7 ms·

Google Podcasts is gone – and so is my faith in Google

80 points by Apocryphon 3y ago

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
goodSteveramos 3y ago
I understand why Google would shut down an expensive gambit like Stadia, but cheap good-will projects like RSS and Podcasts? Why not just keep them running for PR alone? How expensive could they possibly be to run?
- exitb 3y ago
  I assume that RSS was killed because the company that deals with ad-space doesn’t like when you don’t visit the places they show ads on.
  - infinitezest 3y ago
    Makes sense. But I don't think this actually answers OPs question. Google is swimming in money, less so wrt good will.
- ams92 3y ago
  Each engineer gets paid something around 200k-500k all in depending on seniority. I doubt just 1 team worked on this product given the bureaucracy of big tech companies like google. So why shell out millions of dollars in salary per year when the product isn’t making money?
  - BowBun 3y ago
    We're talking about maintenance though, not a fresh build out
    - infamouscow 3y ago
      Google isn't a charity. The product doesn't make any money, so all maintenance is an irrecoverable expense.
      - naasking 3y ago
        What's the business cost of leaving a sour taste in people's mouths over and over again?
        joshfee 3y ago
        Really depends on "how many people". Also if its roughly the same group of people they're making angry over and over, and they don't see an impact to the bottom line, then I'd say the answer is "pretty small", at least relative to Google's size (at which its all about volume)
        infamouscow 3y ago
        Google answered this. The cost is higher than leaving a sour taste in people's mouths.
        naasking 3y ago
        Maybe, or maybe they haven't even considered it and the cumulative effect it will have.
      - joshfee 3y ago
        Google is basically split into "build things that make users happy" teams and "build things that make Google money" teams, so I think that on an individual product level you may be correct, but in aggregate at the high level Google believes there is a ton of value in revenue-less products. Now for Podcasts (or any given product) there's always going to be some calculus of "is it enough value to justify the cost", and clearly Google believes the answer here is no.
    - throwawaymaths 3y ago
  - beezle 3y ago
    Maybe part of the problem is paying people 200-500K for this kind of job? Is it written in stone at all products require that kind of "skill" to function?
    - candiodari 3y ago
      The problem is not that. The problem is that managers will insist that businesses are in danger if they face any competition. Of course, the only thing that's really in danger is the careers (and egos) of those managers. Internal competition would be an extremely good source of information on the performance of the business those managers manage. So anything remotely competitive gets eliminated.
- Symmetry 3y ago
  My understanding is that the codebase was partially shared with Google+, which was a corporate priority. But having to check changes against both reduced velocity so the easiest thing was to just kill Google Reader which didn't have much love in Google' C-suite.
- II2II 3y ago
  I doubt it has anything to do with the direct cost of maintenance. Google has a tendency to introduce multiple products that serve similar markets, as the article cited with Podcasts and YouTube Music. They have to cut the cruft eventually. Given the numbers cited in the article (23% listen to podcasts through YouTube Music, 4% through Podcasts), YouTube Music made more sense from the business perspective. I would imagine that is especially true when you consider that they can promote more products through YouTube Music. That said, I somehow doubt that many people are going to transition from Podcasts to YouTube Music. There are too many alternatives out there, alternatives that would likely reflect the interests of Podcasts users better. Heck, nearly three quarters of podcast consumers are already using those products.
  - tivert 3y ago
    > I doubt it has anything to do with the direct cost of maintenance. Google has a tendency to introduce multiple products that serve similar markets, as the article cited with Podcasts and YouTube Music. Besides both using audio files, Podcasts and Music are totally different markets, with different use cases, etc. Are spreadsheets and games in similar markets, because they both use graphics on video screens? Jamming them together because of some superficial similarity is a stupid simplification, even if many users already do things sub-optimally. Google really needs to get some cheap offshore teams that can do maintenance on the products they'd otherwise kill. They'd stop burning so much goodwill that way.
    - II2II 3y ago
