Google TV launches on iOS as a replacement for Google Play Movies & TV

Enlarge (credit: Google)

Google TV is taking another step in its takeover of Google Play Movies. The app is rolling out to iOS on Wednesday, where it is an in-place upgrade for Google Play Movies & TV. As announced in March, Play Movies & TV is also losing its spot in the Play Store on Android this week, where it was a top-level tab. There's now not much left of Play Movies & TV or Google's original ambitions for the Play brand.

The Google TV app for iOS. (credit: Google)

We can talk about the new thing first: The Google TV app is out on iOS. On Android, the app is part media store, part content aggregation guide. You might have noticed that there are a lot of streaming services. Google TV is sort of a modern-day TV guide, letting you know what shows on playing on which apps, and that function is making the jump to iOS. Google says iOS users can "take your library on the go" but only for "movies and shows you have previously rented or purchased with your Google account." So it sounds like the store part of Google TV is not making the cut. If you have to run the Android TV or Google TV operating systems on your TV, you can also now use your iOS device as a remote control.

Google also finally went ahead with its plan to strip video purchases from the Play Store this week, making Google TV (well, and YouTube, I guess) the primary way to buy video content from Google on Android. Google Play was originally envisioned as an all-encompassing media empire, covering the Google Play Music, Google Play Magazines/Newsstand, Google Play Movies & TV, and Google Play Books, all sold inside the Google Play Store. The Play Store ships as the default app store on all of the world's 3 billion Android devices ("Android" is a registered trademark of Google and does not include forks). Lining Google's highly trafficked app store with a slew of media content stores seemed (and still seems) like a solid strategy.

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