[shimfish]

As an indie dev, I'm really not getting this.

Android has had alternate app stores for years. I don't recall any of them being a panacea for poor struggling devs held captive by Google Play. I stopped offering my apps on any of them as it was never worth the bother.

What problem is this trying to solve for who exactly? I don't see any way this ends up as a win for small devs.

[thebaer]

Allowing alternative payment systems. This would be absolutely huge for small devs, as you no longer have to pay the ridiculous 15%-30% rent to Apple.

[scarface74]

Thought experiment: I have 7 subscriptions. 4 of those are through the App Store. My credit card expires or get lost. What are the chances I enter new credit card information on your site as opposed to App Store?

And let’s not pretend that Apple is making a lot of money off of Indy developers. Most of the App Store revenue is coming from pay to win games and loot boxes.

[shimfish]

Oh goody. I get to manage my own payment system. And have to worry about being tax compliant in every country and state. And deal with logins, and refunds and fraud and uptime and customer support.

Where do I sign up?

[summerlight]

Or just integrate other third party payment systems like Stripe, Square or PayPal. I'm pretty sure that they will almost immediately make their systems available on both Android and iOS when the bill passes.

[Meegul]

It's not about having to manage your own payment system, it's about being allowed to. You may not want to, but others might.

[Apocryphon]

Because a market is suddenly opened for business, alternative payment processors can now start offering systems that take care of this, and with different terms from Apple's. You wouldn't have to handle all of it yourself, you could simply sign on with one that provides you with service you like.

This is the free market competition that tech is supposedly in favor of.

[shimfish]

And these services would all take a 15-30% cut. It wouldn't be profitable otherwise.

[Apocryphon]

The 15% pay cut is an industry convention, but is that actually justified by any financial reasoning? With actual competition in this space, business models can be discovered that could potentially lower costs. Not to mention, given the VC effect, there will likely be newcomers that try to undercut Apple/Google and each other with lower prices by burning investor capital, for a time.

[shimfish]

Which is another non-discussed aspect to this.

People are already upset that their digital purchases are controlled by Apple. Wait until the startup that they bought stacks of software from goes bust and all of their app purchases are gone.

[henryfjordan]

Maybe there will end up being a single app store for both Android and Apple? As a small dev, you'd only have to deal with 1 upload, a single review process, one set of user reviews, etc.

[shimfish]

So you're suggesting that either Google or Apple will just step aside?

And the point of this monopoly busting legislation was to create a bigger monopoly?

[henryfjordan]

The legislation would require Google/Apple to "step aside" and allow side-loading/alternative app stores, so yes?

Google and Apple would still be welcome to operate their own stores. A 3rd-party cross-platform store would compete with them, hence no monopoly.

Edit: I guess you read my comment to mean "Apple's app store would come to Android" or vice versa? That's a possibility. I'd prefer that to the current state of affairs where no direct competition is possible

[shimfish]

I still end up with one more app store to deal with. Unless this 3rd party becomes a de-facto monopoly, there's no way you could afford to leave money on the table by not also dealing with Apple and Google.

[Apocryphon]

It doesn't at all. You can continue to just publish your apps to the App Store and the Play Store, much as the vast majority of users will continue using those.