Rule of Google: if it works, kill it.
I know, I know, using Google apps isn’t the best, but this was a perfectly good Podcast app with all the features you might want.
Apparently they’re moving everything over to YouTube Music, where a lot of the features of Google Podcasts aren’t implemented yet.
I’ve moved over to an app from F-Droid.
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I don’t really understand how they consistently manage to screw things up. And they always say that the features are coming, but they never do.
I’m still bitter over Inbox.
I used to be excited about new things from Google. Tried to get into every beta, downloaded the newest released apps etc. But not anymore.
I just read about tasks being removed from Google Keep. Then the feature removal from nest hubs. Do they have a unified strategy at all? Or is it just the whims of a manager’s daily musings that drive what development does?
Former Googlers have always said that the big issue with sustaining products at Google is that it is highly competitive and Google rewards new products, not sustaining current products. So, most people want to continuously join/form teams for new products leaving little resources for current products. This has been the way since Google started becoming a large company – so decades now.
This makes sense as to why Google puts out applications that seemingly do the same thing as something else but ever so slightly different and why there are sometimes cool new products that die on the vine years later and if there was no slightly different thing available it just dies or if there is then there is a half-assed migration.
In the Reddit AMA the Google Home team answered a few questions and only the very few softball ones. One interesting comment they made though is that because of the Nest products and generally new products, they believe it is a challenge to support the older hardware, including integrating Google and Nest hardware, so basically you get features removed to make it all work. Of course, there was the promise and supposed internal roadmap that puts these features back eventually, but we’ve seen that kind of promise over and over from Google and it rarely happens. They are trying to replace Assistant with their Gemini AI which you can do now but it comes with even less features (but parity is coming – they promise!..one day!). Is that parity with current Assistant which seems to be supporting less and less and working worse?
Google is losing a lot of consumer trust in products I think and it’s going to get worse for them as this trickles to the general consumer-base.
My god, the assistant, yes. After catching up with Siri it was actually useful. And now it seems all it does is plop whatever you say into a Google search. And since they killed that, too, well…
I think deep down, everybody, including Google, realizes this all ends with them retaining their customer s solely through the blackmail they have accumulated over the years.
I’m still pissed over the loss of inbox.
They have an agenda, which isn’t aligned with your agenda. They only care about profitability, so they kill any projects not supporting that goal. Some projects are created to gather specific data sets about users, and the project is shut down when the data is captured, regardless of how popular the project was. They are always doing something with an ulterior motive. Once you understand that then you won’t be mystified by their decisions anymore.
They only care about profitability
It’s not even profitability. It’s about what looks good on a resume.
New projects look good. Maintaining old projects doesn’t.
I’m not ready to be reminded of the loss of inbox
There’s still no better email client than inbox. It was so fucking good
I always felt Google is just a collection of startups each doing their own thing, and they live and die like startups, too. There’s barely any overall strategy, and whenever they actually try to do something strategic, the result sucks (e.g. G+)
Man, Inbox was so good. I still start typing “inbox” into the address bar to get to my emails.
Try AntennaPod, it’s on F-Droid
One of the best apps on any platform
For the big products, I think Google Assistant will be next followed by barely doing anything further with Android Auto until it dies a few years after GAS starts getting pushed out while it probably either won’t or will stop supporting ‘legacy’ Android Auto apps, so AA dies ‘because developers aren’t supporting apps anymore – totally not our fault and we’re sorry to see this happen.’
One of my favorite podcast app.
Grabbed AntennaPod from the Play Store. It’s been a perfect replacement.
R.I.P.
Tombstone 2018 - 2024 Google Podcasts
Killed 26 days ago, Google Podcasts was a podcast hosting platform and an Android podcast listening app. It was almost 6 years old.
Pixel Pass
Killed 8 months ago, Pixel Pass was a program that allowed users to pay a monthly charge for their Pixel phone and upgrade immediately after two years. It was almost 2 years old.
Well, that seems particularly scummy.
They did allow users to upgrade once first.
That’s good. The article linked to by the graveyard made it seem like they didn’t.
Indeed.What a rip-off! :(
Tombstone 2030-2032 Google Pacemaker
Killed 8 years from now, Google Pacemaker was an IoT pacemaker for patients with heart arrhythmia. All devices were remotely deactivated after 2 years.
Tombstone 2030-2032 Google Pacemaker
Killed 8 years from now, Google Pacemaker was an IoT pacemaker for patients with heart arrhythmia. All devices were remotely deactivated after 2 years.
🤯 😂
I just ignore any new Google service these days. Unreliability isn’t even as much of a concern as privacy.
Google music, Google+, Google Spaces, they even killed Google Cache recently - which was a fantastic way to get around my work’s brain-dead decision to block the company (including IT) from reaching Reddit.
Maybe try Redlib for accessing Reddit. You can also use LibRedirect to automatically redirect Reddit links.
