Google Video store closes, leaves customers with hours of unviewable MacGyver episodes
It’s kind of hard to sell a product when you buy a subsidiary that will more or less give it away for free. Such is the case with the long-forgotten Google Video Store, one of the first legal on-line video retailers after Apple added television content to its iTunes music store. It’s premium service, which allowed users to buy and rent video content, is closing its figurative doors. The catch: any video purchased from the store will no longer be playable… anywhere.
Instead Google will give the users credit that can be used through their Google Checkout service. This is a problem. How do you convince people to emrace a digital format if at any moment a company can say, “Not so fast, kiddo” and essentially make all ones content a waste of zeros and ones. Granted, Google Video was embraced by few and used by fewer, but still one has to have a certain level of security in their purchases (read: DRM-FREE). It’ll be interesting to see if other companies follow suit. It also makes me wary of all of the content I have uploaded to remote servers.
