this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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Android

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[–] [email protected] 104 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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!

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (13 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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...

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[–] 9point6 91 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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"

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Exactly. This app has been dead for years. You could technically still rent or β€œbuy” 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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year 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...

[–] [email protected] 68 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I swear this company used to have its shit together.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In addition to 20% Time Fridays they should have had Patch Tuesday where everyone submits a bug fix or new feature for an existing product.

[–] teruma 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

20% has been dead for almost a decade...

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[–] asdfasdfasdf 32 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

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.

β€”Google probably

[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] ConditionOverload 50 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] Potatos_are_not_friends 32 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] visor841 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

YouTube Music. Google Music doesn't exist anymore.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago

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 πŸ™ƒ

[–] hesusingthespiritbomb 28 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago

Google has truly mastered the fine arts of wasting money

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

[–] phamanhvu01 22 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] MrsDoyle 13 points 1 year ago

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

[–] FrankTheHealer 19 points 1 year ago

Another one for the pile

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Theharpyeagle 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

They've gotten to the point where new ventures are doomed before they start because no one can trust that the product they're investing time and money in will be around in a year.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] Jayayess1190 14 points 1 year ago (4 children)

This isn't even talking about phones.

[–] baronvonj 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] baronvonj 4 points 1 year ago

I would expect YouTube.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

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!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

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