Google TV is taking another step in its takeover of Google Play Movies. The app will be released for iOS on Wednesday, where it is an update to Google Play Movies & TV. As announced in March, Play Movies & TV is also losing its place on the Play Store for Android this week, where it was a top-level tab. Little remains of Play Movies & TV or Google’s original ambitions for the Play brand now.
Google also finally implemented its plan to remove video purchases from the Play Store this week, making Google TV (well, YouTube, I guess) the primary way to buy video content from Google on Android. Google Play was originally conceived as an all-encompassing media empire encompassing Google Play Music, Google Play Magazines/Newsstand, Google Play Movies & TV, and Google Play Books sold on the Google Play Store. The Play Store comes as the default app store on all 3 billion Android devices in the world (“Android”is a registered trademark of Google and does not include forks). Lining up the high-traffic Google App Store with multiple media content stores seemed (and still seems) to be a solid strategy.
However, Google can’t stand it and has turned what’s left of these media stores into standalone entities. The newsstand/magazines were closed in favor of Google News in 2018. Google Music was tragically closed to YouTube Music in 2020. Play Movies has been shut down since the launch of Google TV in 2020, and now the Play Store only sells the awkward mix of apps and books.
Play Movies & TV is not as clean of death as other Google Play brands. Contrary to its name, Google TV also fulfills movie viewing duties on some platforms, but so does YouTube, and Play Movies still exists for some platforms and countries. Google has a support page that details its lineup of definitely non-functional video apps and shows which of the three competing brands are available on specific platforms.
Phones still have YouTube, Play Movies & TV, and Google TV, depending on your country. On the web, you can still choose from Google Play or YouTube. Smart TVs are very complex: on third-party platforms like Roku, you need to use the YouTube app. Google does not provide a Google TV app for Android TV; instead, you’ll still have to use the Play Movies & TV app. Google has a new fork of Android TV, also called “Google TV”(it’s an entire operating system), that integrates the Google TV service into the operating system. This explains why Android TV doesn’t have the Google TV app.
Unilaterally replacing everything with Google’s strongest brand of media content, YouTube, would make the most sense, but rights negotiations would make it more difficult. Google Play Movies & TV offers purchases in 117 countries, while YouTube only had deals in 46 countries. There is also already a service called “YouTube TV”, but this is a replacement for cable TV.