Google will now consider letting your video, music or book app evade its 30 percent cut

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Google is opening up applications to a new program for developers of media apps that lets them keep more of what they earn — paying a lower 15 percent commission to Google in exchange for supporting certain platforms and features (via 9to5Google).

The Play Media Experience Program is another way to get around the company’s 30 percent service fee, and it’s also an admission that the Google had already been cutting deals with some developers behind the scenes; Google is positioning it as the global expansion of a program that was previously invite-only, though it doesn’t seem to have mentioned it before today.

If that sounds familiar, you might be thinking of how Amazon managed to evade Apple’s App Store tax. Apple, too, explained that...

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