Google Videos Canned

Google aims to prune the number of services it offers, and has announced that it is closing the program that allowed you to rent or buy videos from its video store service. See Philipp Lenssen's posting and the comments at Google Blogoscoped.

This is a surprising decision. Sure there will have been good reasons for it -- maybe Holywood didnt like the model that Google was pushing, and so it was hard to fill the store. Or there may have been other good reasons for stopping a program which encouraged users to rent and buy from Google; but read this quote from the Google email:

As a valued Google user, we’re contacting you with some important information about the videos you’ve purchased or rented from Google Video. In an effort to improve all Google services, we will no longer offer the ability to buy or rent videos for download from Google Video, ending the DTO/DTR (download-to-own/rent) program. This change will be effective August 15, 2007.
................................................{snip -- note about compensation}.....................
After August 15, 2007, you will no longer be able to view your purchased or rented videos.

This is pretty bald. If I have understood it correctly the email is saying "you bought it, but with less than a week's notice it won't be yours anymore"? That seems like a pretty graceless way of serving customers/subscribers.

After this mess-up, Google will need to be very careful about the way it offers subscription services to media content in future.

If Google is thinking of pruning its services, maybe it should take a look at Google Catalogs. With its limitation to US-only Catalogs and its inability to tie in to the e-commerce systems of the Catalog companies, this has always seemed to me like one of the good Google Ideas that really dont cut it. And yes it really was a good idea.