Google is killing Play Movies & TV, will only have three video stores left

Matt@lemdro.id to Android@lemdro.id – 345 points –
arstechnica.com
85

Google is the only brand I know of where people go out of their way to own the hardware but do everything in their power to avoid the software.

Wait, no. Razor... Razor exists. NO ONE'S MOUSE NEEDS A DAILY DRIVER UPDATE!

Fuck Razor mice. They can't do a mouse wheel right without it slipping backwards when scrolling. Garbage.

Their earbuds are good tho. So far.

Whats a good alternative to Razor? The wheel is slipping on my DeathAdder.

Logitech I guess. There is the mousereview subreddit if you want to research some alternatives. Don't know if there is a Lemmy community equivalent.

I just tossed my fancy Logitech headset after only 3 years. My kid's mouse was double clicking after less. And G Hub makes Razer's software look like poetry.

I was a die hard Logitech fan since I was a kid. I bought shares.

Done with them.

Don't think Razer software will be that much better. After trying razor I am now on a g502 x lightspeed. I really hope these new switches address the double-clicking issues for good.

Upvote cause you're the only one who spelled Razer correctly

Don’t think Razer software will be that much better. After trying razor I am now on a g502 x lightspeed. I really hope these new switches address the double-clicking issues for good.

Lol the g502x lightspeed is the last piece of Logitech hardware I own. About half the time on wake it gets stuck at 0.5fps. The other day a software/firmware bug made it stop reporting clicks and I had to reboot my PC. It's good hardware but something is very wrong with either the firmware or G-Hub.

Why is all gamer equipment garbage?

That's the model that the mouse wheel kept slipping.

Anything really I'm using some brand that has a ship as a logo that I got for like $5 clearance from Walmart that's been pretty good. Not super fancy but has all 5 buttons and a button for quick change of sensitivity (which I've never got used to, I grew up on Ball nice, I have to remind myself that I got side buttons).

I got a basic 3-button black HP mouse that I've used for many years of continuous use and dropping and I've never had a problem

I like Corsair products. My weighted mouse has been perfect for the last 4ish years for gaming.

I can recommend Keychron M3, it’s really a steal for its price. Been using it since the release day for Mac, Windows and Linux and I had zero issues

It's not like that in all areas. It's the exact opposite for their phones. Pixels are trash quality hardware with great software.

Google is just a massive disappointment in 2023...

I was one of the lucky ones with my 6, I will admit... but I'm not up for another round. I'll be an Asus boy in two years if they're still playing a good game, or maybe a Linux phone and keep my 6 as a backup for more proprietary crap if I'm really feeling frisky.

That doesn't quite line up when you consider how popular it is to buy a Pixel just to flash GrapheneOS on it.

Did they not turn this into Google TV already? Not to be confused with Google TV, YouTube TV, Android TV or the old Google TV

No this was all merged into YouTube many years ago after it was announced long before that they were ending it. This is Lemmy so everyone is just gonna pretend Google just announced this and make a big deal out of it because "Google bad"

Exactly. This app has been dead for years. You could technically still rent or “buy” stuff from it for smart TVs and such, but it would also show up in your YouTube library.

This is just them actually announcing the app going away and making it official.

Meh, they don't exactly crow about where to find it in their other apps. They mentioned the "shop" in Google TV and mentioned YouTube, but didn't say where. Not like they made a store in YouTube to make it obvious. They can't be assed to be clear about it because they have so many different apps that have the functionality.

Just looked and you can't access your purchases on a brand account. That's causing issues. They may have announced it a while ago, but they didn't think it through at all. This is looking more and more like the YouTube Music fiasco.

There is a "Your movies & TV" section which points to the store though they should probably rename it to just "Movies & TV" like it is on mobile (which is definitely obnoxious to find on there, you have to click the compass icon).

You can't access your purchases on a brand account because those are not technically the same as your Google account after the fiasco from Google attempting to merge accounts a long time ago.

It was changed into Google TV on phones only, now it's being killed on Android TV's. Extra layer to the confusion, depending on what platform you are using changes what the app is named...

I swear this company used to have its shit together.

They had a really amazing search algorithm that they used to make ad revenue and then made a bunch of stuff because the engineers were bored.

Google's problem is they reward bringing new product to market, but they don't reward steady stewardship or iteration to improve existing products. That's why you see Google release multiple products that do the same thing.

Eric Schmidt was amazing as CEO. Then he left and Page took over. He was okay, but nothing great. Then Pichai took over. He is an absolute douchenozzle and is basically there to just make as much money as possible all while trashing everything that made Google great. Google search sucks nowadays, YouTube is overrun with ads, and nothing interesting at all has happened with Android in a long time.

I love Android. Google please, please don't fuck this one up.

Seriously? I admit I use it, but how can you love it? I often feel violated using it. Google has its tendrils dug so deep into every aspect of it, I feel dirty using it.

I love it from a technical perspective from its runtime to its permissions model. I don't specifically care for Google. I'm enthused from an OS design perspective.

Stop it, don't give Google ideas or they will turn to Android next lol

Ha fuck you pleeb. We so fucking rich we drivin' g wagons to work wearing crocs and sweat pants then when g wagon gets full of mustard from our sandwiches we just buy another. Our shit is so far from together but ain't nothing gonna stop us. Also we just deleted your mom's GDrive because we can.

—Google probably

The downside of throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks is that you end up having to clean up a whole lot of shit of the floor.