Alternatively, use this guide to create a Cloudflare proxy for any website you want to visit that is blocked
You would think with the further advancement of humanity, with or without technology we would have more reason to cache and archive things out there whether it’s by the written word of paper, the internet or via our phone cameras.
How else are they gonna half ass implement that into youtube and make that shit bloated af.
It has long form content, Tiktok clone, Main music delivery system, Twitch clone, And now, Podcasts.
👌🏼👌🏼👌🏼
Going to be called YouTube Podcasts. Soon to be spun off into Google Wallet + Podcasts, then to be renamed Podcasts Pay, then Pay Podcasts, then Google Chrome with Podcasts.
Google Nest Home Chromecast TV with Podcasts Premium+
With different tiers of subscription.
This sounds unfortunately real. Insanity.
It seems like their trying to roll everything into the over media app and subscription
Kind of makes sense, all their other apps are pretty fragmented and crappy.
It also has games now.
I don’t think it’s rolled out to a lot of people. No one at work can see them except me, but my Google app has games that I can bring up.
Antennapod?
Been on it for a few years now. It’s great.
The only other one I’d really recommend is Podcast Addict. I only switched to Antennapod because it has a little less busy UI.
That or Podcast Republic.
Love it!
Another vote for Antennapod.
Now that it has **rudimentary Ad-Skipping **
You can set et to skip X seconds in the beginning and Y seconds at the end of each podcast individually.
Maybe one day we will get Sponsor block integration for crowd sourced ad skipping , or AI using the crowd sourced skip points as a guide to fine-tune skipping on device , ( everyone tends to get different length advertisements , depending on targetting or region )
I’m more inclined to not be annoyed too much by ads on podcasts where you know it’s just some guy or gal getting compensated for the work they are putting into their podcast. That said, maybe I’m getting way fewer ads on Antennapod because of said adblocking, not sure.
I will say, it has a bug where it will not work in a work profile. You can install it but it won’t playback. Which is annoying. But for me it is a small complaint.
You should switch to AntennaPod.
That’s my go to, FOSS app that rivals the major apps.
There are other podcast apps on F-Droid also.
Antennapod is fine, although it is annoying that there appears to be no way to make it so that it automatically plays the next episode of the podcast you are listening to rather than what you purposefully place into the que.
I still miss Google reader
You might enjoy feedly
Yeah, this was the only Google product that I really liked, and of course they’re killing it just to force people to use YouTube Music. AntennaPod is an open-source alternative that functions very similarly, I’ve been using it for a couple of months now and I’m very happy with it.
Yeah, that’s where I ended up, too. At least Google had the decency to support OPML export so I didn’t have to redo my subscriptions manually.
Yeah, that was decent of them. I was expecting some sort of dark pattern bullshit to make exporting to a third-party extra hard, but it was actually pretty simple.
Those features will never be implemented. Just like with Google Music.
Friendly reminder that YouTube music STILL doesn’t have the ability to sort songs in a playlist alphabetically
Friendly reminder that YouTube Music laid off an entire team of 43 unionized workers the very moment two of them went before the Austin City Council to ask them to help pressure Google execs to come to the bargaining table to provide them with fair pay and benefits.
I’ve been using ‘Pocket Casts’ on Android for years. Highly recommend it.
They finally open sourced the app, but for some reason, they can’t figure out how to submit it to F-Droid. This is so annoying.
https://github.com/Automattic/pocket-casts-android/issues/424
wow what a shit show in the comments
Yeah but that price jump is nuts. I’m sure there’s something out there 70% as good for 10% of the price.
That’d be Antenna Pod. It’s (IMO) not as good as Pocket Casts, but FOSS is always good.
The thing that keeps me on Pocket Casts is really just the superior queue management. I’ll keep checking back on Antenna Pod though
Amazing thank you. I’ve got the one-year-of-older-price thing for people who were already subscribed.
But seeing as how I don’t use any of the features… when that’s gone I will be unlikely to renew.
I’ve been plugging it too, but apparently new users have to pay monthly fees to use it? Maybe there are now better alternatives.
Damn :(
Sorry - the data we used to spy on you for through this app, is now available to us by spying on other apps and devices. Its therefore too expensive for us to keep running it when it is no longer necessary
I mean, at some level, how many podcast apps do we need?
But on the other hand, you’re fucking Google and this is a glorified RSS feed. Why is it so hard for this company to maintain quality apps? The Google graveyard is filled with so many good ideas.
My problem is when they kill services that are default installations on Android, then never remove them from the OS image.
I’m looking at you Allo.
I moved to Podcast Republic, and sometimes AntennaPod, on Android, Downcast on iPhone, and just import the OPML from one of those into gpodder to listen on desktop/laptop.
No accounts or other BS to keep up with, just the latest OPML export. Much nicer, and no one can take it away from me or “shut the service down” in the future.
I second the support for Podcast Republic
