Linked List: March 16, 2021

Tuesday, 16 March 2021

Google Play Store Drops Commissions to 15 Percent for First $1M in Revenue ★

Manish Singh, reporting for TechCrunch:

Google will lower its Play commissions globally for developers that sell in-app digital goods and services on its marquee store, the company said, following a similar move by rival Apple late last year.

The Android-maker said on Tuesday that starting July 1, it is reducing the service fee for Google Play to 15% — down from 30% — for the first $1 million of revenue developers earn using Play billing system each year. The company will levy a 30% cut on every dollar developers generate through Google Play beyond the first $1 million in a year, it said.

Citing its own estimates, Google said 99% of developers that sell goods and services with Play will see a 50% reduction in fees, and that 97% of apps globally do not sell digital goods or pay any service fee.

Google’s new rules are simpler than Apple’s Small Business Program. With Apple’s, developers need to apply to the program, and if they go over $1 million in annual revenue, they no longer qualify for the discounted commission on any sales.

Paul Haddad, on Twitter:

I’m happy to see more App Stores going down the 15% route but the “progressive taxation” nature of it just seems weird to me. It’s not like the Store’s cost/unit go up as more units get sold. Just go 15% across the board.

70/30 percent just feels harder and harder for Apple and Google to defend. Make it 85/15 across the board and it all becomes simpler.

The Growing Push to Make Daylight Time Year-Round ★

Alan Yuhas, reporting for The New York Times:

The European Union and several U.S. states, including California, Florida and Ohio, are either considering dropping the shift or taking steps to do so.

This month, a bipartisan group of senators introduced a bill to make daylight time permanent year-round. In a statement, Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said that “springing forward and falling back year after year only creates unnecessary confusion while harming Americans’ health and our economy.”

I’m strongly in favor of this. I know it sucks to get up for work or school in the dark, but it sucks to have the sun set at 4:30 in the afternoon, too. It also seems to me that we’ve named our times wrong — what we call “standard time” is only used 133 days per year. If we do drop the shift, it’ll be to standardize on daylight saving time.

Google Publishes Privacy Labels for Chrome and Google Search Apps ★

DuckDuckGo, having a bit of fun at Google’s expense:

After months of stalling, Google finally revealed how much personal data they collect in Chrome and the Google app. No wonder they wanted to hide it.

Spying on users has nothing to do with building a great web browser or search engine. We would know (our app is both in one).

They’re still rolling these out piecemeal — Google Maps and Google Photos, for example, still haven’t been updated.

Apple Maps Now Displays COVID-19 Vaccination Locations ★

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today updated Apple Maps with COVID-19 vaccination locations from VaccineFinder, a free, online service developed by Boston Children’s Hospital that provides the latest vaccine availability for those eligible at providers and pharmacies throughout the US. Users can find nearby COVID-19 vaccination locations from the Search bar in Apple Maps by selecting COVID-19 Vaccines in the Find Nearby menu or by asking Siri, “Where can I get a COVID vaccination?”