The Leadership Letter

Real correspondence from the people running real companies — and what it reveals about leadership.

Preview Bad News Before You Ship It

When you're about to close a door on a big partner, walking through it in person costs you nothing and buys you information you can't get any other way.

Met with Spotify team at their offices this afternoon. The discussion went as expected. They were surprised and concerned but appreciated the in-person meeting, advance warning and the open dialogue.

They didn't seem to think we would go this direction, "We thought Google would remain an open platform and do what's right for users and developers."

Key Takeaways:

Transaction Fee — The 10% rev share offer was met with some head nods but no firm commitment that this is sufficient. "Well 10% is a lot better than 15%." They seemed surprised that we went down to 10%. I anticipate they will ask for a deeper discount.

Pricing Parity / User Communication — They haven't done the math to know if 10% rev share means they'd need to raise prices in the app or not. If they do, they would want to be able to tell users that they can purchase for less elsewhere (something our new policy will expressly prohibit). This piece is very important and is a crux of the Apple debate: They believe users should be fully informed about their choices; disadvantaging app users by not being able to tell them that pricing is lower elsewhere isn't fair to users.

Policy Principle: It is a principle for them to protect user choice and to have as much control over their relationship with the user as possible.

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Court Exhibit
In re Google Play Store Antitrust Litigation (Epic v. Google)
3:21-md-02981 (CAND), Doc. 886-93, filed 2023-12-21
October 17, 2017
Public domain
View the primary source →