Google announces April 2024 shutdown date for Google Podcasts | Hacker News Reader

Google announces April 2024 shutdown date for Google Podcasts

arstechnica.com

80 pointsMBCook70 comments

> 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.

Meanwhile I bought Doggcatcher for Android in--checks notes--2015, for about 3 bucks, and it still works.

Same for me with Podcast Addict, which as far as I can tell is a solo developer effort and a great product.

PocketCast doing the business here, woot woot.

Podcast Addict is the #1 thing I miss from Android.

Wasn'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.

There 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.

I 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.

They 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.

Agreed, I’d be interested to see how many times apple or other podcast apps (overcast etc.) have ‘shut down’ code base without us noticing

Many times with iTunes. Right now even movies and tv apps are being shut down for TV+ merge

Looks like there’s one of 2 URLs to visit to take your subscription to YouTube or elsewhere.

> If you want to move from Google Podcasts to YouTube Podcasts, Google makes that pretty easy with a one-click button at music.youtube.com/transfer_podcasts

> you can also export your Google Podcast subscriptions as an OPML file at podcasts.google.com/settings

Does that second option work for anyone? I am unable to find an OPML file there

It's a lot cheaper to outsource a bunch of clicks to users than pay product, design, and software people to make the transition smooth.

Sure, 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.

Microservices

At 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.

it is good that they try and if it does not work shut it. At the same time people complain microsoft and others stagnate.

I 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.

> "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.

Then as a user the only sensible action is to assume that nothing else will ever work again and proceed accordingly.

It's an app that plays podcasts, just like dozens of other apps out there. What exactly are they innovating on that has taken four total rewrites to get right?

I've been using the same podcast app for probably 10+ years and have zero complaints. Not having to waste time migrating every few years is a better than any new feature Google is adding.

Sure, but "shut it and then immediately try to make it again" is where it gets silly

There wouldn't be any problem at all if they'd only shut down projects that don't work for anyone.

By the time Google shuts down Bard, will it be legally considered murder?

A whole new meaning to, "product life cycle."

Compassionate 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

https://killedbygoogle.com/

Needs to be updated!

They based their estimated September 2024 shutdown date on 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!

G-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!"

I'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?

Bloated corporate structure with misaligned incentives and ineffectual leadership?

Have you seen the Linux ecosystem of desktop apps?

Basically that, but at corporate scale. Big Rewrites are sexier and more gratifying.

Isn'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

That doesn’t explain the Music app switch. They both had the exact same subscription.

Its a shame but lets not discount how much promo packet material it generated

A lot of people got value out of this

https://i.imgur.com/OM7vO9n.jpg

Goomics has the key.

https://goomics.net/366/

Sometimes I feel like Google bends the laws of physics by shutting down more products than they launch.

I think what happens is that the shutdowns are announced more loudly than the launches, which results in people legitimately seeing more shutdowns than launches.

The 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

Google 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

Google 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 as the article says.

Screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/I36vBAi

I guess the feature is gradually rolling out.

Someone can see it?

Anyone 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.

I'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.

+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.

At 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.)

I can also vouch for the shopping list issue... It's the primary reason I bought a google home but lately asking it to put things on the shopping list has a 50% chance of putting it on the shopping list and 50% chance of saying something about "put on a list called 'shopping'" that doesn't seem to actually do anything. I think it's related to them shutting down the google shopping list app.

Getting hard to keep track of what is shutting down at any giving point...

Pocket Casts is great but keep in mind they were acquired by NPR a while back and it is (IMO, anyway) the kind of project that I could see NPR killing. Use it while you can I guess.

Too late!! NPR actually sold it to Automaticc (of wordpress/tumblr/simplenote fame) a few years ago

Wow, yeah I'd be even more worried now.

Thanks for the tip!

AntennaPod

(Official) guide on how to migrate from Google Podcasts to AntennaPod :

https://antennapod.org/blog/2023/11/google-podcasts-migratio...

Yep: Free, good features, runs locally (I appreciate that this can be a disadvantage, but it means that there's no servers to get shut down) and it's open source (so even if upstream does die, you can fork).

You can also sync it with NextCloud if you want cloud but don't want Cloud.

Try Pocket Casts

Dead 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.

Has anyone successfully downloaded an OPML file? I've yet to find the right page/button to do that...

> Visit takeout.google.com and select Google Podcasts to export your Google Podcasts data in OPML format

source : https://antennapod.org/blog/2023/11/google-podcasts-migratio...

Ah, perfect. Thanks!

Is there some reason why Google can't spin it off into an open source project of some kind?

How do you expect to run Google Podcasts without the Google datacenter infrastructure it runs on?

Isn't it available via GCP?

facepalm

> 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.

Nobody can catch up to the chat devs.

The 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.

Link to actual Google Support post from the article is broken.

No one expected that

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