mark’lectic

Google Offers Full Refunds, Customers Screwed Slightly Less

Today Google Video offered a full refund after initially announcing that customers would only get a Google Checkout credit. According to the story on Ars Technica, “Google has seen the error of its ways and is effectively doubling refunds for customers of its video store. The company also said it would grant a stay of execution to its DRM services, meaning customers can watch videos from the store for a little longer.”

Of course, after the limited time is up, people’s video screens will still go dark. I would guess that most people who bought the videos Google sold actually wanted to purchase them.

After all, almost every movie you can buy is also available for rental. Yet, people continue to buy copies of movies all the time. Even though Google is giving people their money back, they’ve still taken away something the customers thought was theirs to keep.

If Disney showed up on your doorstep with a check and wanted all of their animated films back, would you hand them over? How would you explain that to your kids? And, would you ever buy a Disney movie again?

Sometimes I rant about the content industry and how people should stop them from trying to control every use of their media. And sometimes I think all I need to do is wait and they’ll do something so stupid that they’ll end up shooting themselves in the foot. This isn’t quite the spark that touches off the revolution, but if it does happen it’ll look something like what Google has done this week.