Why don't they refund every paid customer who was impacted? Why do they rely on the customer to self report the issue for a refund?
For example GCS had 96% packet loss in us-west. So doesn't it make sense to refund every customer who had any API call to a GCS bucket on us-west during the outage?
Cynical view: By making people jump through hoops to make the request, a lot of people will not bother.
Assuming they only refund the service costs for the hours of outage, only the largest of customers will be owed a refund that is greater than the cost of an employee chasing compiling the information requested.
For sake of argument, if you have a monthly bill of 10k (a reasonably sized operation), a 1 day outage will result in a refund of around $300, not a lot of money.
The real loss for a business this ^ size is lost business from a day long outage. Getting a refund to cover the hosting costs is peanuts.
for your example, one day would be about 3% of downtime. My understanding of their sla, for the services ive checked with an sla, a 3% downtime is a 25% credit for the month's total, or $2500, assuming its all sla spend.
In this outage's case you might be able to argue for a 10% credit on affected services for the month, figuring 3.5 hours down is 99.6% uptime.
but i still agree, it cost us way more in developer time and anxiety than our infra costs, and could have been even worse revenue impacting if we had gcp in that flow
> For sake of argument, if you have a monthly bill of 10k (a reasonably sized operation), a 1 day outage will result in a refund of around $300, not a lot of money.
Probably literally not worth your engineer's time to fill in the form for the refund.
Not directly GCS-related, but there was a big Youtube TV outage during the World Cup of last year (I think it was during semi-finals?). Google did apologize, but they only offered a free week of Youtube TV, which they implemented by charging me a week later than usual. I didn't feel compensated at all (it was a pretty important game that I missed!)
> "[Customer Must Request Financial Credit] In order to receive any of the Financial Credits described above, Customer must notify Google technical support within thirty days from the time Customer becomes eligible to receive a Financial Credit. Failure to comply with this requirement will forfeit Customer’s right to receive a Financial Credit."
So the answer to why it is this way, is because they wrote it down this way..? I think the real question was why this decision was made, not whether they announced this.
I agree, but it’s pretty standard SLA verbiage (from the telco/bandwith provider days) to require the customer to request/register the SLA violation to benefit.
> I agree, but it’s pretty standard SLA verbiage (from the telco/bandwith provider days) to require the customer to request/register the SLA violation to benefit.
FiOS has proactively given me per-day refunds of service without notification on my part. Weird to me that Verizon acts better than Google in this case.
Google knows the affected regions and probably has very fine grained data around this. I mean, they can even tell you metrics about your instances, they don't have monitoring on their own infrastructure to determine impact radius?
It’s a vastly complex problem. What servers were impacted? For what percentage of the overall outage was each server impacted? During that time, was the server offline or simply slower than usual?
And the part that even Google can’t know, even if they somehow can assemble all of the above: did it matter? Not all servers are created equal.
Small wonder they’re letting customers drive their own reimbursement process.
My question is if you had to pay for Google AdWords and your site was inaccessible due to GCloud outage, do you have recourse on SLA for paid clicks? Or is that money paid to Google AdWords lost?
The icing on the cake was they disapproved one of the ads due to the destination URL not loading.. which was in itself surprising, because everything outside of the affected region was running fine.
That's for price discrimination. This is more like the usual case of don't pay if you don't have to, though in Google's case it could well be that they don't care.
Microsoft refunded after their latest outage in South Central. Google might announce a refund later, though I did read on here that some of their outage was not covered by their SLA.
Having said that, if Google wants to delight customers, they should give a free tier bonus to all customers for a certain period, but such a thing cannot be fair to everyone.
But how likely are you to use Waze when you are half heartedly driving around to a destination? I mostly use Waze when I care about finding the fastest route somewhere (because I feel it has some of the most up to date traffic info), which is when I would least want a detour to some other business along the way.
And sometimes for driving long distances to get notifications of things along the way (like speed traps). In those cases I guess I could use ads for where to stop and eat but since Waze only shows ads when stopped (as far as I can tell) the likelihood of it showing me something relevant at the right time I’d want to grab a bite to eat while cruising down the highway seems unlikely.
