Google on Tuesday, May 16, told all developers hosting apps on its Play Store to abide by the new billing policies effective from April 26, 2023, or risk having their applications removed from the platform.
In a blog post, the Android maker said, "We're respectfully following the CCI’s October 2022 order, and in compliance with that order, we expanded user choice billing to all developers in India and updated our policy that went into effect starting April 26, 2023."
Google said its developer fees are the lowest on any major platform and estimated that less than 60 of the over 200,000 Indian developers on Google Play currently could pay a service fee of above 15 percent.
"And this fee is further reduced by 4 percent if a user pays through an alternative billing system to fairly reflect that Google Play’s billing system has not been used," it said.
Google said developers have had "considerable time to make the necessary changes to their apps" and that any violations will attract action, including app rejection, removal, suspension.
Penalties for non-compliant developers:
"Developers are responsible for addressing any policy issue and conducting extra due diligence to ensure that the remainder of their app is fully policy compliant. Failure to address policy violations in all of your apps may result in additional enforcement actions," Google warned in the blog post.
