Comment by delecti | Hacker News Reader

Comment by delecti | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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