The only value I see in it is reminding me that oh yeah there is a KFC around here maybe I should try it next time. And maybe they have some way to show attribution there (after all they have location info so maybe they can see how many people go to that business within a certain number of days of seeing an ad, or after a certain number of exposures to the ad).
> Spotify wouldn’t be the business they are today without the App Store ecosystem, but now they’re leveraging their scale to avoid contributing to maintaining that ecosystem for the next generation of app entrepreneurs. We think that’s wrong.
I think that's a very hypothetical claim.
> Let’s be clear about what that means. Apple connects Spotify to our users. We provide the platform by which users download and update their app. We share critical software development tools to support Spotify’s app building. And we built a secure payment system — no small undertaking — which allows users to have faith in in-app transactions. Spotify is asking to keep all those benefits while also retaining 100 percent of the revenue.
I think we should be clear that Apple built the app-store ecosystem to improve its iPhone adoption and lock-in. And Spotify isn't asking to keep 100% of the revenue. Spotify is asking for a choice of letting users pay how they wish.
The problem really is Apple wants to milk its App store ecosystem now that its popular and 30% / 15% is a very steep price / revenue loss for any significant player in that eco-system. And FWIW, Google provides a similar App store service, while also allowing users to what they choose with their phones (i.e., install side-loaded Apps).
> Spotify wouldn’t be the business they are today without the App Store ecosystem,
Apple makes Microsoft look like an angel. Using this argument, Microsoft could claim they could have made hundreds of billions if they got a cut out of every Windows app sale. Oh, and that those companies wouldn't exist if it weren't for Windows.
Look at what Apple is doing to native integration [1]:
Because it uses these deep integration APIs, we're only allowed to distribute the application using the macOS App Store (whose rejections, appeals, and eventual acceptance made for quite the stressful saga over the last week and a half)
Imagine having to get certified by the Linux Foundation, under distribution clause, to access native Linux kernel APIs. But that's what the developer of Wiregaurd has to do to gain access to native macOS integration.
Ehhh I feel like Unix/Linux popularized trusted computing, Apple merely added a price tag on it. But I may be blinded by my techie point of view about "popularized".
> I may be blinded by my techie point of view about "popularized"
Yeah, unfortunately it seems like we're still in the state where UNIX/Linux can't popularize anything, especially themselves, unless they're repackaged by someone else :(
It doesn't seem like Apple said that Spotify wouldn't exist. Just that they wouldn't be the business they are today.
Which is absolutely true of Microsoft as well. The sheer productivity boon that Office has added to businesses around the world is unmatched by practically any other piece of software ever written. Most of the businesses would still exist, but they wouldn't be the same business. Excel, Powerpoint, and Word are ridiculously important software.
> And Spotify isn't asking to keep 100% of the revenue. Spotify is asking for a choice of letting users pay how they wish.
But users can pay how they wish, if Spotify didn't mind the 30%/15% cut. Spotify simply can't direct users to use their website to use an alternative payment system. I think that is a very reasonable policy for an app store, as it protects its users from poorly implemented financial info handling and scams.
I agree that Apple's article is more hostile than it needed to be, but it is only in response to an unreasonable attack by Spotify on Apple's IAP policies.
Regarding the walled-garden App Store policies of Apple, it's not friendly to enthusiasts and some developers, but it is good for most Apple consumers, and helps less tech-savvy users trust Apple's App Store.
Android has freer permissions on installing apps, because that is necessary for vendor adoption. However, it is unclear if this is still ultimately a better decision for consumers on aggregate.
> But users can pay how they wish, if Spotify didn't mind the 30%/15% cut. Spotify simply can't direct users to use their website to use an alternative payment system. I think that is a very reasonable policy for an app store, as it protects its users from poorly implemented financial info handling and scams.
Give me a break. It doesn’t take 15-30% to implement a secure payment system. This is proven by Apple itself: Apple Pay charges very little for secure payments for physical goods.
