Third-party app stores will have to pay google an upfront service fee of $5,000 for security review during onboarding, as well as $5,000 every year to maintain access to the Play catalog of apps. They will also have to meet a lengthy set of requirements, the most important of which is that their store must target users in the US. In fact, they legally can’t use the Play catalog to distribute apps to users outside of the United States.
I was almost excited for a moment. Hey, maybe it will make the work of projects like the Aurora store easier
I’m sorry what? $5,000 a year to run a store? how is that anywhere near arguable in court
Also I’m not sure how this meets the requirement of the already given injunction in the US which is that they can not impede third party stores. A $5,000 yearly cost + a $5,000 upfront cost is pretty impeding if no other alternative is provided for third party stores.
for perspective, it seems such a yearly charge is about fifth of fdroid’s annual donations. If the first year required both the upfront and the annual cost, thats a little under half of their total annual donations just to keep the store allowed on google.
Aurora store only has a yearly donation estimate of 1040 USD. How is this remotely applicable to the injunction.
If this is a 5k cost to be allowed to run a third party store that’s a little better but, I would still consider that impeding third party apps.
and that’s ignoring the entire must only distribute in the US, which will require a framework in place to identify where users are prior to them being able to download and install apps.
The price only has to be paid if you don’t want to be subject to Googles advanced flow for installing non verified apps and want to access their catalog. Aurora will likely require the advanced flow and gets the apps through scraping, meaning they wouldn’t be subject to this, however they might gain access to some APIs that make the process easier.
Yea that’s what I mean, when the options are pay 5k, or have every user on the platform go through a 24h timer delay and multiple scare warnings, I think an argument can be made about it being prohibitive and against the nature of the injunction. If I understand the case right, they have already ruled that Google needs to allow for third party stores and can’t prohibit them, its just Epic and Google were fighting about how they would go about it. I don’t think them agreeing to this changed the already in place ruling that google was given.
Ok so if app stores like f-droid don’t care about the play store catalog, it’s just a one-time fee? $5k is still high for a free/libre project, but maybe they can negotiate it down if they’re a 501©3 or something.
This seems more like “allowing a third party frontend for the Google curated app pool the Play store uses” currently, rather than a “pay us and we’ll allow you to install non-Google-signed apps”
If the point is to be able to use non Google apps, this isn’t a solution.
I took it as the reoccuring 5k was to allow installation of the play store apps, and that the upfront cost was the cost required to have it not give the scare alert and forced 24h period.
Regardless if what it is, I would still count even a one time 5k cost to be pretty inhibitive for someone wanting to run a third party store
After they pay Google $5000 for the privilege of participating in their monopoly.
