When it comes to streaming movies, Google Play Movies is nowhere near as popular as Netflix or Prime Video. This is because Google Play Movies is a marketplace where one can rent or buy movies and TV series, while other streaming services follow a subscription model. Google, however, is looking to change things around as it is seemingly planning to offer hundreds of free ad-supported movies through Play Movies.
A teardown of v4.18.37 of the Google Play Movies APK for Android has references to Google adding hundreds of free ad-supported movies to the platform. One of the strings contains the snippet "Hundreds of movies, just a few ads" which points to the company making an expansive library of movies available for free on the platform. It is unclear if the company intends to make its entire Play Movies library available via an ad-supported model or if it will be limited to selected movies from a handful of studios.
Whatever the case might be, this is definitely a unique approach from Google. It will be interesting to see how this ad-supported model for free streaming of movies works out. A lot will also depend on the content library and how expansive it is. At the moment it is not known when Google will roll out free ad-supported streaming of movies on Play Movies, though an official announcement could just be a few weeks away.
Source: XDA Developers