While I understand the objections to Google self promoting their products and masking audience data I don't see how removing their podcasts from one of the most popular platforms helps with what the BBC claims to be important.

"What we think is important is pretty simple. We want people to have easy access to the wide range of BBC programmes, not just a select few, and be able to discover and listen to new ones really easily."

Cutting off your audience potential to understand your audience better is some kind of broken logic. The comments section highlights that their own audience generally does not accept their reasoning.