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Google News is shutting down purchased magazine content, offering refunds

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Re: Google News is shutting down purchased magazine content, offering refunds

#71

Post by creer »

eitally wrote: post #36
tzs wrote: post #8

I wonder if this is just due to something internal at Google or if there has been some more global change that has made them uninterested in continuing this? Normally I'd guess the former given Google's legendary propensity for getting rid of services, but a couple months ago Amazon did something similar [1] which makes me wonder if the two are connected somehow: > Effective September 4, 2023, Amazon is no longer sel…

I think it's more that print magazines aren't really a thing anymore. Yes, they exist, but if you have a computer you're far more likely to consume publishers' content by going to their site and either generating advertising revenue for them as a free user or subscribing digitally, which gives you (and them) much more flexibility in the types of content you can consume and they can create & share. The same has been h…

Print is being shrunk but magazines seem still very active. Still to be seen whether they will succeed in the e-reader transition.

Re: Google News is shutting down purchased magazine content, offering refunds

#72

Post by cpdean »

syncbehind wrote: post #57
rchaud wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Partly why paying for streaming never made sense to me. You can't even take screnshots of shows you've paid to watch!

You can if you use firefox ;)

As a Firefox user, no, I cannot. I can only screenshot youtube and amazon prime video.

Re: Google News is shutting down purchased magazine content, offering refunds

#73

Post by creer »

ghaff wrote: post #44
Mindwipe wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's just a coincidence. The Kindle team has been gutted with job losses so almost everything non-core is being cut. This magazine business just never made anyone any money, so it's an obvious thing to cut.

Magazine subscriptions can be a funny business because they can be so much cheaper than buying an issue at the newsstand. Don't know what the economics look like these days. On Amazon (not uniquely) there were an awful lot of often non-obvious auto-renewal magazine subscriptions which doubtless caused Amazon some number of headaches.

I was under the impression that subscriptions are not where the money was ever made. Advertising was it. And to get good advertising money you needed a high circulation. So then, shenanigans around discounted subscriptions and mostly free ones in the trade professional press. And so then the work of auditors who established more reliable audience numbers than the size of the print run or some such. Auditors -> audience size -> advertising money -> profit.

Re: Google News is shutting down purchased magazine content, offering refunds

#74

Post by dahdum »

delecti wrote: post #60

It seems pretty likely that everyone saying "just pirate" never had any content in the service. I got an email with a link to a page that let me download PDFs for all of the magazines I had in the service ("all of the magazines" being 4 of them that I got for free in 2012, but the point stands). If I had pirated those magazines, I doubt the quality would have been as good as an official PDF from the source. Lately it…

Google in 2023: “Before we pull the rug out from under you, we’ll throw some packing peanuts down.”

Re: Google News is shutting down purchased magazine content, offering refunds

#75

Post by __float »

creer wrote: post #71
eitally wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more that print magazines aren't really a thing anymore. Yes, they exist, but if you have a computer you're far more likely to consume publishers' content by going to their site and either generating advertising revenue for them as a free user or subscribing digitally, which gives you (and them) much more flexibility in the types of content you can consume and they can create & share. The same has been h…

Print is being shrunk but magazines seem still very active. Still to be seen whether they will succeed in the e-reader transition.

I don't get the strong impression that e-readers are really trying to compete here, though. It seems much more in the _tablet_ space, where colorful photos (and additional interactivity, sometimes) are much closer to the physical experience of a paper magazine.

Re: Google News is shutting down purchased magazine content, offering refunds

#76

Post by karaterobot »

I feel like if I was a cloud storage provider, I would want to send the message that if you bought something from me, it wouldn't just get deleted after a few years. I assume it costs them less to store an individual's purchased magazine subscriptions than the cost of the free storage they allocate for everyone who uses Google Drive, but I may be wrong. I suppose they just don't want to keep supporting the distribution of these assets in new products they develop.

Re: Google News is shutting down purchased magazine content, offering refunds

#77

Post by tick_tock_tick »

dragonwriter wrote: post #52
onetimeuse92304 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people should expect accurate information. Kinda the same as with justice. We know justice is served by people in nice togas and juries of peers who are really a nice name for your neighbours. And yet we still demand and hopefully will continue to demand justice, even if those people make mistakes or sometimes behave fraudulently. The problem with Israeli-Hamas conflict isn't that the accurate information isn…

> The problem with Israeli-Hamas conflict isn't that the accurate information isn't available. Yes, it is, because this... > It is that too many people decided to side with either belligerent and are selectively accepting information. ... includes almost the entire American media and political establishment on the Israeli side, which keeps everything that isn't Israeli propaganda out of most formal information channe…

> includes almost the entire American media and political establishment on the Israeli side

For the media I don't know if I agree. I think they have painted Hamas in a much more favorable light then expected. They seem to refuse to run in person interviews with member of Hamas or even random people on the streets of Gaza because of how quickly it would sour any "both sides" narrative.

Re: Google News is shutting down purchased magazine content, offering refunds

#78

Post by delecti »

dahdum wrote: post #74
delecti wrote: post #60

It seems pretty likely that everyone saying "just pirate" never had any content in the service. I got an email with a link to a page that let me download PDFs for all of the magazines I had in the service ("all of the magazines" being 4 of them that I got for free in 2012, but the point stands). If I had pirated those magazines, I doubt the quality would have been as good as an official PDF from the source. Lately it…

Google in 2023: “Before we pull the rug out from under you, we’ll throw some packing peanuts down.”

Well they disabled purchasing 3 years ago. Rather than a rug pull, it's more like a bar turning the lights on 3 years ago, and then they handed out to-go cups in case you didn't finish your drinks after all that time.

Re: Google News is shutting down purchased magazine content, offering refunds

#80

Post by defsectec »

southernplaces7 wrote: post #13

Much like the phrase around crypto about "not your keys? not your crypto" goes, similar applies to all digital things: Not your local content? not your content" Things like Kindle Unlimited (which at least say they're subscriptions to content access) digital streaming and so many other services that let you "buy" things that you don't keep on your own device in your own chosen format are all bullshit waiting to happe…

Steam is the only "digital goods" platform that I meaningfully use and I'm still not entirely happy with that arrangement since, although their terms and conditions currently says they'll offer a DRM-free download if the service were to ever stop, they can change that fact at anytime and have quietly changed other things historically. I often buy older titles from sites like GOG if I just need the game files from some open-source reimplementation and don't need cloud saves or any other Steam features.

Valve was savvy enough to offer additional value and convenience with the platform (especially with all the Linux development they've contributed lately). The ability to easily play a large majority of my Windows games on Linux via Proton, sync those game files between systems automatically, and have built-in IM/VoIP/remote-access is almost worth the fact it might all disappear at a moments notice.

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