[Mindwipe]

Google are granting permanent (to all intents and purposes) ownership of the content to view, whereas a month does not cover time to watch all the episodes of a new season, and goes away the second you stop subscribing, and allows the content to be downloaded. Your theory is comparing apples and oranges.

[TrinaryWorksToo]

In practice people usually watch an episode once or twice. They lose access if they lose the account, they do not own the episode. Additionally, Google could compete and make a monthly streaming service too, which they don't except for live tv. Why aren't they competing with a streaming service? Because they have Google Play.

[thanatropism]

What, in practice people are burned out by twice-to-thrice-a-generation format changes. I have a bunch of TV series in DVD boxes and now have no DVD player.