18 ms·

Google News is shutting down purchased magazine content, offering refunds

• neodymiumphish 3y ago
  Guess the last member of whatever team implemented magazine subscription just got promoted out of that team.
  • rrdharan 3y ago
    s/promoted/laid off/ https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/18/google-cuts-dozens-of-jobs-in-news-division-.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/18/google-cuts-dozens-of-jobs-i...
    • onetimeuse92304 3y ago
      Hahaha... laughed so hard... even for Google this is pretty comical. > The company has been downsizing in recent months to reckon with slowing growth and uncertain economic conditions. What happened to becoming better through overcoming problems? "Slowing growth" and "Uncertain economic conditions" means now "Close down immediately". > The cuts at Google News come as big online platforms are pressured to provide the public with accurate information on the Israel-Hamas conflict and Russia’s war in Ukraine. I guess at the scale of Google it is easier to completely close down your news arm than try to provide accurate information or admit you have problem with producing truth?
      • thaumasiotes 3y ago
        Nobody should be expecting accurate information on either conflict. Sometimes accurate information is hard to come by. I'm not sure the problem is that platforms are being "pressured to provide the public with accurate information", though. I would guess there's far more pressure to provide information that favors certain viewpoints, whether that information is accurate or not.
        • onetimeuse92304 3y ago
          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't available. It is that too many people decided to side with either belligerent and are selectively accepting information. It is that both sides of the conflict decided to use misinformation to bolster their media presence and their right to defend themselves. It is that the people who have open and measured view of the situation are not feeling safe expressing their views and feel pressured to support either side or shut up. I am personally suspicious of radical opinions, but I feel no way to express any support to more moderate and rational opinions without exposing myself as target for both sides. This problem in turn is result of some more general socio-politic changes, poor education and capture of media by organisations who discovered it is better to serve extreme views on any matter because it lets them steal more of the focus of consumers by exploiting our natural biases. Because of the polarisation, you have to choose a lesser evil. If you don't like "trumpism", you have to side with "radical left". If you don't like "radical left", you have to side with "trumpism". This is how masses of people can be captured by extreme views, which should not be the norm, in my opinion.
          • thaumasiotes 3y ago
            > The problem with Israeli-Hamas conflict isn't that the accurate information isn't available. > It is that both sides of the conflict decided to use misinformation to bolster their media presence and their right to defend themselves. How can these two claims be compatible with each other? The first says that accurate information is available. The second says that it isn't.
• zazazache 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • tomschwiha 3y ago
    To continue to access previously purchased magazine content, you must export and save each purchased issue before December 18, 2023. Sounds like you can keep it?
  • tauntz 3y ago
    I'm 99% sure that they won't come to collect my trusty Pixel 3a any time soon :)
    • tomashubelbauer 3y ago
      Canceling a physical purchase sounds more like something for the Nintendo ninjas.
    • nfriedly 3y ago
      They did disable bootloader unlocking on my pixel 2, so while I still have it, it's basically e-waste now.
    • hobs 3y ago
      Yeah, just EOL it and leave it so that its open to basic security exploits.
      • tauntz 3y ago
        Thanks, that's a totally valid point!
  • Jleagle 3y ago
    You can download it and you get a refund.
  • tinus_hn 3y ago
    The end result is more like you borrowed it for a deposit which they are now returning. Who cares, if you insist on reading a magazine again you can get it again somewhere else.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• tzs 3y ago
  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 selling print and Kindle, magazine and newspaper subscriptions. ... > Will I receive the remaining issues for my current Kindle subscription(s)? > No, you will no longer receive issues of your Kindle subscription(s) after September 4, 2023. We will issue you a pro-rated refund for any undelivered issues within 3-5 business days. Visit the Your Memberships and Subscriptions page for more information. > Will I receive the remaining issues for my current Print subscription(s)? > Yes, you will receive all issues of your print subscription through the expiration date. Please visit Your Memberships and Subscriptions page to determine when your Print subscription expires. Kindle issues you have already received remain available on your account for download. [1] https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/arp/B0BWPTCP4K https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/arp/B0BWPTCP4K
  • Mindwipe 3y ago
    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.
