Google won’t say if companies beyond Spotify got secret special app store deals

Of course they did.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

After Google confirmed yesterday that it gave Spotify a sweetheart deal on Android app store fees, we were curious if dating company Bumble or any of the other 80 or so developers that have joined Google’s “User Choice Billing” program were similarly given an alternative arrangement or other sweeteners.

Jackson confirmed that “the standard service fee the developer pays is reduced by 4 percent” with User Choice Billing, and he pointed us toward Bumble’s Q4 2022 earnings call, where CFO Anu Subramanian suggests to investors that Bumble, at least, did not have a special rate at the time:

Google VP of Play partnerships Purnima Kochikar admitted that developers would generally end up paying the same effective rate with or without User Choice Billing.

Bumble’s Q3 2023 earnings call suggests that, far from a Spotify-esque deal, it’s actually now paying higher app store fees:

So there must have been some reason why Bumble sticks with User Choice Billing, if it was either a wash or negative for the company’s margins!

When Bumble lost those one-day subscriptions with its app Badoo as part of a forced move to Google Play Billing, VP of product revenue Richard Watts testified, it led to a drop in paying users.

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