Sure Apple makes money off their share of the payment system. Why shouldn't they? They built the whole thing from scratch, including the phones it runs on.
Also Apple doesn't just support the secure payment system, they also handle distributing the money and providing customer support to the end user and the developer. That isn't free either.
If you don't like the Apple model, there are alternatives.
Apple's argument (which seems compelling if we judge it on the result) is that their model is the best solution for customers and developers.
>If you don't like the Apple model, there are alternatives.
What alternatives? Without allowing developers to create 3rd-party payment systems, all payments must be routed through Apple.
>Apple's argument (which seems compelling if we judge it on the result) is that their model is the best solution for customers and developers.
Apple's model does not seem to be compelling for developers/content creators. Developers need to pay a large (for some) amount of money and give Apple a large cut of their profits.
It's also unclear why Apple's model is best for consumers. While it seems good because it protects consumers from scams on third party sites, for reputable companies like Spotify or Netflix, there doesn't seem to be a risk, except for increased prices to the end user because companies need to compensate for losing a third of their earnings.
But it's quite interesting that Apple seems okay with not taking a cut of e.g. Uber, but does want to take a cut of Spotify. Why should they be treated differently?
>>if Spotify didn't mind the 30%/15% cut. Spotify simply can't direct users to use their website to use an alternative payment system.
No they cant, that is a violation of Apples Policies and would result in the App being removed, Amazon tried that with ebooks years ago. You can not redirect a user for payment inside the app, to a payment system outside the app.
>Regarding the walled-garden App Store policies of Apple, it's not friendly to enthusiasts and some developers, but it is good for most Apple consumers, and helps less tech-savvy users trust Apple's App Store.
It is not an either or option. I think Google has struck a good balence, Their App store is pretty locked down today, but if you know the "hidden" menu and what steps to take you can easily unlock the device and install alternate stores and apps.
There is zero security reason why Apple could not supply this type of hidden unlock for people, it is pure monetary control that they desire
IMO apple’s subscription management is greatly undervalued. When I go there and cancel a subscription, it just cancels and that’s it. No intentionally buried links to hunt down, no “But why are you leaving? :(“ guilt trip modal, no convoluted payment method removal process.
I would be much more supportive of efforts to push Apple to allow third party payment systems of the practices I mentioned above weren’t so common.
It's not an even playing field though. Apple has a competing music service and they can undercut their competition by avoiding the 30% transaction fee, squeezing competitors into submission.
I think this is the cleanest seam to cut on. If Apple had to compete fairly in the ecosystem the 30% cut would much more likely be something Spotify could stomach -- not an existential threat to their business, just the cost of doing business on iPhone.
As things stand, Apple has mixed priorities. They want to enable developers where those developers add uniquely to the platform, but they want to outcompete developers where they cannibalise sales from Apple's own products.
This dual remit doesn't help consumers. If Apple's music offering had to pay the 30% tax "for real", they might have to charge $13 too, and that might make the iPhone an expensive platform for music-listeners, and they might be incentivised to cut their margins to compete with other platforms. We could all agree, "Sure it's expensive, but it's their turf and they can run it badly (to their own detriment) if they want."
Not sure where you draw the line between first-party app and OS functionality though. I imagine in some cases it'd be less clear than here.
This is a bit of a ridiculous claim. From another perspective, an iPhone is just another way to access your favorite apps and content. Taken to more of an extreme, imagine Comcast or T-Mobile claiming that they provide users to Spotify... Apple is easily just a middle man here but they make themselves sound like the entity that owns the users and plugs them into apps. It's not like people buy iPhones just because they're shiny pieces of aluminum and glass, and using apps is secondary to that.
This reminds me of the ISPs getting upset about the bandwidth they have to deliver on behalf of Netflix.
"Our platform enables your app" is true in both cases. But so is "our app brings people to your platform." The power imbalance is that it's easier to build a competing app than a competing app store or ISP.
