This week’s dead Google products: Google Podcasts, basic Gmail, and more!
Enlarge / Google is looking pretty dilapidated these days. (credit: Aurich Lawson)
Google is killing off so many products lately we need to do a roundup or we won't get anything else done today. First on the docket is the inevitable death of Google Podcasts. We've been side-eying Google Podcasts ever since Google's new podcast platform, YouTube Podcasts, launched in April. YouTube has been slowly consuming all of Google's media properties, and podcasts completes the trinity along with videos (both amateur and scripted Hollywood content) and music.
Google does not need two podcast apps, so Google Podcasts must die. This was announced on the official YouTube blog, if there was any question about the responsible party. Google Podcasts is getting shut down "later in 2024," but before that, we'll see an expansion of YouTube podcasts, which is currently only available in the US. YouTube says its podcast platform (which is built into the YouTube Music app) will be out "globally" before the end of the year.
The Google Podcasts app. (credit: Google)
Google Podcasts was Google's third podcasting service, after the Google Reader-powered Google Listen (2009–2012) and Google Play Music Podcasts (2016–2020). Google Podcasts technically started in 2016 as a bizarre podcast player that was only accessible via a mobile Google Search. Searching for a podcast in the Google app would show a play button next to episode search results, but there was no way to subscribe to a podcast. Android Google Podcasts finally got podcast-defining subscription support a whopping two years later, but you couldn't really call the service viable until an iOS app finally launched in 2020.