    • ghaff 3y ago
      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.
      • creer 3y ago
        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.
• southernplaces7 3y ago
  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 happen if you like to really own your digital stuff. Same for Google's News service. At least in this case Google offered downloadable PDFs for some editions. That so many people fall for this only to be later surprised is almost laughable. What should anyone assume less from so many companies that take hostility to users as nearly a default position?
  • deltaburnt 3y ago
    I've been burned too many times by streaming services: 1. Removing entire series/movies 2. Removing specific episodes in a series 3. Making changes to content (e.g. Scrubs and its soundtrack) 4. Only having the inferior quality version of some content 5. And finally, to a lesser extent, just having bad metadata (Netflix in particular has listed episodes out of order) I'm becoming more and more envious of those YouTubers with the wall of physical blurays and games as their backdrop.
    • southernplaces7 3y ago
      >I'm becoming more and more envious of those YouTubers with the wall of physical blurays and games as their backdrop. Going on a tangent here but your line reminded me. It's also a damn good idea to download any favorite YouTube videos for local storage and favorite YT videos with music at least as MP3 files. As with all things streaming, YouTube is constantly erasing all kinds of often excellent content, some of it to never be replaced because its creators stopped caring but left it up. Oops.
    • burnerburnson 3y ago
      Streaming services refusing to let me watch episodes of shows like Always Sunny and the Simpsons for political reasons is my primary reason for supporting piracy. These companies care more about pushing an agenda than they do about their customers. Disney in particular is downright evil and I don't want to give them a single penny.
• windex 3y ago
  [flagged]
• ChrisArchitect 3y ago
  [dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38296615 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38296615
• daeros 3y ago
  Yet another reason to just pirate everything. That way, the company running things can't arbitrarily decide to delete your pirated content.
  • matheusmoreira 3y ago
    It's easier to list the reasons not to pirate.
    • taway1237 3y ago
      1. Piracy is theft.
      • Woshiwuja 3y ago
        No.
      • imchillyb 3y ago
        Piracy, of actual -tangible- goods, is theft. Piracy of digital content is -literal- copying. The original item is not modified or changed. Copying is not theft. The politicians, media journalists, and corporations spent enough monies to brainwash children into believing copying is theft. It isn't. Never was. Never is.
        • Mistletoe 3y ago
          Digital content of songs and movies is exactly the same as the way you consume it. It is the tangible thing. It’s like having a perfect atom to atom reconstruction of the Mona Lisa you can put on your wall and stealing it. People’s jobs depend on the money made from selling digital media and making more digital media takes money. You can try to abstract it away but it doesn’t make sense. Maybe the prices or agreements aren’t fair but the blacksmith can charge whatever he wants for what he makes.
          • InCityDreams 3y ago
• daeros 3y ago
  Yet another reason to simply pirate everything. That way, When the company changes it mind about hosting that content, you still have it.
• asylteltine 3y ago
  Google shutting something down? This is unprecedented! Unheard of!
• anymouse123456 3y ago
  Thanks for updating the title and adding a link @dang. Unfortunately, I think the linked article's title is slightly misleading. Google is only offering refunds for some unknown portion of purchased content. "Google says that some magazines will be refund-eligible because they contain interactive elements that cannot be downloaded and saved for future access." I don't know what portion of magazine subscription content is refund-eligible, but I suspect it is very small. The current title implies that subscribers will be made whole, which is unlikely IMO.
  • ocdtrekkie 3y ago
    If the user can download a full PDF of the magazine, they still have their purchases, and are whole. In the case they cannot do this, then they will refund to ensure the subscriber remains whole despite the inability to offer the purchased content. I see nothing wrong with this, and am actually glad to have the PDFs instead of digital claims in an app I don't use anymore.
