Google Will Let You Share Movies, Apps, and Music You Buy With Up To Six People (cnet.com)

Google reportedly plans to introduce Google Play Family Library plan later this month which will enable users to share their Android apps, games, and media purchases with five different people. The feature, which is similar to Apple's Family Sharing plan, is something that many will find super useful. If nothing, you can split the cost of an app or a music album with your friends. CNET reports:It works like this. Everyone in the group will be able to access every single app, video and book that's available to the [primary] account holder. If you decide to let the kids run wild on your media collection, you can even remove specific titles from the library to keep it more kid-friendly, or hide certain artists you might not want to share with others. You don't have to pay extra to sign up for the Google Play Family Library, but you will need a credit card saved to the account for future purchases. To avoid any financial snafus that might come with multiple account users, Google will send a receipt so there aren't any unpleasant (or expensive) surprises.

Comments

Now you too can make Google's analytics more money

[Anonymous Coward]

Voluntarily providing Google even more information about you! Sounds wonderful, where do I sign up?

Split the costs

[fustakrakich]

Yeah really, man! Anybody got 50 cents?

Re:Split the costs

[chill]

Books and movies can cost quite a bit more than what you're implying.

Re:Split the costs

[barc0001]

It sounds insane but people actually have problems paying $1 for an app, and will talk endlessly about it to me as they debate the value of buying it to put on their $700 smartphone or $400 tablet while they sip on their $4 latte-macchaito-slushie-whatever. Hell, even I do it from time to time "Is this REAAALLY worth $2? Maybe I'll stick with the free version with ads..." So I would expect anything that lowers the perceived cost will increase sales, even if its people lying to themselves about how it's "cheaper" because everyone in their family can now have a copy of *thing that nobody else in their family wants*.

Re:Split the costs

[dslauson]

For me, the initial purchase is NBD, but I have a mental barrier against re-paying for an app that I've already paid for if my wife or kids want it, even if it's only 99 cents.

Re: Split the costs

[hideki.adam]

OVH VPS, £2.50/month (+ VAT) (~$3.50 now, after brexit probably about 20 cents)

OpenVPN, Free

Okay, not exactly free but it's not going to bankrupt you either...

Re: Split the costs

[hideki.adam]

You can already share your Steam library, I in fact do so. I imagine it'll work in much the same way, if someone else in your group is using the app, you won't be able to.

No So Fast

[ramriot]

Although " You don't have to pay extra to sign up for the Google Play Family Library "

It turns out that if you try and do this now you WILL be stung for the full Family Plan $15/m, so best wait intil the real launch is announced.

Re:No So Fast

[technomom]

No. You won't. That's only if you sign up for the Music part of it. I just signed up and still see the $7.99 because I didn't extend music sharing to my family.

Six. Definitely Six.

[TheFakeTimCook]

Because they just had to figure some way to literally "one-up" Apple.

Huh I can share CD's

[future assassin]

with anyone I want.

It cost me about $150 CDN to get a non profit SOCAN license of my steamcast station. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be much for for a non profit/hobby on demand station. Just upload all my tracks to a server and anyone I know can now listen to them anytime they want Split that between 10 people and its $15-20 per year.

Half right

[raymorris]

About half of what you said makes sense. For example:

> It's not 1990 guys ...
> Why can't google use Font Size instead of BIGGER smaller. WTF is that.

font-size was introduced in html 3.2 January 1997 and deprecated in December of the same year. Why? Because you don't KNOW what font size is appropriate for my eyes on the screen I happen to be looking at right this moment. What you DO know is "this part should be the small print" and "this part should be big print". Larger and smaller are correct. font-size=9 is wrong. It was an experiment, and it took less than a year to realize it was a complete failure.

To heck with the grandkids!

[ThatsNotPudding]

Let them buy their own ultrapron!! (Angry Dome).

Re:This is risky

[BaronM]

The 'rightsholder' question is what puzzles me, also.

