Spotify has a special agreement with Google not to pay Play Store “commission” – Spotify

the The agreement allows Spotify will not pay a commission to Google (known to be behind the online Play Store) when users sign up using the Android music streaming service’s payment system. Under the same deal, Spotify paid Google only a 4% commission if users signed up for the service through Google, which is much lower than most other app developers who typically pay Google a 15% commission through the Play Store.

“Listening to music is one of the main goals of jobs [του τηλεφώνου]”If we didn’t have Spotify working properly across all core services and Play Services, they wouldn’t buy Android phones,” Google’s head of partnerships, Don Harrison, told the court. Google and Spotify also agreed to allocate $50 million each into a “Success Fund” as part of the deal. The above was revealed in a lawsuit that Epic Games first filed against Google in 2020 (the company behind the hugely popular game Fortnite). Epic Games claimed in the lawsuit that the Google Play Store on Android is an illegal monopoly that forces app creators and developers to pay Google huge sums to provide its users with the ability to make in-app purchases through the Play Store. Epic Games filed a similar lawsuit against Apple in 2021, and the court ultimately ruled in Apple’s favor.

Google spokesperson Dan Jackson gave the following statement to Engadget: “A small number of developers who invest more directly in Android and Play may have different service fees as part of a larger partnership that involves significant financial investments and product integrations across different form factors. “Investment partnerships like this bring more users to Android and Play by continually improving the experience for all users and creating new opportunities for all developers.” Spotify has supported Epic Games in its legal battles against Google and Apple. But in 2022, the company began using Google’s “User Choice Billing” program that allowed Android developers and companies to use their own payment systems in exchange for a smaller share for Google. The private agreement revealed in court showed that Google was willing to make several exceptions for popular apps like Spotify.

In the last few days of the trial, several major Google trade secrets were revealed. Last week, an economics professor who testified on behalf of the company in another antitrust court case revealed that Google pays Apple 36 percent of ad revenue generated by Apple’s Safari browser, a figure later confirmed by Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, In his court filing with Epic Games. Against Google case.

The Verge also revealed earlier this month that Google had offered Netflix a special deal. The deal included a reduced 10% commission, which Netflix also rejected by choosing not to offer a way for Android app users to subscribe to their service directly from within the Android app.