The Leadership Letter

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

The Real Moat Is Distribution, Not Billing

Developers won't pay you 30% to process a credit card. They'll pay it to reach customers.

I'll re-review Pat's proposal and likely approve... but we need a comprehensive strategy for how to win in games that stretches across product, marketing and BD. A sponsorship here or there won't do it, nor will a feature banner here and there. We need a systemic approach that strengthens Play's position over the long term. I want to make sure that we are driving our own view of the world and not just reacting to what we see around us or the developer that complains the loudest (though we shouldn't be blind to that either).

Competitors are getting more aggressive because we are getting stronger and driving more value into the ecosystem - in the last 3 days alone we processed more than $80m in transactions from apps and games, most of which was likely games. We need to understand what we're doing right as well as what we're doing wrong... and do more of the former.

Our key partners were actively talking to people who were promising them better development tools (Unity), better discovery and distribution (FB) and analytics (Flurry, Distimo). As the market gets increasingly crowded the real $$ will be in distribution. Partners would be more than willing to pay us 30% or even more if we provide them distribution and discovery. They are less likely to pay us for billing.

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Court Exhibit
In re Google Play Store Antitrust Litigation (Epic v. Google)
3:21-md-02981 (CAND), Doc. 887-6, filed 2023-12-21
August 3, 2013
Public domain
View the primary source →