Google kills two-year “Pixel Pass” subscription after just 22 months::Two years on a Pixel Pass was supposed to get you a new phone.
The headline is sensationalist since it implies they were going to get a free phone and Google bailed at the last minute.
Really? Because that’s how I’m reading it.
while new signups are no longer allowed, existing users will be able to finish out their two-year term. The end of the term was supposed to mean re-upping with a shiny new device, but Google now says, “By the end of the 2 year term, you can’t upgrade to a new phone with Pixel Pass.”.
They would have had to pay. It’s not like they already paid and now they’re not getting what they were promised.
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I think Ars Technica has it wrong with that wording, the FAQ from Google support linked in that article says:
Can I still upgrade my Pixel device after 24 months?
Yes, you can still upgrade your Pixel device after 24 months, you just won’t be able to renew your subscription to Pixel Pass. You can purchase or finance your next Pixel device directly from Google Store or Google Fi Wireless, and you have the option to trade-in your current Pixel device towards your next device. Current Pixel Pass subscribers received $100 towards their next Pixel purchase good for 2 years, which can also be used alongside available promotions.
So you can upgrade your phone for the current term, but you can’t renew your subscription and upgrade again.
You’re reading it wrong. You can upgrade to a new phone, just not a new phone that comes with PixelPass.
i am waiting for day when google kill its search engine
Already has.
Tried searching for anything on it recently?
And then they started pushing Bard which in sure will replace search as soon as it can push ads slyly in conversation
That day might come unless they can get the quality of search back under control.
I wouldn’t be surprised (or sad) if a disruptor comes along with a new idea and gives 'em a hard time.
Personally I’ve already replaced a high percentage of my Google searches with the OpenAI gpt-4 playground.
I replaced google with Kagi. It’s much much much better. So much better that I’m literally willing to pay for a search engine. It just doesn’t compare.
why would they kill their only successful product
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They already have, it’s pay to play now
I want to switch to Google Fiber but I can’t shake the thought that as soon as I do they’ll shut down operations and pawn my soul off to Satan ISP
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Both are also in heavily regulated industries with oversight from state utility commissions and the FCC, where simply trying to exit a market requires a whole proceeding before the agency/commission. They could announce that they’d be exiting the industry and selling its assets to a competitor, but that would have to clear antitrust hurdles and would take a while.
I think that means that effectively, they can’t just “kill” these services but would have to sell to someone else, and the approval process itself could result in some concessions for the consumer, so that even Satan ISP would have limited power to really screw over the consumer.
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Dude, they ARE Satan ISP.
Yep, just like they did in Louisville.
I wouldn’t be surprised.
Look at stadia, I knew it would be a rocky road for them to market it, but by also buying game studios with the intentions to make and release games, I was under the impression that they would keep going with it. They pumped so much money in to it.
Oh boy, how wrong I was.
I will never move to GCP because of this. The reputation damage with Reader, Stadia, Hangouts, etc has made me not want to invest moving my companies services to their cloud. I doubt they are factoring this in when they shutter a service, but it is costing them millions. Google has shown it can’t commit to supporting their products and services, so why bother spending time integrating with them and get locked in, just for it to be depreciated or discontinued immediately.
I knew it was doomed when they announced the business model. Subscription + buying the games was never going to fly. If they had gone with a Game Pass style subscription, it would have had a chance.
It wasn’t that though, it was just miscommunicated, the subscription was a ps+ type thing, while you could buy games and play them for no additional costs at 1080p. Having Phil Harrison lead the whole thing didn’t help either (he rejected Hideo Kojima’s offer to make an exclusive game for stadia ffs)
I never considered it because the game streaming is still pretty new and I’ve never forgiven Google for killing the news reader.
Classic Google
How dare they up their services prices like everyone else, they are the devil!
Oh what’s that, if you had the service they have you $100 dollars off the phone you would have had to by anyway? Damn. That sucks that their customers will have to opt in to services instead of them all being grouped together.
No part of this isnt sensationalized.
Basically this says, “The service prices have gone up everywhere, instead of raising the grouped price we are just having you choose individual services you want”
That sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen. Telling people they get a new phone if they sign up for 2 years then cancelling it at the 22 month mark.
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Ah I just realised. I was assuming users would get a free upgrade at the end of the 2 years, but it might be they get it upfront at the start
Yeah, it’s basically a deal at the time of phone purchase: do this 24-month interest free payment plan for a new device, and we’ll throw in phone insurance, Youtube premium, and Google One for a significantly discounted price. At the end of 24 months, you can either get a new phone and sign up for another 24 months, or cancel at that time.