      > Are spreadsheets and games in similar markets, because they both use graphics on video screens? Slightly more realistic examples would be "spreadsheets and databases" or "spreadsheets and word processors". Plenty of people use a spreadsheet when data is represented in a tabular format, even when it isn't the most appropriate tool. (Tangentially, I've also heard of 4x games referred to as spreadsheet games. Though that's more of a description of play style than presentation!) Don't get me wrong. I agree that podcasts shouldn't be jammed in with music. At least for myself. Yet when Google's numbers are saying that about a quarter of people access podcasts through YouTube, there are clearly a lot of people who do not agree!
- plorkyeran 3y ago
  "I can't count that low" is less of a joke than it sounds. Google's approach to developing software and products is great for ensuring that everything they make can scale up, but is terrible for scaling down and minimizing the maintenance work required for a small service.
- adamsb6 3y ago
  Mature products don't have enough scope for Google engineers to get good performance reviews. Maybe you could spin up a lower tier of engineers who aren't on the same career track and exist only to maintain mature/deprecated products, but that could come with its own set of problems.
neilv 3y ago
Anyone have a sense of whether the launch-and-abandon behavior actually works for Google, or is it more like a trust-funder whose checks keep coming no matter how much partying they do?
- bootloop 3y ago
  Works for the employees, because maintaining a service in as-is state doesn't bring promotion opportunities, so who would want to be part of that? Not sure if anyone at Google really cares about Google in general. And who could blame them?
- anon84873628 3y ago
  Did they really abandon it? First Google Music was rolled under the YT umbrella, now the podcasts app was rolled into the music app. Makes sense to me; why have them in different places? This is exactly how Spotify and iTunes work. I have some small quibbles with the UI but overall it's great. You could blame them for launching separate apps in the first place but hindsight is 20/20. I can also agree that the migration should have been smoother. Not migrating listening history is definitely an annoyance.
  - cbzbc 3y ago
    "Did they really abandon it? First Google Music was rolled under the YT umbrella," Not really, Google Music and Youtube Music were very distinct products at least at the consumption end.
  - Apocryphon 3y ago
    Apple has separate Music and Podcasts apps.
- georgemcbay 3y ago
  The conventional wisdom is that this cycle happens not because it works for Google as an entity but it happens as a byproduct of how promotions and compensation work within Google (heavily based on new product launches). I have no idea if this is actually true and/or if it was ever true based on personal experience (never worked at Google) but I've heard it repeatedly including from some seemingly reliable sources.
blakesterz 3y ago
This closes with an interesting quote that I agree with: "But if you’re a Google Podcasts user, should you use YouTube Music for podcasts? No, you shouldn’t. Because Google has made it clear over and over and over again that it can and will be distracted by shiny new things. The stuff you love will get worse, and it’ll die. Get out of the Google Cycle wherever you can."
- pdimitar 3y ago
  While I agree with the quote in general, I find nothing wrong with YouTube Music. In fact its Auto-Play feature is often much better than Apple Music's. I'm sure they'll manage to ruin it eventually but I see no reason for us not to use it until that happens.
  - methuselah_in 3y ago
    Nope they won't. It's cash machine
  - Apocryphon 3y ago
    As mentioned earlier in the article, it's more like YouTube Music is a poor substitute for a proper app for podcasts, specifically.
    - pdimitar 3y ago
      Ah, I see, that's a much better explanation actually, thank you. Somehow I missed that part in particular.
dhosek 3y ago
Does this mean that there will be no first-party podcast app on Android? I’m deep into the Apple ecosystem, so it doesn’t really impact me, but I would guess that most people who listen to podcasts use the default podcast app on their platform¹ so this would potentially be a killer blow to podcasters similar to how the closing of Google Reader decimated the blog ecosystem. ⸻ 1. HN readers would be outliers in this respect. I haven’t used Apple Podcasts for around a decade or so, using Overcast except for one podcast whose delivery method (dump a whole week’s daily meditations at once) and Overcast don’t play well together so I listen to that one on Downcast. What I’ve heard about the newest revisions to Apple Podcasts, though, make me curious about what it’s current state is.
- Symmetry 3y ago