The 'our users' bit is actually one of the most annoying bits. As if anyone that uses iOS is under Apple's control as to what they are or aren't allowed to do or be exposed to. It reveals a lot about how they view their position in the relationship. Between them and users. As if when I download an app or game, Apple is bestowing me to the app developer.
That's right back to the net neutrality debate and the claim that ISP should charge prices that scale with customer profitability rather than network load.
How is this is a hypothetical claim? It is blatantly obvious. Spotify's early days were entirely dependent on the mobile marketplace. Even now, desktop use constitutes a tiny fraction of their total users.
It's not a hypothetical claim at all, really.
> 30% / 15% is a very steep price / revenue loss
Source? Because 30% / 15% is a common middleman commision for most platforms.
> Google provides a similar App store service
This is ridiculously far from the truth. Google's Play Store isn't curated in the least. Malware regularly pops up, the review process is effectively nonexistent, and the quality of apps on the Play Store is thus far below what one can get from the App Store.
There are costs to reviewing every app. I don't think it's fair for you to say 30% is unfair unless you (a) compare the costs to other middlemen, and (b) figure out how expensive the review process and other infrastructure is.
In general, all you really seem to be doing is promoting freeloading off the App Store. Utilize the benefits it provides, but have users pay for your service via a side-channel so you don't have to contribute back to the ecosystem.
You're acting like Apple gets nothing out of a healthy app ecosystem (if there weren't apps, no one would bother to buy an iPhone), or from their App Store review process (many people prefer the iPhone because they feel safer with iPhone apps than they would with Android apps). It's not like Apple provides a developer SDK and reviews apps out of the goodness of its heart.
This is something I think people miss. Almost every other company I have subscriptions with make them a pain to cancel. Subs through the App Store are easy to find and cancel. It's very consumer friendly. Plus as you said, I'm not a fan of giving every service I want to use my CC.
Is that worth 30%/15%? I don't know. The fact that 15% exists shows that Apple is thinking about the pricing and adjusting. Apple just doesn't do anything quickly.
Is anyone else bugged by the "Let's be clear/To be clear" prefix that gets thrown around a lot these days? It seems unnecessary. If you're being clear then that will be self-evident. It seems like a way to preemptively trick the reader in to taking whatever follows as correct and authoritative.
We can also say Apple Music wouldn't be the business today had Spotify not explored the business of music streaming years ahead. Now they just took the idea themselves and pretend that Spotify contributes nothing.
Realising you can make a great inexpensive product by paying a minuscule fraction for the content isn't exactly business innovation. The innovation was paving the way for artists to be stiffed; Apple had no choice but to compete in order to stay viable.
The issue I see is this, Apple Music does not play fair, it is similar priced with the competition but it is in fact subsidized by Apple, any application or service it is in danger because if Apple wants and it is competent it can create an Apple version of it and give itself smaller prices(or free), native integrations that the competition does not have. This is not fair for the users (it may be fair f5rom other POV but not for the users, fair competition is better look like IE as an example)
The thing is obvious and I will explain it again, using a made up example so less emotions are attached
1 I have an app or service say X and I sell it for 5$ and this is the lowest price I can afford
2 Apple wants a 30% cut, so I will have to make my app 7$ .
all is fine so far, the problem is at step 3
3 Apple clones my app names it iX(my original app was named X), makes it 5$ (or bundles it with some gift cars or other deals if you give them more money).
4 Apple's iX gets access to private APIs, is cheaper(or free) since is subsidized, Apple also forces me not to remove from my X app any links to my webpages if I sell things there
Now, please, consider THE USER, what does the user get:
- the user gets less options if my app X is killed or I remove it from the store
- the user pays more if I raise the prices
- the user does not see m,y sale pages because I can't show it in the app
- the X app that some(a big number of ) users consider it better can't access native features like iX can
So, get 30% or whatever you want but compete fair.
I get your point. I got your point the first time. But there are a lot of "ifs" in your hypothesis.
Meanwhile Apple is not attempting to undercut Spotify in the retail space. And they are paying artists substantially more than Spotify for the music so they're clearly not attempting to run a more profitable business.
