After being blistered by criticism over the abrupt termination of the Google Video program, Google has offered an apology and full credit to video purchasers.
Google Apologizes For Video Shutdown
Keep the Google Checkout credit, everyone. It’s a mea culpa from Google as the search advertising company realized its brusque shutdown of their Video service didn’t play well in the public relations arena.
In a week where the search industry celebrates itself at the SES San Jose conference, Google chose to apologize for its approach in disclosing the end of the Google Video service.
Bindu Reddy of Google said, “We should have anticipated that some users would see a Checkout credit as nothing more than an extra step of a different (and annoyingly self-serving) kind. Our bad.”
Reddy outlined how Google would make amends for their heavily-criticized handling of the end of Google Video:
• We’re giving a full refund — as a credit card refund — to everyone who ever bought a video. We’ll need you to make sure we have your most recent credit card information, but once we know where to send the money, you’ll get it.
• You can still keep the Google Checkout credit that you’ve received already. Think of it as an additional ‘we’re sorry we goofed’ credit.
• We’re going to continue to support playing your videos for another six months. We won’t be offering the ability to buy additional videos, but what you’ve already downloaded will remain playable on your computer.
The whole episode should serve as a primer not just on public relations, but on the aspects of DRM-enabled content. Google can and eventually will shut off the playback capability of their videos. If people aren’t more skeptical of managed content after this, they deserve what they get.