  Relatedly, I used to be a happy Google Music user getting pretty fed up with YouTube Music. Are there any good services letting you upload a collection of music files and then play them from your phone or browser. Preferably also letting you download certain playlists for offline use?
  - dhosek 3y ago
    I use iTunes match for that. I’m not sure if Apple still lets new people sign up for it, but you can have the master collection of your music on Apple’s servers (there are some limitations on length (but not size, oddly enough) so the lossless single-file recording I have of Richard Strauss’s Elektra is marked ineligible, but otherwise they have my full music collection.
- Navarr 3y ago
  I wouldn't consider Google Podcasts a first party app. Even as a Pixel user, I only ever interacted with it by searching for a podcast. I could install it, but it wasn't pre-installed. I'm not sure but YouTube Music _might_ be pre-installed. I can't recall.
- Kwpolska 3y ago
  Google Podcasts wasn’t installed on my Samsung phone out-of-the-box, and the app is 5 years old. I imagine most people found a podcast app they like, or they perhaps discovered podcasts on Spotify and stayed there.
nox101 3y ago
I hate that google shuts down things too and I wonder what things I should avoid at the same time, I know that nearly every company, google no exception, has less person power than they need. So at some point a triage happens because they can't keep people on every project. And, yes, they are laying people off which makes it worse. even if they didn't lay people off this issue would still exist. maybe you could argue the problem is they shouldn't launch the service in the first place. I don't know if that would be better or not
- boxed 3y ago
  Google is in a league of their own though. They have killed so many IM services I can't even keep track anymore. And then when they fail to grab market share they lobby legislators to bully Apple...
- MrSkelter 3y ago
  " I know that nearly every company, google no exception, has less person power than they need. " That's a wild statement to make when looking at Alphabet. Their core products could be run on a fraction of the tens of thousands they employ. They are a hugely flabby company which lacks focus, not resources. They dabble in anything new that comes along, looking for a new hit and almost never succeed. Almost everything outside Search that you could call a success Google acquired. Despite decades of attempts their rate of producing homegrown hits is utterly dismal. Their advertising success blinds people to what an inept organization Google are.
dekhn 3y ago
Just remember, Google Reader was killed so Google Plus could live. Then Google Plus died.
munchler 3y ago
> Google cited a statistic from Edison Research that said about 23 percent of podcast listeners in the US say YouTube is their primary podcast platform I assume this means YouTube Music, not plain YouTube? The article (and Google itself) is confusing in this regard. It mentions YouTube, YouTube Music, and also something called YouTube Shorts. Am I supposed to know what all these things are and how they differ from each other? > YouTube Music is a subscription app, and nobody’s going to pay $10 a month for a podcast app Is it? I just logged onto https://music.youtube.com/ https://music.youtube.com/ and started listening to a podcast for free. But apparently there's also a YouTube Music Premium service that costs $11/month. It's really difficult to keep all these products straight, but this article isn't helping any.
- atrus 3y ago
  I'd say plain YouTube, a lot of podcasts put them up as videos,not to mention the ones that also have a video component as well.
- packetlost 3y ago
  It's probably proper YouTube, as many major podcasts record video of the show and post it there. I'd be very surprised to hear YTMusic was popular in any metric.
  - JAlexoid 3y ago
    YT Music makes it easier to just listen to the audio part of it... that includes music videos posted on YouTube proper.
  - munchler 3y ago
    You could be right, but (as the article says), trying to listen to a podcast on the vanilla YouTube app is extremely frustrating, since you can't play audio in the background. Is it still a podcast if you have to watch it like a video? It's hard for me to imagine that 23% of "listeners" in the US do that.
    - 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
shrubble 3y ago
Google is like that really rich guy whose wife runs a boutique store that loses $10k per month. If the wife decides to change the way the store runs, it doesn't matter and doesn't materially change his financial position.
abeppu 3y ago
> Get out of the Google Cycle wherever you can. I think this is a bit much. Maybe the better lesson is "don't get attached to products whose providers aren't sustained by and dependent on you and your money." Yes, google tries some stuff, and kills it if it isn't important and successful. Should they really need to run and maintain free products indefinitely if they haven't gained traction? A smaller company can start a product that doesn't succeed in the way the business needs it to, and they'll pivot, get acquired (and the new parent kills the product or subsumes it into some larger offering), or die. We might be disappointed when that happens, but we don't feel burned or distrustful. (edited for typo)
