YouTube is the world’s largest video platform, and Google would like it easier for people to consume even more moving picture entertainment on the platform. To that end YouTube has announced its Movies and Shows store has arrived in Australia.
You can now navigate to the Movies and Shows store in YouTube and either rent or buy Movies and TV Shows from major and independent entertainment studios alike including Roadshow Films, Walt Disney Studios, HBO and the ABC. Purchased content will be available across you Google Account as many times as you like and rentals require you to start watching within 30 days and finish watching (as many times as you like) within 48 hours after first playback.
It’s an interesting step for Google to move more video content into YouTube, does this signal a potential end of the road for Google Play Movies or is it a broadening of Google’s cross services interoperability? Either way this makes complete sense for YouTube and may even be an indication that YouTube TV could come to Australia.
This is a welcome change I didn’t realise had happened until searching Google for Unsane yesterday (trying to find the name of the movie more than the movie itself – great paranoia film btw, check it out) and it came up saying you could get it for $5.99 on Youtube or GPM
This looks like a move to move play movies under the Youtube branding. Makes perfect sense really. Nobody knows what play movies is but everyone recognises the Youtube branding.