Google News is shutting down purchased magazine content, offering refunds | Hacker News Reader

Google News is shutting down purchased magazine content, offering refunds

arstechnica.com

152 pointsanymouse12345681 comments

Received via email:

Hello,

Since 2020, new purchases of magazines have not been available in Google News and very few users now regularly access their magazine subscriptions. We wanted to inform you that support for magazine content in Google News is being discontinued beginning on December 18, 2023, which means access from Google News apps or news.google.com to the library of magazines you previously purchased or subscribed to will be removed. To continue to access previously purchased magazine content, you must export and save each purchased issue before December 18, 2023.

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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

It's worth noting that sales of this content were shut down in early 2020 and subscriptions were refunded then; this is just the shuttering of the hosting for a service that has not generated revenue in 3 years. The OP links to this article for context: https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/01/03/google-news-killing...

Now, there could be reasons other than cost/technical debt for them to shut this down - perhaps some kind of legal or reputational risk to continuing to host certain content. And perhaps it's the same risk that Amazon identified. But there could be simpler reasons as well.

Something happened. There are a lot of consolidations in the industry, and as content contracts expire and get renegotiated this happens. On September 21:

We regret to inform you that the magazine(s) you received through ZINIO will no longer be available. Please find below a voucher with a value equal to the remaining balance of issues for your subscription(s) to use in a special selection we have created for you based on your interests.

This was in regard to The Economist, which is now available on Pressreader and happens to be free from my Library. So for me cost wise, this is awesome.

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 happening in the newspaper industry the past decade.

This is likely the case. We have Apple News but we don’t open any of the magazines. We just read whatever the feed gives us. If Apple were to follow, it would help confirm our hunch.

Yeah I think the whole print format with static pages and monthly or weekly editions doesn't really make sense anymore in the digital age

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I was being snarky, but I am a little impressed they did more than the usual nothing. Kudos to whomever fought for that.

That's what I'm saying. Outward appearances are that there's a directive from higher up to soften the blow when they kill things. They seem to be deliberately breaking their tendency for the "usual nothing" (which is absolutely a fair characterization pre-Stadia).

They're also refunding purchases, like with Stadia.

Netflix doesn't refund my subscription for the last two months when a show I'm watching disappears.

> 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.

Guess the last member of whatever team implemented magazine subscription just got promoted out of that team.

s/promoted/laid off/

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/18/google-cuts-dozens-of-jobs-i...

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?

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.

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.

> 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 channels, and in other channels the only thing with enough juice to get through is Hamas-aligned propaganda.

> Because of the polarisation, you have to choose a lesser evil.

Nah, that's just the nature of the US electoral system. Partisan polarization is a distraction (well, its what makes the two choices substantially different, in contrast to the 1930s-1990s realignment period when political polarization was often quite high, but the salient divide was misaligned with the split between the major parties, so that the split was within each party rather than between the parties.)

> 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.

People should expect it, but it’s a fool’s errand. Misinformation has been used as a tool of war forever. Russia especially has been known for it.

The problem is that there is no trustworthy source of truth, so you’re forced to pick who you trust.

Just think about the Palestinian hospital. Is it a Hamas stronghold? Hamas says no, Israel says yes, the US says yes, some doctors say no. Some past doctors said yes. Hamas has used hospitals and human shields in the past (depending on the source you follow), so it’s possible they’d do it again.

Looking beyond the hospital story, this plays out everywhere. Countless stories are manipulated or have contradictory sources. You have to pick a source. Should US citizens believe their government? Maybe the “terrorist organization” that’s seeing its people massacred? The government that is currently mass bombing a city?

The media doesn’t even have reliable information because the truth is not apparent. Everyone has an incentive to be the truth-teller. Unbiased news only exists for unimportant news.

> 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 strikes me as incorrect. There isn't really much "radical left" in the US, Biden himself is a centrist. I take your overall point regarding accuracy of information, and I think the comments re: "radical left" are an example of the inaccuracy we see in US media. "Radical centrism", maybe.

I think the word "radical" or "far" as in "far right" are being perverted to deny the existence of both the "radical left" and deny the existence of a moderate right. I've noticed the language war (as in, changing the meaning of words) is more heavily employed by the "far left" (see what I did there?) than the right, but I'm happy to see evidence of the right using it.

For instance, I think if the right fought the language war, nuclear energy should be called "green energy" because it doesn't emit greenhouse gases. And you should be called "against green energy" if you oppose nuclear power.

