Google crackdown means you won’t be able to buy Barnes & Noble ebooks on Android

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge

Users of Barnes & Noble's app will no longer be able to buy digital books in the app from next week due to a policy deadline that has been more than a year and a half. You aren't able to buy books with a credit card in the latest version of Barnes & Noble's app, and you aren't able to buy books with a credit card in the latest version of Amazon's app.

The changes appear to be the result of the insistence that apps use the billing systems of Google Play. The so-called "app store tax" on many transactions has long been criticized by developers for requiring the use of their own billing systems.

Barnes & Noble and Audible are making changes at the last minute, but they are not the only ones. In September 2020, Google updated its policies to clarify which types of in-app transactions required the use of the Play billing system. I wrote this yesterday, as the deadline for the extension was yesterday. Both Barnes & Noble andAudible pointed to the policies of Google as the reason for the changes, withAudible even linking us to that September 2020 post.

Dan Jackson directed us to this page in order to explainAudible and B&N's moves. apps using an alternative in-app billing system will need to remove it in order to comply with the Payments policy.

What might it do to users? The ability to purchase has been removed from the Barnes & Noble Nook App forANDROID and the Nook HD 10. The company sent an email to a staff member on Friday stating that they would no longer be able to make purchases of digital content in the Nook app.

As of Friday, you can't purchase titles with a credit or debit card in the app. As of Friday, any new memberships that are started in the app will be billed through the Play store. You will still be able to use Audible credits to buy books in the app, and you will also be able to buy more credits in the app.

You might be wondering why this is happening a week after it was announced that a pilot program will allow developers to use their own billing systems. Jackson pointed out that participants in the pilot will need to offer their own billing system before they can include their own.

The only company in the pool of companies is Spotify, and neither Barnes & Noble nor Audible have anything to say about it.