JAlexoid 3y ago
Google rolling podcasts into YouTube Music is great, for me. Much easier to use and track your subscriptions. Sorry for people who liked Podcasts, I didn't. The app was horrible, I barely used it.
- deprecative 3y ago
  I have the exact same thoughts but in opposite positions. Google Podcasts was a simple, straightforward, and easy to use app that just worked. YT Music is so cluttered and filled with useless garbage when all you want is to listen to a podcast. It's an awful app. As a result of them shutting down Podcasts I'm not going to YT Music despite paying for Premium. I'll have to find a different app that I imagine will be worse than the UX of Podcasts.
elevatedastalt 3y ago
Google Podcasts was an example of a product that didn't even become fully fleshed out before getting deprecated. It was so painfully basic, the Settings menu had like two 'settings' from what I recollect. Google engineers make new products, put the most basic functionality, consider everything else as "P2", and move on to the next project. So the product never rises above basic functionality.
xnx 3y ago
Lots of posts about Google Podcasts shutdown. Has anyone mentioned that Google Podcasts wasn't a feasible app for Google to start inserting ads into podcasts through? YouTube is much better set up insert ads into podcasts. The best add is no ad. If there are going to be ads, it's better that they be relevant to me and the podcast creators get better compensation for them.
- Apocryphon 3y ago
  Product skill issue. They're Google, surely they can find a way to insert ads into an app. The article itself suggests several ways they could innovate, surely some of it is monetizable: > What’s most frustrating in this case, though, is that Google had an opportunity to do something genuinely great in podcasts. Podcast discovery is a problem, and so is finding information buried inside hours of audio. What Google should have done was find ways to actually connect its services. When you discover a podcast you love in YouTube Shorts, it should have offered you a one-tap way to subscribe to that podcast in Google Podcasts. It should have made transcripts searchable in Google so you can find the moments and insights you’re looking for right in the audio.
sct202 3y ago
I really don't understand why when they do things like this the data does not port well. Like I listen to some smaller podcasts run by friends, and the YT Music Podcasts only have episodes up thru December, but Google Podcasts has 15 more recent episodes listed. It's all these little sloppy things that Google keeps doing that really makes it seem like no one quality checks or cares that stuff is just broken? Like how Google Homes now barely respond properly to anything beyond the time and weather.
cameronh90 3y ago
When Google announced they were shutting down Podcasts, I decided to switch to iPhone and de-Google the rest of my life. Until that point, all of my phones had been "official" Google supported products (from the ADP1, through Nexus and every single Pixel phone), I had several Chromecasts, Nest cameras, etc. Obviously it's not that Podcasts affected my life that much, it was just the final straw of Google taking the carpet out from underneath me; my Google Reader moment, I guess. Anyway, I'm now enjoying polished products with good battery life and have no intention of going back.
helf 3y ago
[dead]
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
Related: Google Podcasts service shuts down in the US next week https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39866748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39866748
prirai 3y ago
I replaced Google reader with Newsblur and Google Podcasts with Antennapod and I could not be happier.
shinycode 3y ago
They lost all credibility to me. All the apps and services that I love that have been shut down over time… this culture is so wrong. Instead of building quality products that stand the test of time and continue to pour quality over time, it seems that only thing that matter is the individuals inside. Like a F1 driver that only care about its career. It’s the best thing that can happen, let this culture and their products die and be eaten by the competition that care about the users and the quality of the products they make. I hope OpenAI eats them with a search product.
anotherhue 3y ago
Google Reader shutting down - 1964 points by knurdle on March 13, 2013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5371725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5371725 You were warned.

