[HN Gopher] Chrome Web Store payments deprecation
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       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?
        
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       (page generated 2020-09-21 23:00 UTC)