• pfooti 3y ago
  I was impacted by this, I have some digital magazines from the 2010s; Conde Nast Traveller. Honestly I don't care, like print magazines I read the issues a long time ago and haven't thought of them since. I can download the PDFs and then reupload to drive if I want (the only annoyance here is that I have to do that, there's no simple "export to drive" button, or I can just pretend that I got them in the mail, read them, and tossed them in the recycling a decade ago. If it were some magazine I really wanted to keep forever instead of inspiration for trips I already went on, it would be a bigger deal, but even then a nice pdf download is fine by me, slots in next to my big collection of old dragon magazines in PDF.
  • mnd999 3y ago
    Apparently so was I. I'm treating is as two free magazines I never knew I had.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• rlnorthcutt 3y ago
  Last line is good: "Remember, all online content purchases are really just rentals."
  • rchaud 3y ago
    Partly why paying for streaming never made sense to me. You can't even take screnshots of shows you've paid to watch!
    • SkyPuncher 3y ago
      Why would I want to? TV/Movies are largely ephemeral experiences. For the handful of content I actually care about, I can purchase it.
      • syncbehind 3y ago
        > Why would I want to? To share with friends, to make memes, to record notable scenes/moments in media you like. There are many reasons to want to screenshot streaming media
    • syncbehind 3y ago
      You can if you use firefox ;)
      • cpdean 3y ago
        As a Firefox user, no, I cannot. I can only screenshot youtube and amazon prime video.
        • syncbehind 3y ago
          You can, you have to use firefox's built in screenshot tool- not the system-wide one.
    • joshstrange 3y ago
      > You can't even take screnshots of shows you've paid to watch! This has got to be one of the most short-sighted/stupidest decisions content providers have ever made. It's literally free advertisement and they eschew it in the name of "piracy". Good thing all the TV shows that don't allow screenshotting have never shown up on pirate websites /s Streaming sites should allow for screenshots and clip export, people aren't stealing/watching shows in ~1-2 min chunks. Add a border around the clip, put your streaming service name in the bottom corner with a QR code to the show (maybe even the timestamp as well). Let people "burn in" subtitles, add effects, etc (a la TikTok, or something, I don't use TikTok). Literally can only be a positive thing for the company. Heck, spend the bandwidth to host the new clips/pictures so people just link directly to you. Put all those GIF sites out of business overnight almost overnight.
• delecti 3y ago
  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 seems like there's a mandate at Google to make it a pretty easy experience for users when they inevitably shut things down. Between this (easy portable download of all my content) and Stadia (total refund of everything), it really seems like they're trying to lessen the risk of investing in their new products. I can't say I'm totally convinced, because it's still obnoxious and inconvenient, but it's a decent start.
  • amelius 3y ago
    > Google to make it a pretty easy experience for users when they inevitably shut things down Pretty easy after you've recovered from the shock of possibly losing everything and now having to think about where to store your stuff, probably at an inconvenient moment.
  • qingcharles 3y ago
    All of the pirated magazines, for current magazines, are taken directly out of emagazine vendor systems and are basically directly from the publisher's distribution system.
  • dahdum 3y ago
    Google in 2023: “Before we pull the rug out from under you, we’ll throw some packing peanuts down.”
    • delecti 3y ago
      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.
      • 3y ago
• loughnane 3y ago
  Its cool that they're letting people download PDFs, but I see two problems: 1. People can't download everything. 2. People have to find a new way to read the content. On #1, its as if I had my personal library stored in my buddy's garage and he said > "hey, you've got to come take your books out--by the way some of them were damaged but here's the money to buy new ones". Its a nice gesture but now my library is incomplete an I've got to go replace it if I want to get back to where I was. Still, I should've known better and held onto my library myself. On #2 I have long since tired of apps always changing the ways I access my content. I self-host where I can to have control over it and its feels like stepping off a busy street into a quiet library--sure less exciting stuff is happening but I feel like I can focus. I get why there's a stronger pull these days for people to download files. I hope the market sees that and puts the mechanisms in place for people to pay to do it.
• karaterobot 3y ago
  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.
• mega_villain 3y ago
  This is google's MO, it's why I won't use any of their products anymore