Purchased digital movies just disappeared from this service thanks to Disney and Google's feud

The October 31 cut off date for Google Play and YouTube participation in the Movies Anywhere platform lines up part and parcel with the ending of the most recent distribution contract between Disney and Google. It's unclear whether this is an explicitly retaliatory move made by either company in question, or whether this parting of ways will be permanent or if it'll be resolved in the future via a revised set of negotiations.

What does this mean for current Movies Anywhere users?

There's good news and bad news

Credit: Pocket-lint / Movies Anywhere

If you rely on the Movies Anywhere service to organize your digital film collection, then, going forward, you won't be able to synchronize new purchases made from Google Play or from YouTube (via 9to5Google). That being said, existing purchases that you've already synced to the service will continue to be accessible via your Movies Anywhere account, at least for the time being.

Longer term, I expect all Google-sourced content to disappear from all users' Movies Anywhere libraries. Individual users of the service must renew their consent to link platforms together on a semi-regular basis, and, in all likelihood, the option to renew consent will simply cease to appear for existing users once it next expires.

All of this is speculative, of course, as neither Google nor Disney have publicly commented on the matter as yet. For the sake of avoiding further fragmentation within the film and TV streaming industry, I hope to see the two companies set their differences aside and come to the negotiating table sooner rather than later, but I have my doubts whether this will actually occur anytime soon.