[amitmathew]

I agree - clumsy is a great way to describe their approach. In my many negative experiences with the review process, I never got the sense that there was evil intent. In the end, it's clear the business as a whole doesn't care about third-party developers - they fulfilled their goals of commoditizing their complements and rode that wave to enduring success.

I do wonder how many amazing products and companies never got started or failed because of their fickle and Kafkaesque review process and their 15-30% revenue cut. For me personally, I've had to nix several business ideas and product features because it was too dependent on Apple's whims.

But that's just Apple being Apple. What really blows my mind is how Google blindly followed Apple. Google could have carved out such a valuable market. No developer fees! Clear and consistent review process! No taking 30%! Instead they blindly walked into the ditch with Apple. Talk about a lack of vision...

[enos_feedler]

I worked for Google at the time of the Fortnite fiasco and challenged the company on why we didn’t use our “beyond status quo” spirit to innovate the business model. It got raised to the top of our all hands dory and the Play store director had to come on stage to address the question. Scripted response. Scheduled a follow up 1:1 through his admin. Sat in a room for 30 minutes while he fed me bullshit. Walked away convinced Google culture is dead. No longer work at Google

[TomSwirly]

Funny, I had much the same experience over ten years ago!

Google had an internal product called GoogleBase that was a huge "database" of "all products" based on Bigtable. Unfortunately, the whole thing had been misrepresented by the original managers, who moved to another project, and the dozens of engineers on the project were all struggling.

I asked Larry Page about this at a meeting, and he said, "We'll get back to you" and someone did and I responded, but there was no feedback, and eventually, a hundred person years later, it was all cancelled.

It was stressful for me and unproductive.

[quambene]

Thanks for trying.

Difficult to change a business model if it's working quite well (financially). Long-term thinking and short-term bonus payments don't align.

Kudos for your decision to leave.

[enos_feedler]

Yes, sadly. Google is operating on a “what can we get away with?” attitude vs a “what is possible?” one. No single 3P has power to change the system.

[Ruphin]

Just curious, what does 3P stand for?

[enos_feedler]

3rd party developer.

[tidenly]

Means something very different in some asian languages haha

[amitmathew]

I figured there must be sensible people within Google trying to fight the good fight. On the surface, it makes business sense to follow the status quo. But I wonder if that's true for the long term. Wouldn't the Android platform be worth a lot more if they gave developers freedom to explore different strategies and business models? What if we could get proper demos? What if we could properly interact with our customers and do things like easily issue refunds? I don't know, maybe I'm way off, but I always thought that Play Store revenue should be a lot higher than it is now if Google exhibited some leadership.

[scarface74]

Google doesn’t care about Android’s experience or the Play Store. It came out in the Oracle lawsuit that Android had only made Google around $25 billion in profit during its existence. Android was already the dominant platform around then. Apple makes more from Google in mobile by Google paying it to be the default search engine than Google makes from Android.

Android is only a defensive play for Google not a profit center

[MajorBee]

> only $25 billion in profit

Surely there must be a typo in one of these words? I can’t imagine 25 humongous ones being loose change for any business.

[scarface74]

For a company the size of Google making $22 billion on a product from 2010 to 2016 is a nothingburger.

https://www.engadget.com/2016-01-21-android-22-billion-in-pr...

This is their total net income between 2010 and 2016.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/net-...

They pay Apple a reported $18 billion a year to be the default search engine on Apple devices.

[morelisp]

It's a single-digit percentage of what ads make, without much room for growth. I doubt it's a single-digit percentage of technical effort.

[ffhhj]

Please mark this as accepted answer.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Wouldn't the Android platform be worth a lot more if they gave developers freedom to explore different strategies and business models?

Say Google does the right thing. Enables great apps, charges 4% instead of 30%, everything goes well.

What does Apple do in response? If they do nothing, Android eats their market share. That's kind of the point, isn't it?

But that means they can't do nothing. They'd have to respond in kind; do the right thing too. Which means it's not a competitive advantage for Google. All they do is lose the 30% they're getting right now.

Even worse if Apple is foolish and the move actually succeeds, because then Android gets a real monopoly instead of this duopoly fig leaf they each use to claim they have competition.

This why duopolies are just as bad as monopolies if not worse. We need real competition and barriers to entry low enough that someone without a vested interest in the status quo can actually enter the market.

[enos_feedler]

I dont think the solution is to drop the fee to 4%. My pushback on the Play execs was that we need something unique, that seems fair and recognizes the value that 3rd party and the platforms provide. The 30 / 70 is simple and clean but its not “good” or “fair”. It doesnt mean you cant capture say 20% of app revenue in a way that is good and fair

[amitmathew]

That’s true, but it would help Google get out from Apple’s shadow on mobile. From a strategic perspective, you want your competitor being forced to make moves because of your actions. Then you get to dictate the next few steps. But for any of that to matter, you have to view mobile as more than another ad platform, which Google doesn’t seem to.

[seanmcdirmid]

If Google went to 4% and Apple stayed at 30%, a lot of people would still be buying iPhones and not caring.

[AnthonyMouse]

Developers would care. For many that difference would double their margins, or quintuple them. People would make apps for Android that didn't exist on iOS, or make them for Android first, or spend more time on the Android version and make it better.

[seanmcdirmid]

Yes, but consumers of the phones themselves? Anecdotally, I haven't paid money for an app in...5 years or so. So the free apps would still be around, and I guess candycrush and such would get to Android before iPhone, and will be better on Android, but that really isn't going to affect me.