And every time you do, the next shit has a harder time sticking.
Stadia was doomed from the start because nobody was willing to commit to it in fear of Google killing it, and that meant it wouldn't get enough users and would get killed.

I honestly didn't know they still had Google Play Movies and TV still, I'd assumed they'd folded it completely into the YouTube movies brand already.

As a Google Play Music user, I'm retroactively angry. I would've loved that many years of GPM while they worked a couple (not enough) of the kinks out of YTM. And I wish I still had access to Google's music store, since Amazon doesn't sell in Canada and I hate having to install a desktop application to shop at Apple.

Ever since Sundar Pichai took over as CEO, Google has just gotten boring as a company, overall, and has forgotten or discontinued its products more than actually innovate like they used to.

Google has truly mastered the fine arts of wasting money

Jesus fucking Christ, what a clusterfuck.

I can't wait to not be able to spend google play store credits on renting movies anymore, just like there's no way to spend google play store credits on purchasing albums or songs 🙃

I have no freaking idea what the hell Google is doing detaching all these apps then being extra aggressive at getting me to use it.

If I want a song, am I doing YouTube, YouTube Music, or Google Music?

Podcasts are even worst, because theres Google Podcasts too.

YouTube Music. Google Music doesn't exist anymore.

And YouTube / YouTube music is technically the same service, the data source is the same. The front-end is the only difference, similar to shorts and regular YouTube.

First Play Music, now Play Movies. Hopefully Play Books isn't next.

Knowing Google I wouldn't be surprised at all if they do remove Play Books and fuck over all the customers, just for that 1% increase in profits lol.

Shhhhh, I think maybe they’ve forgotten about it….

I'm surprised Sundar isn't on the hot seat at this point.

People are gonna be like "oh well he presided over X revenue growth and that's all investors care about". Investors also care about future returns.

Under Sundar, Google has more or less completely failed to diversify. They've had the advantage on several products, only for them to dick around while their competitors established (or re-established) dominance. The areas where they have market dominance went from "we have the far superior product" to "this Lowkey sucks, but I can't think of anything better".

As far as I'm concerned Sundar is Google's Sculley. Google will go for a long time under its own momentum, but eventually the wheels will come off.

Meanwhile Nadella is getting paid a quarter as much.

So does this mean those of us who have bought content through Play Movies will lose access to those?

No they are allowing you to view them in YouTube and the Google TV library section of the app

Yeah, but the movies I purchased in HD are now only accessible in 480p. So technically available but not really.

On Youtube they are 480p. On Google TV they appear to be HD and allow downloading.

Still shitty as you have to use their app, a chromecast or google TV smart TV.

Finally, I don't need to disable this app anymore when I have a new phone

Have you met Google? The app will still be there for years to come. It will be broken, but it'll never disappear.

Unfortunately I know them, I recently wiped a pixel 3 and I noticed that the latest ROM still has play music. The latest ROM update is from November 2021 and it still has play music. Almost one year after the complete shutdown and over three years after the deprecation they fucking continued to include play music in the system rom...

Doesn't surprise me. They never even supported it with the Assistant / Google Home. There's pretty much zero point in onboarding with any Google products anymore.

I got some Google home mini devices and now none of them work to do basically anything of value. Actually I shouldn't say now, they stopped doing the basic functions I wanted them for around 2 years ago.

Telling it to play a show on TV doesnt work, which is essentially why I bought them. The most they can do now is basic on and off functions. They were constantly going off at random times when no one was talking. They have now become fancy looking paperweights.

I also have Google TV which is slowly becoming worse and worse. I recently bought my kids Rokus because they had all the same functions as Google but without the microphone remote. They were half the price and are working better than my Google TV.

Good riddance. Less bullshit to uninstall when I get a new phone.

This isn't even talking about phones.

You're right. From the article:

The company emailed users of Android TV to say that the "Google Play Movies & TV app will no longer be available on your Android TV device from 05 October 2023.

I wonder what the button on my TV remote will launch now? An error message? Or YouTube?

This community is about Android, not about phones. Android is on phones and televisions.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

On third-party smart TVs (this is a different category than today's Android TV announcement) the app was killed in 2021.

How any normal person is supposed to understand that pile of Google media brands, and how it works across phones, the web, and various smart TV OSes, is beyond me.

The idea back in the 2010s was to compete with the digital media revolution Apple created with iTunes, the iPod, and the iPhone.

Most of the media stores started in the Android Market but then pivoted to a more Google-wide offering with the launch of Google Play branding in 2012.

Nothing at Google is ever stable, though, and the company's other media stakeholders sought to pick apart what the Android Team had built.

All the apps will be dead in October, and presumably, that means the now-useless store will be booted from the web interface as well.

The original article contains 711 words, the summary contains 147 words. Saved 79%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

It's actually bad news for me because I bought a bunch of movies living in the UK (moved to Canada now) that I can't access through YouTube but can through Google Play movies.

Going through support is like dealing with monkeys. They have no idea what they're doing.

Movies Anywhere is your friend here. Buy a movie from one store, watch it from any other store. Not sure how it works when one store shuts down, hopefully you keep it in all the other stores.

Whoa ... seems so weird. I'll buy a movie on sale to give it a go. Thanks!

It works with movies you already own, so there's no need to buy more just to test it out! It's still not as convenient as some other... less legal... options, but it's a step in the right direction.

I actually had no idea this was an app or what it did lmao. Google has so many confusing things like this.

Actually a good thing though, it should all be merged into one.

It was, years ago. It’s part of YouTube’s rentals/purchase feature now.