: BitCoin + Crowdfunding = Political Accountability
This is awesome because Google is awesome.
If Google says it's the right way to go, it's gotta be the best.
Not only that but it's likely to violate EU competition laws.
I would have loved to have jumped on board with Googles payment system in place of PayPal... but there was a slight problem... it was "US Only". It would seem that if I look at the dominant players in various fields, they are players that embrace the fact that the internet and more importantly, consumers, exist well beyond the US alone.
Soon as Google lets us buy/sell stuff using their PayPal-replacment across the bulk of the world, I'll be interested.
They should do that only when Wallet is available in all countries. Google Wallet is not available in my country, I cannot receive payments so I HAVE TO rely on Paypal for this.
My app is available on Apple's AppStore, Blackberry's AppWorld, Amazon, Intel AppUp and Samsung's store and they all can send payments. It's just Google who doesn't. Even stranger is that they DO make payments to my country in the AdSense program, I just don't understand why they don't do this for apps on the Chrome Webstore or Google Play.
I tried to pay for conference registration using google payment... after going through too many badly designed data collection screens, I eventually reached an error page that claimed I could resolve it by going to the page I was on...
I gave up and sent a check.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's just about getting a cut of the sales.
That's the ONLY thing this is about.
it can be wrapped in 7 layers of bullshit, but that's still what this is about in the end.
sure, it's an attack on paypal, on facebook credits etc. but that's only means to an end which is getting a cut of your purchases.
I'm pretty sure they won't extend this to banking apps though!
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
So what? Ebay also did this with Paypal. Before Ebay ruined itself, you could have a choice of payment processor including the one they most liked you to use - but was NOT compulsory to use their payment processor (which was NOT Paypal).
Then one day, Ebay decides to make it compulsory to have Paypay as a payment option. Around about that time I gave two fingers to Ebay. You WILL NOT force me to use a 100% unethical bent company to sell my no longer needed stuff, and have not used Ebay since.
And so Google are going the same way. Oh well.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
False. You're cut off from no-one.
I have yet to see an Android phone (in my country anyway) which doesn't feature a simple checkbox that allows you to install apps that didn't come from the market.
I have seen several Android phones out of the box which feature more than one market installed on the system (though admittedly they somewhat suck).
I have seen several alternative markets (Amazon included here) which are incredibly capable as almost a complete replacement of the Google Market, or Play or whatever they've changed it to.
Admittedly practicality here may be the key argument, but hey you are going to a 3rd party to host, advertise, collect feedback, and manage updates for your apps it's not such a hard rule to abide by.
Also as someone who vehemently hates PayPal, anything that works against it gets the thumbs up from me :-)
The Bill Gates/MS icon on Slashdot (is/was) that of a borg version of the Dorky One... the idea being that MS wanted to assimilate you into the collective. Turns out it was a hippy collective indeed with about as many rules as Fight Club with no enforcement.
It has often been remarked that MS dominance was obtained not so much through the success of MS but through the failure of everyone else. Read Apple, IBM and the various home computer makers whose names are lost in the mists of time only remembered by the senile elders.
And through their failure, we gained the Wintel platform which now turns out to have been insanely open. Imagine MS telling Windows developers how to collect payment, if at all. Does MS tell Blizzard how to collect its pound of flesh of the enslaved? How shareware should be payed for?
Does MS dictate which version of MS you should run on Dell hardware? Does Dell stop you from upgrading the OS?
It is not as if MS never tried but it failed so often nobody took them to serious and so the evil that might have happened, never happened. It is like a brutal dictator whose brutality ends up as a kind of cute outburst with throwing chairs instead of the millions dead with efficient dictators. A dictator who fails at being terrible sounds a lot better then a dictator who succeeds... and Apple and Google are certainly trying hard enough.
It is kinda sad that companies keep trying to get total control when the PC did so well without it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
For one, any in-app purchases made will be tied to your account now. I've seen people lose out on DLC-type purchases they'd made because they switched to a new phone, and the developer of the program used a different payment service. Hopefully this will keep that from happening in the future.
I've used both Google Wallet and I've used PayPal
And I've used other online payment services
I find Google Wallet a little bit more "friendly" to the user. PayPal, which I've used for years and years, has become more and more, how should I say - arrogant
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Android is open. Google Play (formerly Android Market) isn't, and never was. But no one is forced to use their market to provide and install apps.
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The main reason I use Paypal , is because it that allows bank transfers. I don't have a credit card.
All the other systems I've seen ( including Google Wallet from what I've seen ) require a credit card.
Slipping shoelaces ?
Do is sense an anti trust suit? Yes I do!
I don't think the market you use has anything to do with whether Android is open or not, as long as you're not locked to that market. I mean, is Debian not open because I can't force them to put applications that don't comply with the DFSG on the main repository?
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You gave these idiots access to your bank account?
Both Visa and MasterCard offer debit cards linked to your bank account. They act like credit cards and they usually have a clearing time just like credit cards allowing you some leeway to complain to your bank if a transaction doesn't go your way. I'm not sure what it's like where you live but the banks in Australia offer these free (free as in no yearly cost, no interest, no transaction fee etc) to pretty much any customer with an account that allows debit transactions. Actually I don't think I've seen a debit card in the last few years that hasn't had the Visa or MasterCard logo on it.
I highly suggest you investigate this possible option. In Australia our banks are pretty good with dispute resolution, in fact in my experience they have been incredibly painless even when a card is stolen. But if you give someone debit access to your account you have pretty much no recourse with the bank.
According to this article: http://www.i-programmer.info/news/81-web-general/3895-google-insists-on-google-wallet.html
1. Developers outside the US are exempted
2. Google Wallet charges a float 5%, Paypal charges $0.30 + 2.9%. Google Wallet is only more expensive if your app costs > $14.28. Considering the prices of most Android apps, I'd say calling Google Wallet "costlier" is a downright lie.