The ever excellent Guardian Technology supplement has a very interesting piece in it today about the closure of the paid for service on Google Video. It seems that Google is in the process of putting all its efforts into YouTube (much like Yahoo!, which closed its pictures site to concentrate on Flickr). This in itself is not really news.

But what caught my eye (and The Guardian’s) is the fact that anyone who has bought clips from Google Video will no longer be able to view them. In an email sent to purchasers it said:

After August 15, 2007, you will no longer be able to view your purchased or rented videos

As (rather insulting) compensation, Google is offering those who had bought clips a rebate of $2 - but this has to be spent within 60 days, and can only be used on sites which use its Google Checkout payment system (so the rebate will be worthless on the millions of sites that use credit card or PayPal payment systems).

Obviously Google is free to do what it likes with its services, but this strikes me as a really stupid move. Google has (outside of the search sector) generally had a pretty good reputation (scare-mongering stories about privacy not withstanding), but this has all the potential to be a massive PR own-goal. Can you imagine if Fopp had been able to disable all of the CDs & records it had sold, when it went out of business? The outcry would have been huge.

This is exactly what Google is doing, but the people who will probably suffer are likely to be Google fans; consumers who bought from Google because they liked or trusted the company. To now be told that their purchases will no longer work, and then add insult to injury by giving meagre compensation, with ridiculous T&Cs attached, is unlikely to increase their love of the brand.

I guess that Google figure that not many people will be affected by such a move, I would imagine that the people who will feel hard-done by are likely to be the early adopters & influencers of the web: the sort of people who will blog about their unhappiness, Digg anti-Google stories & rant on forums about how Google stole their money. In other words, just the sort of people you don’t want to annoy.

It seems that I just can’t say this enough (but I’m amazed a company like Google haven’t worked this out yet): online, everything is connected to PR &, therefore, reputation. And when you have armies of fervent brand evangelists, it’s a lot easier to lose them than it is to regain them later.

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