No this was all merged into YouTube many years ago after it was announced long before that they were ending it. This is Lemmy so everyone is just gonna pretend Google just announced this and make a big deal out of it because "Google bad"
Exactly. This app has been dead for years. You could technically still rent or “buy” stuff from it for smart TVs and such, but it would also show up in your YouTube library.
This is just them actually announcing the app going away and making it official.
Meh, they don't exactly crow about where to find it in their other apps. They mentioned the "shop" in Google TV and mentioned YouTube, but didn't say where. Not like they made a store in YouTube to make it obvious. They can't be assed to be clear about it because they have so many different apps that have the functionality.
Just looked and you can't access your purchases on a brand account. That's causing issues. They may have announced it a while ago, but they didn't think it through at all. This is looking more and more like the YouTube Music fiasco.
There is a "Your movies & TV" section which points to the store though they should probably rename it to just "Movies & TV" like it is on mobile (which is definitely obnoxious to find on there, you have to click the compass icon).
You can't access your purchases on a brand account because those are not technically the same as your Google account after the fiasco from Google attempting to merge accounts a long time ago.
It was changed into Google TV on phones only, now it's being killed on Android TV's. Extra layer to the confusion, depending on what platform you are using changes what the app is named...