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This is hilarious. Google is trying to leverage it's search & mobile OS market positions into pushing people towards its podcast app. Unfortunately for Google i
by Traster 8y ago
This is hilarious. Google is trying to leverage it's search & mobile OS market positions into pushing people towards its podcast app. Unfortunately for Google it has come up against one of the few entities in the world that can just turn around and say "Fuck. That."
Frankly, I think this is a monopolist tactic from Google and it should result in government investigations but I have no hope that will happen. Nice to know people like the BBC have the balls to say no to this though.
- jamescridland 8y agoThat's not quite what happens. https://podnews.net/article/bbc-blocks-google https://podnews.net/article/bbc-blocks-google does go into the actual user experience, rather than what the BBC is claiming.
- atonse 8y agoBut this brings up a good point. What is the value of google showing you the play buttons in the search results? They're trying to keep you on google's site.
- TheCraiggers 8y ago>They're trying to keep you on google's site. But why? I don't see a financial motivator here, unless there is some long-game that I'm not aware of. In theory, driving users to websites in a search result is likely just going to make Google more money from displaying ads. The only thing I can currently think of is they actually are trying to improve the user experience.
- fenwick67 8y agoIf you stay on a search results page you're more likely to do another search after you're done listening, rather than browsing around on BBC's site.
- beaner 8y agoIt is also a better use experience.
- Mindwipe 8y agoI'd be fairly surprised if the metrics resulted in any measurable difference there tbh.
- captn3m0 8y agoEven a minute change in this might convert to a non trivial difference in ad revenue for this feature. This is the company that decides shades of blue by conversion numbers.
- ForHackernews 8y agoWhy does Google do anything? They want to keep you on Google properties longer, record more "engagement" data and use it to sell ads against you. Maybe they indirectly want to 'improve user experience' (so you're less likely to leave) but it's not their terminal value.
- msquog 8y agoThe adverts are right there on the page still. Why would it be more profitable to send users to the BBC website?
- Mindwipe 8y agoIt wouldn't in the BBC's specific case, but in general the behaviour sending users to the site where they would likely be exposed to more advertising (probably by Google) would be the more profitable scenario.
- untog 8y agoIt's pretty clearly not the path Google has followed for some years now, though. They clearly have incentive to keep people on the search results page.
- dagw 8y agoBut why? I don't see a financial motivator here If you listen via Google they not only know what you listened to but for how long you listened, which parts you skipped over or stopped listening at, and whether you listened to the ads or not. All that information has value to them. Being able to say these people googled your product within 72 hours of hearing your ad on these podcasts is very valuable.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jamescridland 8y agoEither: 1. You see a podcast you're interested in 2. You go to the BBC's website 3. You discover you need to download BBC Sounds (if in the UK) 4. You download the app 5. You register with a username and password (and UK postcode, which narrows you down to the street where you live) 6. You press play and start listening or 1. You see a podcast you're interested in 2. You press play and start listening Wouldn't anyone prefer #2? Including the BBC's programme makers?
- RugnirViking 8y agoYes. thats why the podcasts are available on wide range of services not owned by google, for example my preferred client at the moment, spotify.
- jscholes 8y ago> though BBC Sounds remains unavailable to non-UK listeners I'm a non-UK listener and use the BBC Sounds app all the time. The only thing that's unavailable are program downloads.
- jamescridland 8y agoThe BBC Sounds app is only available within the UK. You may be talking about the BBC iPlayer Radio app, which is the only one available outside the country. Unless you're side-loading on Android, which is perfectly possible too, but that's not quite "being available".
- Navarr 8y agoGoogle Podcasts is a replacement for the Podcast aspect of Google Play Music. They're splitting it into "Google Podcasts" and "YouTube Music"
- cheez 8y agoGoogle Podcasts is TERRIBLE compared to Google Play. The UX is just so bad. You'd expect at least some podcast-specific features like mark podcast as listened.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- barry-cotter 8y agoNot from Google I wouldn’t. They give hope to people everywhere who realise they don’t know design. Money doesn’t automatically buy competence, so if you can make something useful you can beat a Goliath in a small nice and work up from there.
- ascagnel_ 8y agoGoogle hasn't ever really "gotten" podcast players. Their first attempt (Google Listen) was basically a bad UI around a special Reader folder -- so you could accidentally mark a podcast as read while you were flipping through your RSS feeds.