Yeah, its confusing the way its worded, but it’s still kind of shitty. I am sure there were some who would have bought another phone, but we’re lured into the Pixel deal. I know some people really look forward to replacing their phone every couple years, for whatever reason (they all seem pretty much the same to me).
This is just an interest free financing plan that comes bundled with services.
No one was going to get a free phone.
One more headstone in the Google graveyard
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Just buy a different android phone you buffoon
He’s probably talking about his dissatisfaction with Google’s entire Android platform on top of Pixel Pass
But why iPhone?
I went to search for what the best phones are. Now I’m on OnePlus 8T for the past three years and the device still kicks most phones asses for what was a good price. I’ll use this for another two years I guess and then I’ll look at what is the best phone again. It won’t be iPhone, that’s for sure
Apple products are overpriced like hell, and simply not yours to do with what you want.
Because they’re lying
Because the phones just fucking work
Do you mean to say that android phones don’t work?
They do not work as well no, take for example if I buy an android phone + a Samsung watch + Sony headphones and run them together you know what happened last time. The Samsung watch broke the Sony headphones touch controls because of the apps not integrating properly.
That’s the kind of it just works apple phones don’t deal with, I work with phones daily and the amount of people I see return android phones compared to iPhones is not even funny
Probably because it’s not 2010 and both platforms are matured to the point of being able to do almost the exact same things for the majority of users, so it’s just down to small personal preferences.
I think this is mostly right. There used to be big differences and now its very much just a preference. Except when price is taken into account.
Apple no longer have an excuse for the high price of their phones because they are, as you said, basically the same as androids and in some cases just not as powerful.
Androids have the advantage of competing with itself. There are many different makes and models of android all fighting for space so new features or improvements happen faster than they do for iphones. Apple have lost what made iphones unique and therefore “worth it” in many consumers opinions.
If they are now basically an android they should cost the same as an equivalently specced android.
This is so true now. I used to go back and forth between iPhone and Pixel phones, and then a few years ago decided it’s just nicer with an iPhone. I know I’ll get regular updates and I’ll get OS updates way longer than any Android phone will. The OSes are pretty much the same now, little tweaks here and there between the two and they are nearly identical to how they work. And iPhone just has more QOL features over Android.
Yeah pretty much the same except iOS is absolute trash with the shittiest ux imaginable. Yeah, I have to use them for work. Safari is a fucking trainwreck as one example
The UX is pretty comparable to the Android one, I think. I don’t use Safari, so I don’t know too much about it. I use Firefox instead.
Firefox on iOS is actually just a reskinned safari, because apple will not allow an actual different browser on their platform. The EU probably is going to change that though.
And no I think the ux is not intuitive on iOS. Some of the simplest common options are either hidden or missing altogether
iPhone is still WAY more expensive, more prone to failure, harder and more expensive to repair, and you can’t do the same with the device as on an android. So as long as you are a rich non-power user with little technical knowledge and don’t care about the money, then I guess iPhones (and apple in general) are okay, I guess.
That also directly describes most Apple users
If anything that’s nonsense, iPhones are cheaper and easier to get repaired and far less to failure and I say this as someone who runs a store that sells phones.
iPhones are cheaper than Android phones? And they’re easier to repair?
I’m sorry but both those claims are lies. iPhones and apple hardware in general always is more expensive for less hardware. And though I’m sure there are some hard to repair Android phones out there, apple typically makes sure you get sabotaged if you don’t repair your hardware at their stores and yes, their repair services are insanely expensive
Try to as a normal non technical user get a random £200-300 android phone repaired that isn’t Samsung and then try to get an iPhone repaired and see the cost difference
I don’t believe you.
I mean, there are android phones from 2013 that still work…no need to advertise for apple.
lifelong googler
lol, oh now it’s too much?
shit, they should have at least waited the two months, issue some phones to early-adopters and then discontinue the subscription saying there was too little interest amongst the users to justify keeping it up. otherwise it looks like they pulled out at the very last moment to screw peopleedit: ohhhhh, you were supposed to get a new phone when singing up for another two years, then they did well cancelling it before the two-year mark
this is sooooooooooo shitty, I’d be so fucking upset
The title made it sound bad, then I read the article. It basically said they are canceling a subscription service offering. No one is getting cheated out of a phone. You could pay 45 or 55 dollars a month for 2 years and once it was over you could pay that again to get a new phone. So $1080 for their phone + google services or $1320 for the more expensive phone with their services.
It was started with the Pixel 6. The Pixel seven I see listed as $599 through the playstore. So thats $481 or $240.50/year on google services you can avoid paying for and just get the phone. Oh, and you are “eligible” for that new phone whenever you want.
