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Google announces April 2024 shutdown date for Google Podcasts
- ska 3y agohttps://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/
- btown 3y agoNeeds to be updated! They based their estimated September 2024 shutdown date on https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/podcast-destination-on-youtube-music/ https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/podcast-destination-on-... saying "Later in 2024, as part of this process, we’ll be discontinuing Google Podcasts." I guess April is "later" than January, February, and March, so it's technically correct - the best kind of correct!
- toyg 3y agoG-MiddleBoss: "Alright, the New Shiny Thing is ready to go boys! Better shut down the old cesspit as soon as possible. What about January, 'new year new me' and all that!" G-Underling1: "Er, sir, we'd really like to do it, but we announced that we'd be closing it 'later in 2024'. Doing it in Q1 would not really be 'later', would it? Marketing would be whining again..." G-MiddleBoss: "Alright, alright, no Q1, we'll do it in Q2 - first month, though. I need that sweet cost-saving recognition, dammit!"
- wsgeorge 3y agoLink to actual Google Support post from the article is broken.
- ForkMeOnTinder 3y ago> Google Podcasts (2016–2024) is Google's third attempt at a podcasting app after the Google Reader-powered Google Listen (2009–2012) and Google Play Music Podcasts (2016–2020). average lifespan = 5 years > The product is being shut down in favor of podcast app No. 4, YouTube Podcasts, which launched in 2022. I look forward to YouTube Podcasts being shut down in 2027.
- AdmiralAsshat 3y agoMeanwhile I bought Doggcatcher for Android in--checks notes--2015, for about 3 bucks, and it still works.
- lambic 3y agoSame for me with Podcast Addict, which as far as I can tell is a solo developer effort and a great product.
- toyg 3y agoPocketCast doing the business here, woot woot.
- Graziano_M 3y agoPodcast Addict is the #1 thing I miss from Android.
- TechRemarker 3y agoWasn't even aware there was a "YouTube Podcast" app. I thought they abandoned individual podcasts app and were just added it as a feature to YouTube Music, like how Spotify did to their Spotify app. YouTube Music has been relatively successful so I'm more hopeful that their podcast feature there has the best chance if they devout enough love to it. Was dead on arrival without support rss music feeds but now that they support that and you can add any podcast it has potential, but non technies will have a great amount of trouble discovering content then compared to Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And overall podcast features in YTM is very bare bones so don't see anyone switching from Apple Podcasts or Spotify ever for it, but rather just something that will help keep YTM customers with YTM.
- nashashmi 3y agoThere is not a podcast app. There is a podcast section on YouTube. And I just tried it. It ducks. I cannot miminize the player on my iPhone and let it play in the background without it shutting down. If I wanted to play in the background, I would’ve to subscribe to YouTube and pay money.
- mupuff1234 3y agoI don't understand why they can't do a seamless transition. I should be able to click on the Google podcast icon in April 24' and have it open the new YouTube podcast page without me needing to do anything else.
- dwayne_dibley 3y agoAgreed, I’d be interested to see how many times apple or other podcast apps (overcast etc.) have ‘shut down’ code base without us noticing
- tsunamifury 3y agoMany times with iTunes. Right now even movies and tv apps are being shut down for TV+ merge
- acaloiar 3y agoIt's a lot cheaper to outsource a bunch of clicks to users than pay product, design, and software people to make the transition smooth.
- rurp 3y agoSure, but it would be even cheaper to only develop a podcast app once and then iterate on it. Not to mention that it would avoid repelling users by forcing all these manual migrations on them. Of course, that depends on the possibly flawed assumption that Google cares about acquiring and retaining these users.
- tycho-newman 3y agoMicroservices
- eitally 3y agoThey did this a few times over the years (most recently, I believe, with Pay + Wallet apps, where in the US and Singapore, there was a forced transition from Wallet to Pay because of how Google decided to roll the digital wallet features into the payment app. This was only the case in those two countries, though, so in those places trying to open the Wallet app after the transition instead opened the new GPay app. The Wallet apps still exists, but does nothing unless you live somewhere other than the US or Singapore.
- afjeafaj848 3y agoIts a shame but lets not discount how much promo packet material it generated A lot of people got value out of this
- pavel_lishin 3y agohttps://i.imgur.com/OM7vO9n.jpg https://i.imgur.com/OM7vO9n.jpg
- renegade-otter 3y agoGoomics has the key. https://goomics.net/366/ https://goomics.net/366/
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kibwen 3y agoBy the time Google shuts down Bard, will it be legally considered murder?
- petee 3y agoCompassionate release, probably. A future panel will determine the trauma of humanity's literature caused undue, irreparable suffering, and Bard has the right to choose its own method of euthanasia. /s
- spinchange 3y agoA whole new meaning to, "product life cycle."
- georgeoliver 3y agoSometimes I feel like Google bends the laws of physics by shutting down more products than they launch.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoI think what happens is that the shutdowns are announced more loudly than the launches, which results in people legitimately seeing more shutdowns than launches.
- JshWright 3y agoHas anyone successfully downloaded an OPML file? I've yet to find the right page/button to do that...
- strict9 3y agoAt what point do people give up investing anything into Google's ecosystem? How do they plan on gaining any market share in AI space? I think subconsciously I avoided Bard because I had little faith anything beyond search or email will live more than a couple years.
