The upside is that Android can come with a ‘native’ podcast player. Just like iOS comes with a native player.
A big downside with shutting it down is that it reinforces the idea that Google products are eventually killed so don’t rely on them.
Please don't take this as an argument against monorepo. It is a discussion point there, but even if you view this as largely negative, I assert a lot of these negatives come with the size of Google.
But really, do you have a choice? Sooner or later someone finds a security bug in the code and you actually have to dig out the code and deploy an update.
This would be akin to trying to move a car to a system that shuts off during stops. Totally doable, but requires a massive change in how reliant passive systems are on the serpentine belt/alternator for power.
The way the Google monorepo works, there's actually more cost in keeping things running than you would think.
You have to keep up-to-date with all of the library and platform upgrades and occasional migrations that are happening internally that your product is built on.