To be clear, I am vehemently against changing the meaning of words, but it's seemingly an arms race and I happily add the word "far" to referring to the left just to help balance things out. I just wish it didn't have to be this way.

The concept is in general use. The terminology is not symmetric, but I don't really see that "the far right" is necessarily more pejorative than "extreme progressives".

>> It is that both sides of the conflict decided to use misinformation to bolster their media presence and their right to defend themselves.

In the wars I've seen in my lifetime, this really seems something that only started with Ukraine/Russia. I know in the Gulf War the sides would spin news to portray them in a more favourable light, but not (to my knowledge) masses of lies like in Russia/Ukraine or Israel/Hamas.

This is par for the course. We've had the gulf of tonkin incident, and weapons of mass destruction. The difference is now we have more information, so it only looks like it's gotten worse.

From Weavers, Scribes, and Kings: A New History of the Ancient Near East:

> a few decades later King Enmetena of Lagash (c. 2450 BCE) was still fighting Umma over the same territory. Fortunately for historians, he wrote a long summary of the conflict, setting his own actions in the context of decades of what seem, in retrospect, to have been rather futile wars. This is one of the earliest attempts anywhere at writing a history of events.

> He started his history not with the life of his great-grandfather King Ur-Nanshe, but with the gods. According to King Enmetena, it had been the god "Enlil, king of all the lands, father of all the gods" who had "fixed the border (between the god) Ningirsu and (the god) Shara," meaning the border between the kingdoms of Lagash and Umma. The border had not been created by men; it had been the work of Enlil himself, the greatest of all gods. This obviously meant that it had to be maintained just where the god had set it and it had to be protected from movement. And so, as he described it, one Lagash king after another had attempted to do just that, against what they saw as the dastardly incursions of the kings and armies of Umma.

> No doubt the kings of Umma saw things differently.

Royal inscriptions [anywhere] and, in the ancient Mesopotamian context, year names, are generally not viewed as particularly accurate sources of information about what happened during the events they commemorate. Later in the book there is a discussion of a king who issued a year name memorializing his conquest of a city on his borders; meanwhile, documents formalized in that city continued to use the year names issued by an entirely different king.

> 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.

Strictly speaking, it says that inaccurate information is also available.

You can destroy information with noise. Accurate information about the conflicts (or anything) is also available in the digits of pi.

Accurate information is available.

Figuring out which of the many, many bits of information we're bombarded with are accurate is frequently tough.

maybe not accurate, but it has to be true.

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.

Apparently so was I. I'm treating is as two free magazines I never knew I had.

Last line is good:

"Remember, all online content purchases are really just rentals."

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'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.

Why would I want to?

TV/Movies are largely ephemeral experiences. For the handful of content I actually care about, I can purchase it.

> 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

You can if you use firefox ;)

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

You can, you have to use firefox's built in screenshot tool- not the system-wide one.

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.

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?

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.

>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.

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.

Yeah I spent a good 20 minutes looking for the first Lethal Weapon episode of Always Sunny on Hulu. Went through each season multiple times and finally had to look up what season it was in on Wikipedia. Didn’t realize they were going to just remove it from Hulu because black face.

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.

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.

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.

[dupe]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38296615

This is google's MO, it's why I won't use any of their products anymore

Yet another reason to simply pirate everything. That way, When the company changes it mind about hosting that content, you still have it.

Yet another reason to just pirate everything. That way, the company running things can't arbitrarily decide to delete your pirated content.

It's easier to list the reasons not to pirate.

1. Piracy is theft.

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.

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.

You're comparing selling finite physical goods to selling literal numbers. That's how insane copyright is. In order to have any impact, they have to associate it with absolute nonsense terms like high seas piracy. They have to equate it with stealing, robbery and theft. Otherwise it's exposed as the utterly victimless crime it is. You're reproducing the propaganda of a trillion dollar industry with immense lobbying power, an industry that literally buys laws.

The Mona Lisa is a good example why this comparison doesn't fly. If I could clone the Mona Lisa and put it on my wall, would it harm anyone? No. I would never have been able to afford it and the Louvre wouldn't sell it to me anyway. The original artist is very long dead.

However if I steal it the Louvre no longer has it and there would be a massive manhunt. Cloning is definitely not the same as stealing.

Not that I'd clone it because I think it was actually pretty unimpressive in real life.

Then refer to it as 'illegal copying', not 'stealing'.

I would amend this to piracy of media within a reasonable copyright term of say 10 or at most 20 years is theft.

Wrong.

No.

Google shutting something down? This is unprecedented! Unheard of!

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.

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