There is no IF, all Apple apps have unfair advantages, not only financial but I also mentioned access to private APIs.
The user looses when there is not enough competition, like you get stuck with a worse browser (but in this case this may be a deliberate thing to protect the app store)
With that idea, we should forbid grocers from charging less in-store for their brand name items that compete directly with mainstream brands (Safeway Select, WholeFoods 360, etc)
Can you comment on my point and not add an "What about x" ?
My point is about the user, do I benefit is a supermarket makes it own products cheaper, Yes , but if it makes my preferred product more expensive to force me to buy the product they want, this does not benefit me,
again, tell me about what the benefit is for the user/consumer not what about x, the market shares, the laws in US, free market ....
The consumer gets an equivalent service for cheaper, that is like literally the definition of consumer benefit in economics. If you truly believe that X is better than iX than you can pay the extra money for X, but if iX is just as good and is cheaper than X the consumer benefits because they can spend less to get the same service.
But that's a too simple way to look at it. I am not trying to defend the 30%, but just saying 'their own apps do not have to pay 30%, so they can easily replace any app with their own' doesn't go far enough.
They got two options:
a) make a 30% on $10/month from Spotify -> $3 in Apple's bag for no work or effort at all. Almost pure profit.
b) sell their own music solution for $10/month (INSTEAD of that customer going to Spotify) and have to pay out X to musicians, companies, younameit. Higher hosting and streaming costs too. If X>$7/month Apple loses. If it's $7 Apple earns as much but no more than with option a), if it's less than $7/month only then Apple wins.
I agree with most of what you said, but come on. Running (one of?) the biggest software distribution and payment processing systems on the planet is hardly "no work or effort at all".
This is the same sort of rhetoric that calls dropbox a weekend project.
There's credit card costs etc associated with that as well. Doubt it's $3/user per month though and the distribution costs are minimal (only downloads of app updates) compared to the streaming costs (which could be multiple GBs every month).
Apple: $ to build the app, $ to maintain the music label relationships, $ to manage paying royalties, $ to manage server infra, $ for bandwidth.
Spotify: $ to build the app, $ to maintain the music label relationships, $ to manage paying royalties, $ to manage server infra, $ for bandwidth, $ to Apple for the "privilege" of being listed on the App Store and using Apple's payments system (which they have no choice over).
Both companies have the exact same base costs to operate their service. But Apple gets to charge for subscriptions through the app for free, whereas Spotify does not. That's literally the only difference cost-wise, and IMO Spotify is correct to consider that anti-competitive. Whether or not Apple would make more or less money shuttering Apple Music and transferring all their customers to Spotify is completely irrelevant.
And no, I don't consider "creating and maintaining an iOS payments system" to be a part of Apple's costs here. That would exist even if Apple Music did not, and the marginal cost of having Apple Music use that system is virtually nil, certainly not 30% of Spotify's subscription fee.
From what you're saying it sounds like Spotify should have built a smartphone platform. It's not free for Apple to build and maintain the App Store and everything that entails—from API documentation to the rock solid software platform that is being kept up to date and is astonishingly robust compared to any internet-connected consumer platform that came before it.
Some apps pay for that effort with a cut of the app's retail price. Spotify pays for it with the tiny fraction of their users which (a) pay for it at all and (b) pay for it through their iOS device.
There’s clearly a difference between moving money from one internal balance sheet to another, and moving it to an entirely different company’s balance sheet.
What has changed is Apple has a direct competitor product.
Firstly, that competitor product has technical advantages as it can access APIs that Spotify cannot (SiriKit, background audio on earlier versions of WatchOS).
Secondly, that competitor product is at a financial advantage because of the 30% fee.
It's not the fee itself that's the issue. It's that Apple is (arguably) using it's control of the platform to compete unfairly against Spotify.
For example GCS had 96% packet loss in us-west. So doesn't it make sense to refund every customer who had any API call to a GCS bucket on us-west during the outage?