As we continue to be quarantined or obey shelter-in-place calls to lessen the spread of COVID-19, we will be dependent on online content to keep us entertained. You have your Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, and other streaming services. You also have your Google Play Movies but it’s for renting and buying movies to add to your collection. However, it looks like they may be adding another feature to their platform as strings show that they may be bringing free, ad-supported movies to their customers.
Google Play Movies isn’t the place that you go to when you want to stream movies and TV shows since it doesn’t have a subscription model. You go to it when you want to rent or buy videos, although there are a few movies you can watch for free. But according to XDA Developers, they saw some strings in version 4.18.37 that indicate we might be getting “hundreds of movies, just a few ads”.
This may mean that a lot of the movies in their library will soon be available for free but with ads occasionally playing during the movie. How often the ads will play and how many movies will be available for free streaming is still uncertain at this point. But if the strings are correct and the feature does roll out soon, it will basically change how Google Play Movies functions and may even become a competitor to the other streaming services mentioned above.
They won’t be the first to have this kind of model. Vudu is also a marketplace for movies and TV shows but they also have a rotating library of free movies that you can watch but with ads intermittently playing all throughout. Some users get annoyed eventually and just subscribe but for those looking for free content, having sometimes disruptive ads is a small price to pay so you can watch movies.
This feature is obviously not yet available on Google Play Movies but it can also roll out anytime soon through a server-side update. If we get an announcement anytime soon, we’ll let you know. It would be a huge boon to bored people everywhere if they make it live really soon.
