Google Podcasts shuts down tomorrow, April 2
- Thread starter JournalBot
- Start date
Is this real news or an April Fool's Day prank? It feels real and tracks with Google behavior, but today is 4/1 and Google killing a random product is totally believable.
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Nah, a real April fools' prank would be that Google announces it plans to support <product X> in perpetuity.
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Nope it's real. Google's been planning this for months now. I use the Google Podcasts app and they announced this awhile ago. It's actually too bad - YouTube Music is way worse than Google Podcasts.
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I'm looking forward to the launch of Google Exterminator, their app that hunts down and terminates other Google services. And the discontinuation of it and what they use to hunt it down to bury in the back woods.
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I'm just glad they didn't start out by buying a good, existing podcast app, so that what they are shutting down now is not resulting in an actually usable product being killed.
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I've used Pocket Casts for years and have been very happy with it. Lots of customizations and easy access to most of what's available. It even has RSS integration.
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I used Googles first podcast client Listen. Loved it. They shut it down.
I learned.
I learned.
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I think that, with this, the "play the news" command on Google Assistant will probably die as well right? That I'm going to miss, it was part of my morning routine. 
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CastBox works excellent for me; just if you have patreon/subscriber-only feeds, they will not migrate in the XML export/import, so you will have to re-enter them individually.
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Yes. AntennaPod is really good. A fairly customizable UI, free+open source. I poked around PocketCasts and some others and this is by far the one that gives me the same feeling of using Google Podcasts (RIP) without constantly nagging me to pay for a subscription. No frills but extremely usable. And no upselling.
Plus I was able to import by OPML and it was a breeze - even one feed I pay for came in effortlessly.
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It's the stuff of legend that Google abandons projects regularly. This doesn't help that perception.
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Ron Amadeo needs to write a book about the chaos and schizophrenia of Google sub-projects. I still miss Wave!
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That sounds like a refrain I’ve heard before…
Does Google actually make anything better when they replace it?
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No, that's on-brand for them, as well. They did this with Stadia.
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I like Podcast Addict enough for an annual subscription (there's not many features locked behind the fee, but the dev is responsive and earns it, IMO)
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Podcast Addict. It is ridiculously customizeable. I will never buy an iphone if this app remains Android-only. I love it that much.
There's an annual subscription model but the free version is also very capable. If you're a configuration and fine-tuning nerd it's a blast.
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This was the final straw for me. I am so tired of Google killing a product, pushing us to a subpar version that shows they have no idea why I used the original in the first place. I swear that Google employees do not actually use any of their own products, it's the only thing that can explain some of their boneheaded moves.
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They do not. I'm still angry about the demise of Inbox, which was much better than the Gmail app.
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I liked Podcasts for its simplicity; I find that AntennaPod serves me well as a replacement, not a cluttered UI like PocketCast or PodcastAddict, and it has just the right functionality.
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Like Ron outlines, this project didn't make much sense when it launched and was pretty devoid of features for a couple of years, but today its actually a pretty good podcast app. Its replacement (pods in YT Music) works fine too, but never misses an opportunity to push the Premium subscription service.
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uesc_marathon
Ars Scholae Palatinae
I'm trying to remember the last time I was actually excited for, and put in effort to learn and use, a google product. Pretty sure it was the Nexus 4. That was a great app ecosystem. Mostly everything worked, everything was integrated with each other. Good times.
What is this horrible mess this company has become?
What is this horrible mess this company has become?
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Deja vu! Google+ shutdown on Apr 2, as recorded in this meme: https://www.genolve.com/design/socialmedia/memes/5381eae32b3d458b7820d543a8a818bc
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Geez, Google had almost as many podcasting solutions as they did messaging apps
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I assume the shutdown is only in the US - there is no way to export podcasts to YT music elsewhere.
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One thing that has frustrated listeners of a podcast network I listen to, Cool Zone Media, is Google's lack of cohesion and vision for podcasts. The big thing being Apple Podcasts users can buy into a subscription service that removes ads from each episode but CZM has tried and failed to get the same thing for Android users.
I'm not certain if this exists in any of Google's products and if their attempts didn't line up with Google's efforts in that area, but for whatever reason it's a problem for this network.
I'm not certain if this exists in any of Google's products and if their attempts didn't line up with Google's efforts in that area, but for whatever reason it's a problem for this network.
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I feel bad for people that actually used this, but I won't miss it hijacking assistant commands and adding an un-dismissable mediaplayer notification rather than use my actual podcast app.
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There’s a lot of pressure on the YouTube brand carrying all these products after all these “merges”. At some point everything was “Play Something” too, and look where is “Play” now.
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YouTube Music didn't work for me. Over 50% of the time it lost my place in a podcast between listening sessions. Hey Google, when you're retiring an app, make sure your suggested replacement does the job. Fail.
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Which I find incredibly weird, since "Play" had a nice little double meaning built right in that made it memorable in my mind. There was play as in "press play" to listen/watch, and also play as in "do something fun". It was, IMO, good branding.
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“Every time someone searches for when the next ASOIAF book comes out, I kill a Stark we kill a product”
- Google, probably
- Google, probably
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Another vote for AntennaPod. I started looking for a replacement when the regular announcement of Podcast shutting down appeared. Free and Open Source, with years of history and multiple active maintainers (but one who has been really active for the past couple of years). It took 30 seconds to move everything from Google Podcasts to AntennaPod and works well with Android Auto.
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The Nexus 4 was a great phone. Like you said, it had a great ecosystem; it had wireless charging (yes, way back in 2016)! Google+ was still a thing, integrated with gmail AND Hangouts. OMG Hangouts... If they hadn't killed it and instead worked on it, added some functions, kept it updated, Hangouts would probably now be competing with iMessages, Whatsapp, Teams, Slack, Zoom...it already had online messaging, sms, voice and video calls, groups, integration. One could buy credits for international calls, like on Skype and calling cards... Damn, such a waste.
Echoing your question, what happened? Google had so much potential to really be a force of change, instead it's just making everything worse.
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I've been using Podcast Addict for years and have been very happy with it.
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Apart from the physical power button eventually becoming flaky, the Nexus 4 was (adjusted for era/vintage) the best phone I've owned.
Apparently, Google staff generally can't get substantial bonuses or promotions for supporting and maintaining existing products. Those perks are reserved for Googlers who successfully release first-generation, minimum-viable new products. Once the products are out, and the people are promoted, there's nobody left to do the hard work of iteratively debugging and maintaining them.
It's an objectively shit business model, but since virtually all the company's actual revenue is from ad sales and everything else is just there to keep eyeballs on the ads and top talent out of competitors' payrolls.... it seems to work for them.
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