I'm surprised that Google (and Apple) can do this. Are they paying out to the rightsholders for the additional copies? If not, I can see this making word-of-mouth a bad thing for artists and developers. I know that a lot of the apps and music that I've bought have come from recommendations from family, but if we can all just share one purchase, that really does cost the rightsholder money.

I'm sure this must be covered in the appropriate license agreements between Google/Apple and the rightsholders, but I suspect it's a case of 'let us do this or be excluded from our platform'.

Re:This is risky

[BaronM]

I know it's poor form to reply to myself, but I can see that, at least for Apple, Family Sharing was an opt-in:

http://www.macrumors.com/2014/06/04/apple-turns-on-family-sharing/

Any IOS developers care to comment on whether or not you opted in, and if it had a noticeable effect on sales?

Or I can just buy it at the local store

[BarbaraHudson]

Or I can buy it at the local store, and then loan it to anyone I want, or even resell it to recoup some of my investment. And there's no danger that Google changes the deal in the future, and I have to pray they don't change it again.

but you will need a credit card to the account

[frovingslosh]

but you will need a credit card saved to the account for future purchases.

WTF is this? Why can't I just continue to pay for my Google purchases the ways I have been? (Such as purchasing credit when I feel I need it.) I really don't like the idea of saving my credit card information to my Google (or any other) online account. This has numerous disadvantages. I'm concerned about the many hacks that occur to both on-line and brick-and-mortar retailers. And I'm concerned about charges being made against my account that shouldn't be.

Just this week I tried to make a purchase on Vudu with a promotional code that Vudu had sent me in email while logged into my Vudu account on my Roku. I went through the process of selecting and buying a show. But before ever presenting a screen to enter a promo code, Vudu tried to complete the sale through my credit card on file. That is when they found out that the information they had was no longer current. If it had been, I would have ended up being charged for a show that I really didn't want to buy and was only getting because of the promo code that I was sent. Just another good reason that I don't want to enter credit card information until I see what I'm being charged and agree to the purchase, and I don't want that information saved "for later".

There also seems to be the implication that others in my "family" might be able to make purchases on my behalf. Otherwise why does any purchase related change have to be put in place when you create a "family"?

Please don't respond back about getting the unwanted purchases revoked through my credit card company. I've fought charge-back battles before and the credit card companies do like to say "you authorized it" even when the actual charge is bogus. It seems much smarter to not invite the problem in the first place.

Re:but you will need a credit card to the account

[DogDude]

Use cash. Shop locally. Quit whining.

Re:but you will need a credit card to the account

[frovingslosh]

Use cash. Shop locally. Quit whining.

As to using cash, I already pay for credit hidden in the price of everything that I buy. I might as well get the credit that I'm paying for and the modest cash back that comes with it than just walk away from it with no cash discount. Just because I use a credit card doesn't mean that I should be sloppy with it and give others open access to it.

As to shopping locally, one local merchant urges us locals to do that too, and even points out that 80% of what is spent in his hardware store "stays in the community". Since he has no locally produced inventory, I believe most of the locals keeping him in business are too stupid to understand how high his markup must be if the 80% claim is true. I am not.

As to quitting, this is Slashdot. Get over yourself. I'm not happy about a Google policy that is apparently designed to get extra charges against a credit card (otherwise there would be no point in it, as they already have good payment options in place that I use). I see no reason not to voice displeasure with that, if enough do the policy may change.

You're not BUYING anything

[DickBreath]

It is a RENTAL. Period.

The only difference is whether it's a short term rental, like 48 hours or somesuch, or a long term rental for a few years until: "we are discontinuing our DRM servers". Or try this: "our licensing with the content provider has changed, and what you bought, you can no longer watch.".

Unless you can download a DRM free copy that you can play on any of your devices, then you didn't really BUY anything.

And if you did buy a downloadable DRM free copy, then you already don't have any problem with your immediate household members being able to 'access' the content.