Whoa, you read the article before getting out your pitchfork? I wish more people would. Part of the reason I left Reddit was due to people (or bots) who would post articles with titles that were unfair, combined with users who wouldn’t read, yet had strong angry opinions about everything.
I bought my pitchfork with a saftey in it. Figure by the time I take the safty off I may have cooled down some haha
They were eligible for a brand new phone after 24 months if they recontracted for another 24 months. If they decided to unsubscribe during months 25-48, they’d be on the hook for the remaining cost of the phone. I mention this because at least for where I am, this is the default position - this decision would just mean the user needs to get their brand new phone on a contractual repayment from a provider other than Google.
This is Google’s standard operating procedure.
Well, that solidifies my plan for graphene os on this 7pro and once fairphone comes state side I’m going all in. Been moving to Proton services and this will be the first and last Google phone I get. So sick of their backtracking on everything I enjoy. Fuck Google.
Im running GrapheneOS on my 7 Pro and I like it very much. Only issue I had was Android Auto. That seems to be not possible to have…
I heard the latest fairphone doesn’t have a headphone jack
nooo now pit jump
This probably isn’t a big deal, but this is (and the fact that Google is an ad company) is the reason why I wouldn’t rely on any Google service or product that I couldn’t easily replace in a matter of minutes.
It’s this kind of knee jerk on Google’s part that might save them a few bucks in the short term (presumably incentiviced with bonuses for the managers) but causes long time reputational damage over time.
I don’t understand how seemingly no one up the chain considers this before pulling the plug so quickly.
Don’t fuck with user trust. When you lose it it’s pretty hard to get back.
I was all in for years and each product I’ve been burned, this is the last straw for me. As each thing I own fails or needs replacing, it won’t be Google.
I am done, I looked past a lot of faults because of the overall capabilities of the ecosystem they created and they’ve slowly dismantled it and changed and tweaked everything to be annoying to use.
It’s like they intentionally pick the best features, remove them and try to gaslight me into thinking it’s better now.
I’m just done with them.
Wtf are you even talking about.
Your question really made me laugh because I was indeed rambling but the overall point was - I bought Google products, they’ve dismantled and changed things to make it less useful than it was or they have cancelled the product/program entirely. So I’m not buying their products anymore. It’s my opinion but it’s my money and I’m going to choose to spend it elsewhere.
Hope that clears it up.
Since everything I’m aware of that they’ve cancelled is free software, I’m curious what products you are talking about
Pixel pass is the most recent service they’ve cancelled on me, my movies I bought on Google TV after being moved to YouTube but that service is gone too.
Their assistant devices have slowly gone crazy and barely understand anything and half the features for them have been removed for one reason or another.
Also the transition from the Nest app for my cameras which was amazing to the shitty Google home app which had half the features and didn’t work with all my cameras so I had half on nest and half on Google home.
Also their WiFi app is now also in Google home and it has less features than the original stand alone. So it’s not all free services, it’s things I’ve paid for and been burned over and over again.
I had a lot of their stuff over the years and it’s always great at first until… it’s not.
Okay, this explanation does make sense. I’ve only ever really given money directly to Google by buying their phones, and recently a Google TV device. I have a Nest thermostat which I bought before they owned it, and while they haven’t actually messed anything up with it per se, it’s been really annoying how many times they’ve nagged me about migrating my Nest account to a Google account. Also they did cancel a bunch of features on Fitbit after they bought it. Granted I didn’t really use any of those features but I could see how that would be frustrating.
The voice assistant is pretty bad. tbf though, I think Siri is as well. Apple doesn’t buy companies quite so often but I’m pretty sure they’ve changed their offerings over the years. A while back I went looking for a way to play my iTunes purchases on Linux and… that was not possible. The Apple DRM is a huge pain in the ass.
It has been a pretty short trip from “Don’t be evil” to “The cutting edge of late stage capitalism”
Didn’t feel like a trip to me, more like teleportation.
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Which isn’t a lot of time if we’re being honest
This is the best summary I could come up with:
When the service launched in October 2021, Google said that every two years on the Pixel Pass would make you eligible for a brand new phone.
but Google doesn’t answer its own question, saying only, "We offer the best value of our hardware products and give users the flexibility to purchase their favorite services.
We continue to evaluate offers based on customer feedback and provide different ways for them to access the best of Google."
That won’t happen here, though—while new signups are no longer allowed, existing users will be able to finish out their two-year term.
You’ll receive a monthly bill for Google One, Google Play Pass, and YouTube Premium at the current discounted rate, which is visible in the email sent to you on August 29, 2023 with the subject line, ‘An important update on Pixel Pass.’
To take some sting out of the move, Google is offering a “$100 loyalty reward credit” for active Pixel Pass subscribers.
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