Google Video kills paid downloads and your video collection

It looks like Google Video's transition from a video hosting service to a video search engine is pretty much complete. Yesterday Google sent out an e-mail to the two or three customers who had actually paid to download premium videos from Google Video.

In a nutshell, the messages said that Google would no longer be offering paid video downloads. Oh yeah, and if you've already bought movies from Google, they won't play anymore. Sorry, have a $2 Google Checkout coupon.

If you forgot that Google even offered paid videos, you're probably not alone. But back when Google Video launched, that was one of the things that set it apart from YouTube. You could get user generated videos or professionally produced content, much of which was from independent producers, for a fee. The only problem is there was hardly any content worth paying for, and Google stopped playing up that feature ages ago.

Tags: drm, google video, GoogleVideo, online video, OnlineVideo