Digital magazines will no longer be hosted on Google News

Surprise, surprise — Google News is done hosting digital recreations of print magazines.

The announcement was made via email to people who subscribe to any of the PDF magazines available through Google’s service, Android Police reported on Friday. Subscribers who’ve paid for content beyond 2019 will get refunds.

While magazines will no longer get to host their issues on Google’s services, let us not forget that most publications have websites where you can read their content, or even apps if you’re into that kind of thing. No need to go through Google at all.

Perhaps that’s why the service has been shuffled around and was eventually shuttered. It launched as a standalone app called Google Play Magazines in 2012, then folded into Google Play Newsstand in 2013. That was discontinued in 2018 and magazines were dumped onto Google News.

All that shuffling around didn’t help, it seems. Why look at the magazine content you want to read online through Google instead of through the magazine’s website itself? I do not know.

If you have been subscribed to any magazines through Google over the past eight years, fear not. Everything you purchased will still be available to view through Google so you can go back and read old magazines to your heart’s content.

And for those who still love to read magazines online but not through the magazines’ websites, there’s always Apple News+.