[whoisjuan]

This doesn't even make sense. How are the users supposed to help? I think what google is suggesting here is to build a structure with all the license representations of all your users and then figure out how to enforce your licenses or recharge them or walk them through a process of migration to another licensing system which implies authorizing with their own accounts. At that point it's just easier to assume that all those users will churn. There's a lot of friction for the final users to go through all that process.

Another thing is that once their licensing API is gone there's no way to enforce any license attached to a particular user, so what happens with users that don't go through the migration process that is supposed to be set for this?

I think it would have been easier if they reached out to a couple of payment providers and ask them to write an adapter for their licensing system. That way all the developers could migrate to something else without affecting the users. But I doubt Google is willing to give any business to anyone.

[TedDoesntTalk]

> This doesn't even make sense

Sure it does. It’s a big ‘fuck you’. Imagine if you’ve built a lifestyle business with this.

[AnssiH]

> How are the users supposed to help?

By going to your site and authorizing it to access their subscription data with their Google login, like you said in the following sentence. That counts as helping, no?

[whoisjuan]

My question was rhetorical. Users can help, but they shouldn't. This is not their responsibility. This is the equivalent of Netflix interrupting my service because I need to help them to migrate their payment provider and they cannot do it if I don't do some manual process.

[jfrunyon]

How many users do you think will bother? No, they'll just complain at some point in the future, probably long after Google has completely turned down the API and migrations are no longer possible.