The court opened the gate. Google kept the toll booth.

A court order can pry open a gate and leave the toll booth in place. That is the pattern inside the Google Play change dated July 22, 2026, and the cleanest evidence is a single percentage.

Most readers will hear the headline as a concession: Google cutting its own app store commission from 30% to 10% and finally letting third-party stores appear inside Google Play. CNET's reporting on Google's announcement carries the number that disrupts that reading. Google's service fee still applies to every third-party download flowing through the new channel. The 10% is the same rate Google just adopted for its own cut, applied now to rivals as well. Lower the headline, raise the take.

A court or regulator can force an incumbent to open a rival channel. In this case, Google's compliance extended its fee structure to that new channel. The 30-to-10% cut is the toll, now applied to every download that crosses the opened gate.

Who gains, who loses: developers and users get a more visible marketplace, a 10% commission floor, and room to run their own payment rails. Google keeps a fee on every transaction flowing through the newly opened channel.