[HN Gopher] Chrome Web Store payments deprecation ___________________________________________________________________ Chrome Web Store payments deprecation Author : hibiscus4156 Score : 26 points Date : 2020-09-21 21:54 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (developer.chrome.com) (TXT) w3m dump (developer.chrome.com) | Gehinnn wrote: | This sucks. I paid $25 for my play console account to monetize my | extension two days ago - just to find out they deprecate web | store payments entirely. | tyingq wrote: | I think they should do prorated refunds. | sippingjippers wrote: | Make up a support e-mail address at random, send refund request | to it, wait 14 days, file chargeback, be sure to mention no | response to refund request which is attached to the form. Don't | worry, they probably don't pay attention to chargebacks either | | Alternatively, simply wait 12-18 months and the same feature | will be relaunched under a slightly different name by a | different team | filoleg wrote: | According to everything i read about chargebacks on Google | services, they indeed don't pay attention, they just | automatically block access to any of your Google accounts and | services shortly after you do a chargeback. And given the | horror stories I've heard about trying to resolve or reverse | any automated account bans by Google, I do not recommend | following that route. | gnicholas wrote: | This is super annoying. I have two extensions, one which we've | offered on Chrome and Firefox for years, and which uses Stripe | for payments. The other we only offered on Chrome and was paid | through the Chrome Store. Thinking of all the work we'll have to | do to manage accounts/payments/etc on the PDF extension almost | makes me want to scrap the whole thing. | | Most frustrating is the migration. We have been live in the | Chrome Store for 7 years, with varying prices. When someone | subscribes, they are grandfathered at that price forever. But | when we create our own payment system, how do we know what price | someone was previously paying? We can either make our new | customers really happy by charging all grandfathered users the | lowest price we ever charged, or we can upset a bunch of our | older customers by charging everyone the current price (which is | 5x the former). | | One fair way to accommodate everyone is charge the high price but | if someone forwards us their receipt from the Chrome Store | showing a different price, we apply a perpetual coupon to their | account. But that will be super labor-intensive (and is | susceptible to manipulation/abuse). | summitsummit wrote: | and annoying. you're charging your most loyal users the cost of | providing proof after all these years. | moron4hire wrote: | I feel like we are getting nearly weekly examples of "the | platform store will eventually kill your business". These | platform stores wouldn't be anywhere without independent | developers building the software to sell in then, and these big | companies just shit on them. | mrkramer wrote: | Who says Google is destroying competition, they encourage | competition by closing down their own stuff people love and use. | Analemma_ wrote: | That _is_ destroying competition though. What Google does is | enter a market which previously had a healthy economy of paid | software, snuff out all the other players with a free version, | and then abandon the space when they get bored. And the old | economy can never come back, because there 's hysteresis | involved in the relative costs of starting from scratch versus | keeping a functioning ecosystem alive, and because users now | expect the software to be free and throw a fit if they're | charged for it (especially if it's an ongoing cost, because god | forbid developers can't live off a single payment for the rest | of their lives) | | It's only gradually becoming common knowledge, but eventually | we're going to collectively realize that Google killed small | ISVs, and at the time we all cheered them on. | single_source wrote: | Just my luck... | | I created my extension and started monetizing it March of this | year... | lapcatsoftware wrote: | "There is no way to bulk export your existing user licenses, so | you need to have your users help with this part of the | migration." | SahAssar wrote: | Am I understanding it correctly that products paid for will stop | working at the undecided "some future time"? And at that point | there will be no official way to keep those extensions/apps | working even if both the dev and the user wants to? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2020-09-21 23:00 UTC)