80 points by Apocryphon 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

I understand why Google would shut down an expensive gambit like Stadia, but cheap good-will projects like RSS and Podcasts? Why not just keep them running for PR alone? How expensive could they possibly be to run?

exitb 3y ago
I assume that RSS was killed because the company that deals with ad-space doesn’t like when you don’t visit the places they show ads on.
- infinitezest 3y ago
  Makes sense. But I don't think this actually answers OPs question. Google is swimming in money, less so wrt good will.
ams92 3y ago
Each engineer gets paid something around 200k-500k all in depending on seniority. I doubt just 1 team worked on this product given the bureaucracy of big tech companies like google. So why shell out millions of dollars in salary per year when the product isn’t making money?
- BowBun 3y ago
  We're talking about maintenance though, not a fresh build out
  - infamouscow 3y ago
    Google isn't a charity. The product doesn't make any money, so all maintenance is an irrecoverable expense.
    - naasking 3y ago
      What's the business cost of leaving a sour taste in people's mouths over and over again?
      - joshfee 3y ago
        Really depends on "how many people". Also if its roughly the same group of people they're making angry over and over, and they don't see an impact to the bottom line, then I'd say the answer is "pretty small", at least relative to Google's size (at which its all about volume)
      - infamouscow 3y ago
        Google answered this. The cost is higher than leaving a sour taste in people's mouths.
        naasking 3y ago
        Maybe, or maybe they haven't even considered it and the cumulative effect it will have.
    - joshfee 3y ago
      Google is basically split into "build things that make users happy" teams and "build things that make Google money" teams, so I think that on an individual product level you may be correct, but in aggregate at the high level Google believes there is a ton of value in revenue-less products. Now for Podcasts (or any given product) there's always going to be some calculus of "is it enough value to justify the cost", and clearly Google believes the answer here is no.
  - throwawaymaths 3y ago
- beezle 3y ago
  Maybe part of the problem is paying people 200-500K for this kind of job? Is it written in stone at all products require that kind of "skill" to function?
  - candiodari 3y ago
    The problem is not that. The problem is that managers will insist that businesses are in danger if they face any competition. Of course, the only thing that's really in danger is the careers (and egos) of those managers. Internal competition would be an extremely good source of information on the performance of the business those managers manage. So anything remotely competitive gets eliminated.
Symmetry 3y ago
My understanding is that the codebase was partially shared with Google+, which was a corporate priority. But having to check changes against both reduced velocity so the easiest thing was to just kill Google Reader which didn't have much love in Google' C-suite.
II2II 3y ago
I doubt it has anything to do with the direct cost of maintenance. Google has a tendency to introduce multiple products that serve similar markets, as the article cited with Podcasts and YouTube Music. They have to cut the cruft eventually. Given the numbers cited in the article (23% listen to podcasts through YouTube Music, 4% through Podcasts), YouTube Music made more sense from the business perspective. I would imagine that is especially true when you consider that they can promote more products through YouTube Music. That said, I somehow doubt that many people are going to transition from Podcasts to YouTube Music. There are too many alternatives out there, alternatives that would likely reflect the interests of Podcasts users better. Heck, nearly three quarters of podcast consumers are already using those products.
- tivert 3y ago
  > I doubt it has anything to do with the direct cost of maintenance. Google has a tendency to introduce multiple products that serve similar markets, as the article cited with Podcasts and YouTube Music. Besides both using audio files, Podcasts and Music are totally different markets, with different use cases, etc. Are spreadsheets and games in similar markets, because they both use graphics on video screens? Jamming them together because of some superficial similarity is a stupid simplification, even if many users already do things sub-optimally. Google really needs to get some cheap offshore teams that can do maintenance on the products they'd otherwise kill. They'd stop burning so much goodwill that way.
  - II2II 3y ago
    > Are spreadsheets and games in similar markets, because they both use graphics on video screens? Slightly more realistic examples would be "spreadsheets and databases" or "spreadsheets and word processors". Plenty of people use a spreadsheet when data is represented in a tabular format, even when it isn't the most appropriate tool. (Tangentially, I've also heard of 4x games referred to as spreadsheet games. Though that's more of a description of play style than presentation!) Don't get me wrong. I agree that podcasts shouldn't be jammed in with music. At least for myself. Yet when Google's numbers are saying that about a quarter of people access podcasts through YouTube, there are clearly a lot of people who do not agree!
plorkyeran 3y ago
"I can't count that low" is less of a joke than it sounds. Google's approach to developing software and products is great for ensuring that everything they make can scale up, but is terrible for scaling down and minimizing the maintenance work required for a small service.
adamsb6 3y ago
Mature products don't have enough scope for Google engineers to get good performance reviews. Maybe you could spin up a lower tier of engineers who aren't on the same career track and exist only to maintain mature/deprecated products, but that could come with its own set of problems.

