Didn’t see this one coming, and I usually have my ear to the rail on the Android front… So late last year Google changed the TOS on the Android Market and changed the payout schedule from 2 days to monthly. I didn’t notice a thing, until I read someone on twitter complaining. Sure enough, I looked and today was the first day my Android account received nothing.
So it’s not like I’m living off the cash flow, I do it on the side and don’t depend on my app sales for day to day expenses or anything. But the thing that bugs me is that it just adds another question mark to the “Do no evil” Google checklist. I mean really, it’s not exactly evil, I can even understand why – it has to cost a fortune to wire all that cash around every day not to mention the hassle of keeping it all going.
But the thing is, that trickle of cash was just another way of saying “We are Google, we don’t hold on to your money” which just feels like the opposite of evil. Now they join the other app stores and pile up our money, gaining interest while they make us wait. Maybe that is evil.
The other day I saw that mobile ads would hit a billion dollars for Google this year. The projections I’ve seen for Rim, iOS, and Symbian look pretty dismal compared to the 2+ year Android skyrocket. I call on Google to do less evil. Maybe they should lower their 70/30 cut and go 90/10 or something to show that they know that developers drive those numbers in the end.