10
Google to pay $700 million and make tiny app store changes to settle with 50 states
(www.theverge.com)
- For 5 years, Google will let developers offer an alternative in-app billing system next to Google Play (aka “User Choice Billing”)
- For 5 years, Google won’t make developers offer their best prices to customers who pick Google Play and Google Play Billing
- For 4 years, Google won’t make developers ship titles on Google Play at the same time as other stores and with feature parity
- For 5 years, Google won’t make companies exclusively put Google Play on a phone or its homescreen
- For 4 years, Google won’t stop OEMs from granting installer rights to preloaded apps
- For 5 years, Google won’t require its “consent” before an OEM preloads a third-party app store
- For 4 years, Google will let third-party app stores update apps without requiring user approval
- For 4 years, Google will let sideloaded app stores use its APIs and “feature splits” to help install apps
- For 5 years, Google will turn its two sideloading “scare screens” into a single user prompt which will read the equivalent of this agreed-upon language: “Your phone currently isn’t configured to install apps from this source. Granting this source permission to install apps could place your phone and data at risk.”
- For 5 years, Google will let User Choice Billing participating developers let their users know about better pricing elsewhere and “complete transactions using the developer’s existing web-based billing solution in an embedded webview within its app.”
- For 6 years, Google will “continue to allow developers to use contact information obtained outside the app or in-app (with User consent) to communicate with Users out-of-app”
- For 6 years, Google will let consumption only apps (e.g. Netflix, which doesn’t let you pay on device) tell users about better prices elsewhere, without linking to an outside website — example: “Available on our website for $9.99”
- For 6 years, Google “shall not prohibit developers from disclosing to Users any service or other fees associated with the Google Play or Google Play’s billing system.”