neilv 3y ago

Anyone have a sense of whether the launch-and-abandon behavior actually works for Google, or is it more like a trust-funder whose checks keep coming no matter how much partying they do?

bootloop 3y ago
Works for the employees, because maintaining a service in as-is state doesn't bring promotion opportunities, so who would want to be part of that? Not sure if anyone at Google really cares about Google in general. And who could blame them?
anon84873628 3y ago
Did they really abandon it? First Google Music was rolled under the YT umbrella, now the podcasts app was rolled into the music app. Makes sense to me; why have them in different places? This is exactly how Spotify and iTunes work. I have some small quibbles with the UI but overall it's great. You could blame them for launching separate apps in the first place but hindsight is 20/20. I can also agree that the migration should have been smoother. Not migrating listening history is definitely an annoyance.
- cbzbc 3y ago
  "Did they really abandon it? First Google Music was rolled under the YT umbrella," Not really, Google Music and Youtube Music were very distinct products at least at the consumption end.
- Apocryphon 3y ago
  Apple has separate Music and Podcasts apps.
georgemcbay 3y ago
The conventional wisdom is that this cycle happens not because it works for Google as an entity but it happens as a byproduct of how promotions and compensation work within Google (heavily based on new product launches). I have no idea if this is actually true and/or if it was ever true based on personal experience (never worked at Google) but I've heard it repeatedly including from some seemingly reliable sources.

blakesterz 3y ago

This closes with an interesting quote that I agree with: "But if you’re a Google Podcasts user, should you use YouTube Music for podcasts? No, you shouldn’t. Because Google has made it clear over and over and over again that it can and will be distracted by shiny new things. The stuff you love will get worse, and it’ll die. Get out of the Google Cycle wherever you can."

pdimitar 3y ago
While I agree with the quote in general, I find nothing wrong with YouTube Music. In fact its Auto-Play feature is often much better than Apple Music's. I'm sure they'll manage to ruin it eventually but I see no reason for us not to use it until that happens.
- methuselah_in 3y ago
  Nope they won't. It's cash machine
- Apocryphon 3y ago
  As mentioned earlier in the article, it's more like YouTube Music is a poor substitute for a proper app for podcasts, specifically.
  - pdimitar 3y ago
    Ah, I see, that's a much better explanation actually, thank you. Somehow I missed that part in particular.

dhosek 3y ago

Does this mean that there will be no first-party podcast app on Android? I’m deep into the Apple ecosystem, so it doesn’t really impact me, but I would guess that most people who listen to podcasts use the default podcast app on their platform¹ so this would potentially be a killer blow to podcasters similar to how the closing of Google Reader decimated the blog ecosystem. ⸻ 1. HN readers would be outliers in this respect. I haven’t used Apple Podcasts for around a decade or so, using Overcast except for one podcast whose delivery method (dump a whole week’s daily meditations at once) and Overcast don’t play well together so I listen to that one on Downcast. What I’ve heard about the newest revisions to Apple Podcasts, though, make me curious about what it’s current state is.

