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Google Loosens Up on Play Store Policies

CIO Insider Team | Monday, 5 October, 2020
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CIO Insider Team

Merely four days after around 50 Indian entrepreneurs came together in a video conference to plan a possible retaliation against Google Play’s monopoly in the Indian Android Mobile App ecosystem, Google loosens up on its stand. The global tech giant is now ready to listen to the app developers in the country and sort the issues out, including the predicament with its billing system.

Google had recently announced a 30 percent fee

for the apps that are there on Google Play but are not using Google’s billing system. The news impacted the Indian app community and was followed by a coming together of Indian entrepreneurs. Coordinated Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Yashish Dahiya of Policy Bazaar, Murugavel Janakiraman of Matrimony.com, Vishwas Patel of CCAvenue, and founders of ShareChat and Innov8, the Indian entrepreneurs was looking into the possibility of creating a national app store as an alternative to Google Play.

In a blog post, Purnima Kochikar, Director of Business Development, Games & Applications, Google Play, wrote “First and foremost, we want to reiterate that we are deeply committed to the success of the Indian ecosystem -- we do not succeed unless our partners succeed.” She added, “We are setting up listening sessions with leading Indian startups to understand their concerns more deeply and will be setting up Policy Workshops to help clear any additional questions about our Play Store policies.”

Purnima also added, “To be clear, the policy only applies if a developer charges users to download their app or they sell in-app digital items, which is less than three percent of developers with apps on Google Play.”

There are more than 131,726 apps from Indian publishers on Google Play out of the almost three million apps.

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