- random878 8y agoI haven't had a smartphone in some time, but I highly recommend AntennaPod which is available of F-Droid. Not only a great podcast app, but it respects your Freedom. It's the only thing I miss about not having a smartphone.
- cheez 8y agoGreat app, using it now!
- mnbvkhgvmj 8y ago
- Theodores 8y agoActually there is a problem with the BBC. In the UK how do you compete for news eyeballs and try and make it pay when the BBC news is for free? Imagine your business is weather forecasting, the same applies. Then there is the small matter of the license fee. Most people just pay it out of fear of being caught by one of the legendary detector vans. But you can't have a TV or a monitor that also does TV without being hassled for the rest of your days. It is getting that way online. I only listen to the BBC on DAB radio, if I sign in to their player thing I know I can't trust myself not to watch some lame series on iPlayer meaning I will have to pay up. The BBC has an important propaganda role in informing the national conversation and keeping British people British. I am not saying that cynically, that is what the voice of empire is there for. They aren't trying to sell you product, it is more subtle than that, essentially propaganda though, controlling the latitude of available thinking. They need to be more careful about closing down their reach as people like me go off-piste and start listening to stuff that would never make it onto the BBC. Once you have done that and realise the world thinks differently to the allowed BBC viewpoints there is no going back. I don't see this as the BBC standing up to the monopolistic evil Google, I also think the BBC are not whiter than white.
- AJRF 8y agoHassled for the rest of your days is a bit much. You email, send them a letter or call them or I think there is actually a website that you can register on which remove's them questioning you needing the license or not. I did it and i've not heard from them since. Not exactly rocket science.
- keypress 8y agoOpting out is a hassle.
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago>You email, send them a letter or call them or I think there is actually a website that you can register on which remove's them questioning you needing the license or not. // They used to send a postage paid envelope, and you could return their "you're a criminal" letter indicating that in fact their supposition was incorrect. Now, they don't include an envelope IIRC, certainly not postage, so you have to pay [a small amount] every time they decide to accuse you falsely of being a criminal. I'm against that in principle. So, I thought, I'll waste my own time and go online and fill out the form ... except they demand additional PII from you. Which I'm not happy about giving to Capita, and shouldn't need to, name and address should be sufficient for the legal purposes here. Thus, we're left waiting for them to make the next move. Which they did, they sent someone around: I stated we didn't watch broadcast TV and don't need a license. They went away. So, that's the end of it, right? Nope, they sent two people the next time, who asked for my wife (clue: license fee is payable against premises), didn't show ID, nor identify themselves in any way. When asked they said they "needed to come in" to check we didn't have a TV, they have no need to and no legal right of access [without a warrant]. When I made the same statement as before "we don't need a license ..., not using your services" they threatened "we'll just keep coming". Great huh. What really grates with me is that you have to register your details to even use the services on iPlayer now, so they would see clearly at the BBC end that we've stopped using their service. So, they presumably will continue to waste money until we get an injunction against them for hassling us.
- gerash 8y agoWhat's hilarious is that the reason is Google is pushing back on sharing user analytics with BBC. For another company it'd be the pinnacle of respecting user but you just seem biased against Google so there's nothing they can do to please you it seems. All other services (Spotify, SoundCloud, Apple, etc.) serve podcasts on their own properties but if Google does it it's monopolistic. To me such claims about Google have become too overused and have lost their meaning. I don't blame BBC though for sticking to their guns because they really want user analytics and think have the weight to pull out. The justification they provided is just misleading.
- jamescridland 8y agoThe podcasts are played directly from the BBC's servers. The BBC already have all the consumption data that they would expect - IP address, device, time listened, etc - in their own server logs. Just like a normal podcast player. So... what user analytics do the BBC actually want?
- shermozle 8y agoThose user analytics aren't very useful. You get IP address, device and time _downloaded_. You get nothing about "listened". There's a standard NPR have written to improve this, but it requires the podcast players to implement it. It's very privacy-respecting but I doubt Apple will implement it, so it's probably going to be a non-starter unless the big podcasters like the BBC hold the line.
- jamescridland 8y agoThe standard is RAD. The BBC hasn't implemented it. For Google Podcasts, "downloaded" = "listened", since it has no auto-download feature. So they are (excepting the minority who manually download) actual listens. You remind me that I should add a sniffer for RAD support in my Podnews pages, so I'll go and do that. My own podcast has RAD tags in it.
- peterhadlaw 8y agoThe irony is that the BBC is a government _mandate_ funded organization, if you want to talk about monopolies. Oy, m8 you got a license for that?