Symmetry 3y ago
Relatedly, I used to be a happy Google Music user getting pretty fed up with YouTube Music. Are there any good services letting you upload a collection of music files and then play them from your phone or browser. Preferably also letting you download certain playlists for offline use?
- dhosek 3y ago
  I use iTunes match for that. I’m not sure if Apple still lets new people sign up for it, but you can have the master collection of your music on Apple’s servers (there are some limitations on length (but not size, oddly enough) so the lossless single-file recording I have of Richard Strauss’s Elektra is marked ineligible, but otherwise they have my full music collection.
Navarr 3y ago
I wouldn't consider Google Podcasts a first party app. Even as a Pixel user, I only ever interacted with it by searching for a podcast. I could install it, but it wasn't pre-installed. I'm not sure but YouTube Music _might_ be pre-installed. I can't recall.
Kwpolska 3y ago
Google Podcasts wasn’t installed on my Samsung phone out-of-the-box, and the app is 5 years old. I imagine most people found a podcast app they like, or they perhaps discovered podcasts on Spotify and stayed there.

nox101 3y ago

I hate that google shuts down things too and I wonder what things I should avoid at the same time, I know that nearly every company, google no exception, has less person power than they need. So at some point a triage happens because they can't keep people on every project. And, yes, they are laying people off which makes it worse. even if they didn't lay people off this issue would still exist. maybe you could argue the problem is they shouldn't launch the service in the first place. I don't know if that would be better or not

boxed 3y ago
Google is in a league of their own though. They have killed so many IM services I can't even keep track anymore. And then when they fail to grab market share they lobby legislators to bully Apple...
MrSkelter 3y ago
" I know that nearly every company, google no exception, has less person power than they need. " That's a wild statement to make when looking at Alphabet. Their core products could be run on a fraction of the tens of thousands they employ. They are a hugely flabby company which lacks focus, not resources. They dabble in anything new that comes along, looking for a new hit and almost never succeed. Almost everything outside Search that you could call a success Google acquired. Despite decades of attempts their rate of producing homegrown hits is utterly dismal. Their advertising success blinds people to what an inept organization Google are.

dekhn 3y ago

Just remember, Google Reader was killed so Google Plus could live. Then Google Plus died.

munchler 3y ago

> Google cited a statistic from Edison Research that said about 23 percent of podcast listeners in the US say YouTube is their primary podcast platform I assume this means YouTube Music, not plain YouTube? The article (and Google itself) is confusing in this regard. It mentions YouTube, YouTube Music, and also something called YouTube Shorts. Am I supposed to know what all these things are and how they differ from each other? > YouTube Music is a subscription app, and nobody’s going to pay $10 a month for a podcast app Is it? I just logged onto https://music.youtube.com/ https://music.youtube.com/ and started listening to a podcast for free. But apparently there's also a YouTube Music Premium service that costs $11/month. It's really difficult to keep all these products straight, but this article isn't helping any.

atrus 3y ago
I'd say plain YouTube, a lot of podcasts put them up as videos,not to mention the ones that also have a video component as well.
packetlost 3y ago
It's probably proper YouTube, as many major podcasts record video of the show and post it there. I'd be very surprised to hear YTMusic was popular in any metric.
- JAlexoid 3y ago
  YT Music makes it easier to just listen to the audio part of it... that includes music videos posted on YouTube proper.
- munchler 3y ago
  You could be right, but (as the article says), trying to listen to a podcast on the vanilla YouTube app is extremely frustrating, since you can't play audio in the background. Is it still a podcast if you have to watch it like a video? It's hard for me to imagine that 23% of "listeners" in the US do that.
  - 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

shrubble 3y ago

Google is like that really rich guy whose wife runs a boutique store that loses $10k per month. If the wife decides to change the way the store runs, it doesn't matter and doesn't materially change his financial position.

