“Developers were working with us in partnership and they were offered a 15 percent revenue share as part of that,” says Google’s Paul Gennai, referring to Google’s Living Room Accelerator Program (LRAP) and parallel ADAP program for audio apps.

What about subscription devs who were paying 0 percent back in the day?

There was a component of our billing policy at the time that was likely confusing and could be misinterpreted; there were developers selling goods and digital subscriptions at the time that were not using Google Play Billing.

“We knew we were going to have to come around and correct that problem,” he adds.

This does not explain Spotify’s current 0 percent rate, or its special offer to Netflix, or other deals we’ve seen in court, though.

But it is a defense for another point Epic has made about how Google was not enforcing Play Store Billing evenly.