A secret Google deal let Spotify completely bypass Android’s app store fees

Music streaming service Spotify struck a seemingly unique and highly generous deal with Google for Android-based payments, according to new testimony in the Epic v. Google trial. On the stand, Google head of global partnerships Don Harrison confirmed Spotify paid a 0 percent commission when users chose to buy subscriptions through Spotify’s own system. If the users picked Google as their payment processor, Spotify handed over 4 percent — dramatically less than Google’s more common 15 percent fee.

Google fought to keep the Spotify numbers private during its antitrust fight with Epic, saying they could damage negotiations with other app developers who might want more generous rates. Google’s User Choice Billing program, launched in 2022, is typically described as shaving about 4 percent off Google’s Play Store commission if developers use their own payment system, bringing down Google’s 15 percent subscription service fee to more like 11 percent. That often ends up saving developers little or no money since they must foot the cost of payment processing themselves. And in court, Google has focused on benefits like greater flexibility rather than cost savings.

But Harrison says Spotify’s “unprecedented” popularity was great enough to justify a “bespoke” deal. “If we don’t have Spotify working properly across Play services and core services, people will not buy Android phones,” Harrison testified. As part of the deal, both parties also agreed to commit $50 million apiece to a “success fund.”

Google acknowledged Harrison’s testimony in a statement to The Verge. “A small number of developers that invest more directly in Android and Play may have different service fees as part of a broader partnership that includes substantial financial investments and product integrations across different form factors,” says spokesperson Dan Jackson. “These key investment partnerships allow us to bring more users to Android and Play

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Android’s new real-time app scanning aims to combat malicious sideloaded apps

Android’s in-built security engine Google Play Protect has a new feature that conducts a real-time analysis of an Android app’s code and blocks it from installing the app if it’s considered potentially harmful.

Google announced in October the new real-time app scanning feature built into Google Play Protect that the company says can help catch malicious or fake sideloaded apps installed from outside the app store. These apps will morph their appearance or use AI to alter the apps’ code in a way that helps them avoid detection.

Google said this Play Protect feature now recommends a real-time app scan for any new app that has never been scanned before. This consists of a code analysis that will “extract important signals from the app and send them to the Play Protect backend infrastructure for a code-level evaluation.”

Android’s app store has billions of apps that Google screens for malware, though not always successfully. Many device owners also take to sideloading Android apps, which skirt the app store altogether and its many lines of defense. Sideloading remains a popular feature for Android users, even if it means having to trust that the app they are installing is not malicious.

One of the key reasons for Google to introduce its enhanced real-time code-level scanning feature is to counter the proliferation of predatory loan apps. These apps have resulted in the harassment of users, leading in some cases to victims taking their own lives. Bad actors gain access to user data, including contacts and photos, which are used to bully users. TechCrunch extensively covered the impact of predatory loan apps on Indian users. Google also said it took down over 3,500 such apps in the year for violating its policy requirements. Attackers still find ways to target their victims.

“Our policies are making

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How to set up Android’s Data Saver mode

While most carriers offer unlimited data with their monthly plans, there are some out there that still limit cellular data usage. With dozens of Android’s best apps and services running in the background, you may run out of your monthly mobile data rather quickly. So instead of paying for expensive mobile internet every month, you can enable the data saver mode on your top budget Android phone and restrict apps from consuming data in the background. Here’s how you can start conserving your data with ease.

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What is Data Saver on Android?

Google introduced the Data Saver feature with the Android 7.0 release. The search giant used to offer Lite mode in Google Chrome to block images and save up to 70% of data. Since mobile data costs have reduced over time, Google removed the Lite mode in Chrome on March 29, 2022.

Data Saver mode limits how much data your installed apps can use in the background. If your phone isn’t connected to Wi-Fi or frequently remains out of the Wi-Fi range, it switches to mobile data to function properly.

Some video streaming and instant messaging apps may consume abnormal data in the background. When you enable Data Saver on your Android phone, these apps can’t connect to the internet in the background. You must open the app to receive updates.

Since the installed apps can’t refresh in the background, an active Data Saver mode also improves your Android phone’s battery life.

We use screenshots from a Pixel and Samsung Galaxy phone in the steps below. The steps may vary on Android phones from Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi, and OnePlus.

Enable data saver mode on most Android phones

You can turn on data saver mode from the settings or access

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Google and Samsung partner to fix one of Android’s biggest annoyances

One of Android’s biggest annoyances is how different devices handle background services. While Google has a set of guidelines on how background processes should be handled, Android manufacturers tweak their behavior to improve their devices’ battery efficiency. Mostly, this breaks the app’s intended behavior and offers a poor user experience. At I/O 2022, the company revealed its efforts to fix Android’s background app issues. We saw the fruit of those labor with Android 14, which brings several changes for foreground services. Going a step further, Google is announcing a deeper partnership with Samsung to deliver a more consistent experience.

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In a post on the Android Developers blog, Google announced it is partnering with Android hardware manufacturers to ensure a consistent and uniform implementation of Android 14’s background APIs. Samsung is the first company to join Google’s efforts, with the benefit of their collaboration bearing fruit once One UI 6.0 drops for Galaxy devices later this year.

Some of the changes to background and foreground services in Android 14 include streamlined background operations, an optimized internal broadcast system, and new Google Play policies to restrict device and network abuse.

In its statement, the Korean giant says starting with One UI 6.0, “foreground services of apps targeting Android 14 will be guaranteed to work as intended so long as they are developed according to Android’s new foreground service API policy.” So, you may not immediately see the benefit of this partnership once One UI 6.0 drops. But as developers update their apps for Android 14, the experience should get a lot better.

Samsung has the dubious honor of the Android manufacturer that aggressively kills background apps on its devices. The situation worsened after Android 11 dropped, leading to delayed notifications, inconsistent

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Android’s forthcoming “app cloning” aspect will make several accounts effortless

Android’s upcoming “app cloning” feature will make multiple accounts easy

Google

Android 14 Preview 1 came out yesterday, and when Google is accomplishing its greatest to disguise the fascinating purchaser-experiencing options from this early launch (possibly because they’re not completed, or for a huge I/O reveal), which is not stopping the Online from discovering exciting features. ‘App Cloning’ is a new function seemingly concealed in the transport Preview 1 create, and Mishaal Rahman, composing for XDA, managed to permit it.

The aspect leverages Android’s multi-consumer technique to have two copies of the exact same application but with various details, allowing for you to log in to every single with distinct accounts. Some applications aid numerous accounts and some you should not, but this element would provide several account support to almost everything. It would also carry a terrific deal of regularity to owning various accounts—every application could deal with a number of accounts in the exact same way, with a single icon for account number one particular and a second icon for account number two. Underneath the hood, the whole feature seems a great deal like Android for Work but devoid of the sophisticated Do the job Profile set up course of action and with the capacity to decide on which applications you want to duplicate.

App cloning in Android 14.
Enlarge / Application cloning in Android 14.

You could have seen this aspect in some Android skins and third-party applications, so this is building it into Android appropriate as component of the typical upstreaming system. As Android Technique UI guide Dan Sandler once stated at Google I/O, the Process UI team’s feature loop is usually “we see a paradigm in the wild, we just take it, we understand about it, we make it safer, and then we contribute it back to the framework for anyone to use in Android.”

There is a

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