Will people ever learn. There was Microsoft's "Plays For Sure". Which was then discontinued, and everyone's 'purchased' content became locked to their devices -- which probably don't work any longer. Then there was Zune, and the same fate for all of your 'purchased' content. Certain Disney content on Amazon which people had purchased became unplayable because Disney had new exclusive licensing for some of that content that people had previously purchased. And Amazon has 'disappeared' content from devices before, in one instance because Amazon realized that they didn't have a license to 'sell' it to you in the first place.

Buy?

[Holi]

If you can control what I do with something after I give you money then I didn't buy it.

Re:Now you too can make Google's analytics more mo

[RabidReindeer]

It gets better. I "bought" a book through Google Play. All that actually downloaded was a 150-byte decryption key. The book itself only downloads to their Play reader and for all I know, only the parts you are actively reading at the moment.

"Own it" indeed.

Sorely needed

[Solandri]

I was helping troubleshoot the tablets my sister had bought for her kids, and noticed that you could access her gmail and text messages from all of them. I asked why she was logged into her Google account on her kids tablets, and she said it was the only way to let the kids use the apps and movies that she'd bought with the account back in the day when all their family had was one Android phone which they gave to keep the (at the time) one kid occupied during car rides.

It's a huge security hole that's needed to be plugged for a while now. If a kid loses their tablet, whoever finds it potentially has access to all your Google stuff.

Re:This is risky

[stephanruby]

I know it's poor form to reply to myself, but I can see that, at least for Apple, Family Sharing was an opt-in:

http://www.macrumors.com/2014/06/04/apple-turns-on-family-sharing/

Any IOS developers care to comment on whether or not you opted in, and if it had a noticeable effect on sales?

That would depend on your business model I think.

The freemium model for instance should suffer no problem.

No, thanks

[crow_t_robot]

Considering megacorporations continue to use their financial power to keep extending copyright I'll use my power to continue responding to that by just stealing all the content I would like to possess. Thanks, but no thanks, Google. You can stick your idea right up your mom's ass.

Re:Google just won!

[crow_t_robot]

This is why you don't work at Google or have any say in a single money-making enterprise. If you need a bunch of fancy bullshit to write a simple e-mail then you are a goddamned idiot that no one wants to hear from.

Re:This is risky

[scamper_22]

Well, I'm reasonably sure the lawyers at Google have talked to the various media companies.

However they price these deals... is how they price them.

I can definitely see a case to be made though. If you make a service cheap enough for people, they're not going to bother pirating it.

This is the Netflix model. $10/month for a lot of tv and movies and original content. It's low enough that they're getting their money... and its consistent cash flow.

If sharing the cost between 6 people means more people sign up and pay for it, it's all good.

Re:Piracy lets you share with unlimited users.

[sudon't]

Piracy lets you share with unlimited users.

So does real stuff. Not that I'd ever lend someone a record again, but at least I can play my records on any, and as many, turntables as I want. I can even sell 'em if I want. Digital data simply has no intrinsic value because it can be reproduced endlessly for nothing. If you want people to pay for it, it'd better be really cheap, and really convenient, because that's all it has going for it.

Instead of trying to bring real world convenience to digital, they're trying to bring digital inconvenience to real objects. Call me old-fashioned, but I want to own the crap I buy.

Re:I will let Google suck all of your dicks

[hideki.adam]

It's a private company. While it may be that the government spies on what's going on with peoples use of it (Okay, post Snowden I don't need to hedge, they are) that is not Google's doing or exclusive to that particular company even. Calling it a government spy apparatus seems a touch unfair. Is Facebook? Twitter?

This is actually a (somewhat) newsworthy story,

[jenningsthecat]

but with verbiage like "many will find super useful" and "split the cost of an app or a music album with your friends", TFS reads like an advert.

Note to editors: I understand the need to generate revenue, but fer chrissake, when you've got something that can actually be written like a tech story, don't turn it into a fscking Slashvertisement!

Re:This is risky

[UnknownSoldier]

> .. and they license files via purchase agreements (EULAs), etc

FTFY.

Depending on the platform you don't "own" digital files -- all you have is a license and they can terminate it at any time. i.e. Steam.

Worse, you can't even sell "your" stuff.