Google News will no longer offer paid magazine subscriptions. According to Android Police, the News team sent out an email to customers, telling them that the company is killing print-replica magazines in Google News.
Subject: To all current Magazine Paid Subscribers
Hi there,
This notification is to inform you that we’re discontinuing print-replica magazines in Google News.
This means you won’t be able to purchase new print-replica magazine issues or renew your subscription via Google News. However, you’ll continue to have access to all issues you previously subscribed to in the Google News app, in the Following or Favorites tab, depending on your app version. To continue to read the latest articles, we encourage you to search for that publication in Google News, or visit the publication’s website:
[list of subscriptions]
Your last payment for your subscription(s) will be refunded. Most refunds are completed within 30 business days. The time it takes for the refund to appear depends on how you paid. If your refund is taking longer than expected, you can check the refund status in your Google Payments account. If you have not received your refund after reviewing the respective timelines in the resources above, please contact us and we’ll look into this for you.
We apologize if this causes any inconvenience. Thank you for your support.
Google News team
A company spokesperson has confirmed the change to Kenyan Bulletin, noting that the program worked with under 200 publishers. Subscribers won’t be able to purchase new magazine issues anymore, but they can thankfully still keep accessing old issues (PDFs and other formats) in the Google News app via the Following or Favorites tab. In addition, the tech giant is refunding subscribers their latest payment within 30 days.
Google’s started selling digital magazines through the Play Store back in 2012, along with movies and TV shows. They were made available for free to print subscribers a year later, and the service was eventually folded into News.
