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All subscription contracts provide that they can be cancelled by either parties with reasonable notice. If that was not the case we would have open-ended contracts that can never be brought to an end, which would be obviously unfair (and in fact such contracts are deemed unfair in many jurisdictions).

In this case it seems that Google's promise was only never to raise the price.

That might sound misleading because consumers are not used to have a company cancel on them (they want to get paid, right?) but that's always a contractual possibility.



All subscription contracts provide that they can be cancelled by either parties with reasonable notice. If that was not the case we would have open-ended contracts that can never be brought to an end, which would be obviously unfair (and in fact such contracts are deemed unfair in many jurisdictions).

That’s not the case, and it needn’t be the case. In common law jurisdictions courts rarely order specific performance. So for perpetual contracts, which do exist, a party would just need to pay expectation damages to the other party to end the contract.


That's rather nitpicking.

On the consumer side perpetual contracts are unfair, and subscription consumer contracts essentially always include termination clauses on both sides.

In the end this usually means having to give reasonable notice, which can also be an implied term.

Now, if you consider commercial contracts in general that's different.


What's unfair is Google offering lifetime deals, getting consumers because of it and then pulling the rug from under them when it's no longer convenient.


I basically agree with what you said, but want to point one thing out:

> All subscription contracts provide that they can be cancelled by either parties with reasonable notice

Apparently no notice was given. Either way, this seems to me like it's a bug rather than a contract issue




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