Google expands ‚user choice billing‘ to the US, but developers may see little financial benefit.
Google’s settlement of a multiple-state lawsuit over its control of the Play Store may make you $2 or more richer, while Android developers may not see much more upside from this deal.
The company announced this settlement in a blog post that outlines a set of remedies to close out an antitrust complaint filed in July 2021 by Utah Attorney General Sean D. Reyes, leading a group of 36 states and the District of Columbia.
Perhaps the biggest change has Google opening its “user choice billing” program to US developers instead of requiring them to use Google’s Play Store billing for in-app transactions for digital goods.
To date, almost all Android developers (Spotify is a glaring exception) have had to play by those Google rules and let that company collect “service fees” of 15% on automatically renewing subscriptions and on a developer’s first $1 million in App Store revenue from digital goods and services, 30% in most other cases.
But Google’s post doesn’t note that under user choice billing, Google collects almost as much in service fees while doing no actual work. Company publicist Dan Jackson confirms that the US version of this option will match what Google has offered in other markets and only lower those two tiers to 11% and 26%.