- omnifischer 3y agoit is good that they try and if it does not work shut it. At the same time people complain microsoft and others stagnate.
- pavel_lishin 3y agoI have two counterpoints: 1. "does not work" is wildly subjective. Google Reader was tremendously awesome. It "worked" for a lot of people. 2. Even when something doesn't work, they don't just shut it; they shut down one project, and start two competing ones with slightly overlapping feature sets. And now you get to choose which one you want to eventually migrate away from when they inevitably shut it down, as well, in favor of another set of competing internal projects. I think they shut things down when it doesn't work for Google, and that really doesn't give me an incentive to use any Google product. I'm still on gmail, and I'm betting that they won't dare shut that down - can you imagine? - but I absolutely will not invest any time or money into anything else they offer.
- toyg 3y ago> "does not work" is wildly subjective. Oh no, no no no. There is only one subject that matters at Google nowadays, and it is "how much does this thing help us sell ads...?" Mail? Great. Maps? Fabulous. Reader, aka a bunch of nerds talking to each other about geeky subjects? ...Nah.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoThen as a user the only sensible action is to assume that nothing else will ever work again and proceed accordingly.
- chrisfosterelli 3y agoAnyone have anything they'd recommend changing to for Android users? I just finished migrating to Google Podcasts last year from podcast republic, figuring the 'official' solution was going to have the best support. Whoops. Features I'm looking for are: * Per-podcast speed setting at least up to 2x * General play queue with auto addition of new episodes * Ability to pick up playback where it was from Google assistant (e.g. OK google, play podcasts) Podcast republic didn't seem to play well with voice control. I've tried spotify but I don't like losing my music play state on the computer if I listen to a podcast on my phone. Don't have a lot of faith in youtube podcasts but maybe I should give it a proper look.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Rebelgecko 3y agoI'm not sure about Assistant integration, but Pocket Casts checks a lot of those boxes. I also like being able to listen on my computer while playing American Truck simulator, then being able to resume on my phone while driving in a non-virtual vehicle.
- nativeit 3y ago+1 - I moved to Pocket Casts when they shut down Google Listen (or at least, when it stopped functioning I didn’t bother with anything else until Pocket Cast). It was beautifully designed and very functional, and I’ve never needed anything else. I paid for it once, and it’s followed me from Android to iPhone and back without any issues.
- jfengel 3y agoAt least in theory, "OK Google resume Pocket Casts" is supposed to work. In practice, I've had mixed results. But I've always found Google Assistant flaky. (It may be partly due to being grandfathered in on one of the free Google-for-business plans, and features waver in and out over the course of months. Right now I can't add things to my shopping list via the assistant, which is a very handy feature since it usually happens while my hands are covered in food.)
- afavour 3y agoI'm baffled why Google do what appears to be a rebrand (Google Podcasts -> YouTube Podcasts, just like they did Google Play Music -> YouTube Music) as an entire rebuild. When they switched music apps I had to download a whole new app and press a button to transfer my data, etc etc... why?
- tracerbulletx 3y agoBloated corporate structure with misaligned incentives and ineffectual leadership?
- whirlwin 3y agoIsn't it obvious? They don't make enough money? The podcast app was basically free, and YouTube Music/whatever is heavily based on a subscription model
- afavour 3y agoThat doesn’t explain the Music app switch. They both had the exact same subscription.
- toyg 3y agoHave you seen the Linux ecosystem of desktop apps? Basically that, but at corporate scale. Big Rewrites are sexier and more gratifying.
- bitcharmer 3y agoNo one expected that
- rurp 3y ago> The product is being shut down in favor of podcast app No. 4 Google is only on their fourth podcast app?! They are going to have to increase their engineering velocity to catch up to the chat app teams.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoNobody can catch up to the chat devs.
- resters 3y agoIs there some reason why Google can't spin it off into an open source project of some kind?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- whirlwin 3y agoGoogle realised that the free podcast app won't cut it for them. So they push their userbase over to the YouTube universe, where a paid subscription is flashed in your face if you have one. Not too surprising
- Almondsetat 3y agoThe youtube app is built to display ads, the podcasts app isn't. I guess they figured it would be cheaper to move the cattle somewhere else than implement an ad system into an existing app that doesn't have it
- pphysch 3y agoDead product jokes aside, it makes perfect sense that Google should build their media apps/services on top of the multimedia behemoth that is YouTube. Why should Google music, streams, podcasts, shorts, or movies be anything but a thin wrapper around their world-class video service? That never made sense to me.
- onetokeoverthe 3y ago[dead]
- nashashmi 3y agoThe Google podcast app was supposed to be a search for all the podcasts on the Internet and a syndication of all the podcasts on the Internet. Somebody at Google is lacking imagination.
- pentagrama 3y agoGoogle Podcasts user here. I was waiting for the feature to export my subscriptions to import them to Pocket Casts. I already tested Pocket Casts and is good. But I'm not seeing yet the export option on https://podcasts.google.com/settings https://podcasts.google.com/settings as the article says. Screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/I36vBAi https://imgur.com/a/I36vBAi I guess the feature is gradually rolling out. Someone can see it?