I guess the question is how many phone consumers buy apps (or pay for content in those apps)? And if paid app availability improved (or got worse for their platform), would that affect the next phone they bought.

[dmitriid]

> Wouldn't the Android platform be worth a lot more if they gave developers freedom to explore different strategies and business models

Android as a platform is completely at odds with Google as a business, and will continue to be so as long as Google's is only revenue stream is online advertising.

[ocdtrekkie]

Ultimately, you ran into reality: That no matter what story these companies sell you on their mission, a 30% profit margin is a 30% profit margin, and not a single person is going to stand in the way of that much profit.

The honest truth is Google culture never existed, they just had most people fooled for a long time.

[brimble]

I've not dug into it, but explanations I've read that claim they kinda did have a culture until they reverse-acquired themselves with the DoubleClick purchase have some ring of truth, just from my casual external observation over the company's lifespan. It lines up (c. 2008) with some other things—inline ads going full-evil, the search engine anti-spam efforts evidently drying up (or, at least, entirely failing from then on despite whatever effort they were making), et c.

[cromwellian]

There's a difference between the informal culture of rank and file employees, how they see themselves and their peers, and the upper management. Culture at the bottom can get diluted by hiring too rapidly and a high degree of churn, which doesn't yield sufficient time for new hires to be assimilated into culture, gradually weakening it.

But at the top, for a public company, the only culture that truly exists is the next quarterly report. Once you're on the "must show XX% quarterly growth" treadmill, your decisions will be dictated by strategies to further that. Unless you have a crazy person at the top willing to burn money and investor sentiment (e.g. Elon Musk, Zuckerberg, Jobs. Google doesn't have crazy founders running it anymore, which is why Google Bets are kind of a joke, and why the company continually kills stuff that you need to be in the long hall for to make a success (e.g. gaming studios, red studios -- they finally got a hit Cobra Kai -- and killed it, etc)

That's why some of the earlier comments about understanding Apple's App Store behavior as "good intentioned" is off. That MAY have been the original reason behind Jobs wanting it, to gate keep the platform and protect brand image and quality, but it is NOT the reason for charging high fees today.

Apple made $72 billion on App Store revenue in 2020. Their total revenue was $274 billion, so 26% of all revenue came from the App Store. That is the reason for the inertia in keeping the Store exactly the way it is.

The App Store's purported benefits to the platform: security, quality, etc could all be maintained for a fraction of that. Apple is not spending $72 billion a year on store maintenance. It's very clear this is about money, not high minded principle.

[Cederfjard]

Elsewhere in this thread, someone has suggested that Android makes up a fairly small percentage of Google’s net income. Does that have any bearing on this analysis?

[enos_feedler]

This is a good point. A project within Google that doesn’t move the needle next to it’s search advertising business should not be _driven_ by profit margin. However there are a few reasons why I think this happened within Google Play:

1. Lots of pressure for google products and services to become standalone businesses

2. Too much imbalance of power between business teams and engineering teams within Google Play. The business teams just saw it as copycat App Store and the engineers and product leads didn’t have the influence to overturn this. In some ways this is against what the broader Google culture was thought to have. (Eng/prod > bd).

3. Androids existence as a defense and not as an opportunity to create the future. Android has always been this and it’s engrained culturally.

[ocdtrekkie]

There are ways to lie with statistics, but the Play Store is a huge cash cow. I play a mobile game where thousands of players at least have spent more than a car in in-app purchase transactions. Someone told me if you're spending less than $1,000 they consider you free to play. One of the key items for high level play you can only unlock after spending $12,000 on an account.

Imagine if Ford could make 30% profit on selling cars, and didn't even have to manufacture the car.

Fortnite alone is worth hundreds of millions to Google. There's a reason they're willing to compromise any supposed principles they had over it.

Then there are additional effects, like how their control over the Play Store impacts their advertising opportunities on Android.

[Cederfjard]

If someone, like I was, is curious what a ”dory” is in this context, I believe this is it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Moderator

[enos_feedler]

Sorry about using that terminology!

[sangnoir]

> Sat in a room for 30 minutes while he fed me bullshit. Walked away convinced Google culture is dead.

I bet you a dollar his bonus is directly, or indirectly tied to Play store revenue. Companies destroy themselves from the inside due to misaligned personal vs. organizational incentives.

[spicybright]

We call it a ditch, Google execs call it good returns.

[throwaway2048]

Yep, Google completely ignored why platforms like the PC beat the Macintosh to begin with

[scarface74]

Isn’t Android the same Pyrrhic victory that Windows was for PC Makers? All of the market share but none of the profit? No PC maker is making any real money selling PCs just like no Android manufactures are making real money.

At least MS made some decent money on Windows. Google has to pay its competitor Apple more than it makes on Android if you extrapolate what came out during the Oracle lawsuit.

[ido]

Did they though? Apple is today by far the most profitable computer manufacturer.

[grishka]

The use of Google Play is at least not mandatory. You can fully DIY your app distribution if you feel like it.

[intrasight]

> too dependent on Apple's whims

so why not just make a web app?

[kaladin-jasnah]

Web apps cannot use certain features, eg. Bluetooth, and it will for sure be less user-friendly and responsive than a native app.

[intrasight]

Bluetooth? I don't have any apps that use that.