Android Play Store Privacy (opens in new tab)

I am surprised to hear you refer to this as "privacy nonsense"; things like a name and address are obviously identity related information. As such, any identity related information has to have privacy concerns.

In some ways, I see this as a breach of trust; I can trust Google with some of my data but I dont think every app developer is worthy of even a certain percentage of that trust.

Are you familiar with a payment instrument called ... Cash?

If you buy a TV via Amazon Marketplace, the seller of the TV certainly gets similar personal information (otherwise they can't ship it).

However, if you do business internationally, this is not as clear: you do not have any a priori right to take money from citizens of other countries for your products or services; as a specific example, if you have customers in the EU (and you meet the various thresholds in any of the member countries) you must register for VAT (probably through the VAT on e-Services program designed for streamlined registration of overseas companies selling digital products). Every quarter, for example, I have to remit collected VAT for every EU country through HMRC (in pounds sterling, which is really quite irritating).

(Even domestically, the rules regarding whether you are doing business in a state are dependent on the state. If you travel at all, have any contractors, work with any other companies, or even simply ship goods around, it can be very confusing to determine in what jurisdictions you suddenly are liable for collecting either sales or seller's use tax. I ran into this personally while trying to figure out "am I doing business in Michigan, a state that imposes a 6% tax that includes digital goods?": the Michigan Treasury didn't want to commit to an answer, so I was going back/forth with accountants and lawyers for quite a while.)

Except that Google takes the same cut ...

Order status issues for apps?

How about:

- the download failed, did I actually purchase it?

- has my refund been processed (note that the current setup lets developers have refund policies that are more generous than the Play Store's 15 minutes)?

- did transferring my purchase from another app store work (which often comes up if a developer leaves the other store)?

- why isn't my in-app upgrade working (could be a code bug, could be a processing bug on the in-app purchase, etc.)?

- ...

>Giving developers the option of contacting users regarding issues is alright ... giving every developer of every app I installed my private phone number is NOT (in my personal opinion).

That's... that's not what it is. It's every app you've PAID for. I would argue that giving people you've given money to direct access to be able to fix issues for you if they come up is a benefit.