Google Video Store gets stay of execution, full refunds coming

According to Ken Fisher, Google Video is closing its commercial video sales wing, the Google Video Store. The controversial decision will see Google eventually shuttering its video Digital Rights Management service, which will render video bought from the store useless.

Fortunately, Google has seen the error of its ways and says it will now work with customers to give them full refunds in addition to keeping its DRM service alive for another six months. The upshot: customers can obtain full refunds, keep past credit, and still play their movies (until early next year).

Google's original deal was to offer past customers credit in the form of a Google Checkout bonus that could be applied to purchases made with Google partners (namely, companies that are using Google Checkout). That solution didn't sit too well with customers, and it's not hard to see why: you had to spend more money to get your "credit." The company also gave users less than two weeks before killing the videos they had purchased.

Bindu Reddy, Google Video product manager, has now said that Google is working with customers to provide them full refunds since the company realizes it had made a "mistake" in rushing to close the store. Reddy admitted on the Google blog that the company should have anticipated that its previous refund policy would appear "self-serving."

Because of the "goof," Google is not only going to refund the purchase price, but they will still extend the original Google Checkout credit to users as a "we're sorry we goofed" credit. If you spent $10 at Google Video, you now have a $10 refund due and a $10 credit. Let no one say that Google can't apologize sincerely.

Of course, the most significant issue in all of this is still not addressed: namely, the weak business model that sits at the core of this DRM-controlled experience. It remains ridiculous that the DMCA props up such a flawed business model, one in which the "purchases" you have made are constantly held hostage to the threat of a DRM clearing house going offline somewhere. I discussed all of this in my previous write-up on the matter and won't rehearse it all again here. Suffice it to say that Google is exiting the business in a respectable way now, but the business (of tying content to DRM that can't be legally circumvented) itself is still not entirely respectable in my opinion.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070821
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