abeppu 3y ago

> Get out of the Google Cycle wherever you can. I think this is a bit much. Maybe the better lesson is "don't get attached to products whose providers aren't sustained by and dependent on you and your money." Yes, google tries some stuff, and kills it if it isn't important and successful. Should they really need to run and maintain free products indefinitely if they haven't gained traction? A smaller company can start a product that doesn't succeed in the way the business needs it to, and they'll pivot, get acquired (and the new parent kills the product or subsumes it into some larger offering), or die. We might be disappointed when that happens, but we don't feel burned or distrustful. (edited for typo)

JAlexoid 3y ago

Google rolling podcasts into YouTube Music is great, for me. Much easier to use and track your subscriptions. Sorry for people who liked Podcasts, I didn't. The app was horrible, I barely used it.

deprecative 3y ago
I have the exact same thoughts but in opposite positions. Google Podcasts was a simple, straightforward, and easy to use app that just worked. YT Music is so cluttered and filled with useless garbage when all you want is to listen to a podcast. It's an awful app. As a result of them shutting down Podcasts I'm not going to YT Music despite paying for Premium. I'll have to find a different app that I imagine will be worse than the UX of Podcasts.

elevatedastalt 3y ago

Google Podcasts was an example of a product that didn't even become fully fleshed out before getting deprecated. It was so painfully basic, the Settings menu had like two 'settings' from what I recollect. Google engineers make new products, put the most basic functionality, consider everything else as "P2", and move on to the next project. So the product never rises above basic functionality.

xnx 3y ago

Lots of posts about Google Podcasts shutdown. Has anyone mentioned that Google Podcasts wasn't a feasible app for Google to start inserting ads into podcasts through? YouTube is much better set up insert ads into podcasts. The best add is no ad. If there are going to be ads, it's better that they be relevant to me and the podcast creators get better compensation for them.

Apocryphon 3y ago
Product skill issue. They're Google, surely they can find a way to insert ads into an app. The article itself suggests several ways they could innovate, surely some of it is monetizable: > What’s most frustrating in this case, though, is that Google had an opportunity to do something genuinely great in podcasts. Podcast discovery is a problem, and so is finding information buried inside hours of audio. What Google should have done was find ways to actually connect its services. When you discover a podcast you love in YouTube Shorts, it should have offered you a one-tap way to subscribe to that podcast in Google Podcasts. It should have made transcripts searchable in Google so you can find the moments and insights you’re looking for right in the audio.

sct202 3y ago

I really don't understand why when they do things like this the data does not port well. Like I listen to some smaller podcasts run by friends, and the YT Music Podcasts only have episodes up thru December, but Google Podcasts has 15 more recent episodes listed. It's all these little sloppy things that Google keeps doing that really makes it seem like no one quality checks or cares that stuff is just broken? Like how Google Homes now barely respond properly to anything beyond the time and weather.

cameronh90 3y ago

When Google announced they were shutting down Podcasts, I decided to switch to iPhone and de-Google the rest of my life. Until that point, all of my phones had been "official" Google supported products (from the ADP1, through Nexus and every single Pixel phone), I had several Chromecasts, Nest cameras, etc. Obviously it's not that Podcasts affected my life that much, it was just the final straw of Google taking the carpet out from underneath me; my Google Reader moment, I guess. Anyway, I'm now enjoying polished products with good battery life and have no intention of going back.

helf 3y ago

[dead]

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

Related: Google Podcasts service shuts down in the US next week https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39866748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39866748

prirai 3y ago

I replaced Google reader with Newsblur and Google Podcasts with Antennapod and I could not be happier.

shinycode 3y ago

They lost all credibility to me. All the apps and services that I love that have been shut down over time… this culture is so wrong. Instead of building quality products that stand the test of time and continue to pour quality over time, it seems that only thing that matter is the individuals inside. Like a F1 driver that only care about its career. It’s the best thing that can happen, let this culture and their products die and be eaten by the competition that care about the users and the quality of the products they make. I hope OpenAI eats them with a search product.

anotherhue 3y ago

Google Reader shutting down - 1964 points by knurdle on March 13, 2013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5371725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5371725 You were warned.