Customers weren’t too happy with Google when it shut down Google Video. To its credit, Google responds:
We recently emailed you to let you know that Google is ending the
Google Video download to own/rent (DTO/DTR) program, and that
you’d receive a Google Checkout bonus equal to or greater than the
total amount of your Google Video purchases.
Since then, we’ve received feedback from people dissatisfied with
our approach to phase out the Google Video download to own/rent
program, so we’ve decided to take additional steps to address
these concerns:
1. We will fully refund your credit card for the total amount
of your Google Video purchases.
2. We’re going to continue to support playing your videos
through February, 2008. We won’t be offering the ability to buy
additional videos, but what you have already downloaded will
remain playable.
3. The Google Checkout bonus you’ve already received is yours
to keep. You can use your bonus at the following stores:
http://www.google.com/checkout/signupwelcome.html . Your bonus
expires on October 31, 2007, and the minimum purchase amount must
be equal to or greater than your bonus amount, before shipping and
tax.
1. We will fully refund your credit card for the total amount of your Google Video purchases.
Good move on Google’s part. The right thing to do. And blogger response seems to be, appropriately, positive.
Nevertheless, the fact that this situation was possible at all gives me great concern for most things Web 2.0. Think about it: At any time, Google has had the ability to render unplayable videos that you had purchased. And this was because the videos were Web 2.0-ed, tied in to the network and not standalone, “desktop” data. At any point, Google could throw the kill switch and make ’em go away. And throw the kill switch they did. Remuneration was finally given, true, and cheers for that. But the kill switch was still thrown.
Now, as more and more of our data move away from the desktop and onto the cloud, what confidence should I have as a consumer that some other kill switch won’t be thrown at some critical point of necessity? I’m not just talking Google here. Google Video did go away, even though Google is a healthy company. But Yahoo Photos is also going away, too. Kill switches are thrown all over the place.
Yes, both companies have a good policy of not locking in the data, letting me extract my photos or (let’s say) my docs and spreadsheets, so that the raw data is not lost. But what about all the time I spent creating tags and directory structures and time stamps and edit histories and links and so on? I am talking about the data that cannot be replicated outside of a particular service, because it is not just raw ascii text, it is data that only has meaning within that service. Don’t I essentially still lose data, when that kill switch is thrown?
What is the Average Joe really supposed to do in a Web 2.0 world?