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Comment by nmz | Hacker News Reader

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nmz·

Forgot to mention that google podcasts will no longer be operational as of this year.

Honestly, at this rate, I'm surprised google hasn't killed gmail.

https://www.theverge.com/23891397/google-podcasts-youtube-sp...

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Google consolidated the podcast features into YouTube Music. Many of the "killed by Google" entries are actually Google shuffling around features between different apps. Annoying, but the functionality is still there.

From the outside looking in, it feels like Google lets their org structure dictate their product strategy to a comical degree.

They did the same with Google Play Music, but the YouTube Music app was so much of a worse experience for me that I just switched to Apple Music.

So I do think moves like this still fit into some category of “killed by Google” lists.

Not to mention, you needed to download and use a special tool to download your Google Play Music songs that you'd paid for before the shutdown, which didn't actually work.

Functionality is also the interface, it demonstrates the functionality, a podcast app is an rss feed reader tuned towards playing longform audio. I sincerely doubt youtube music integrated with rss feeds would be any good for podcasting, I've tried it and it always tries to play the video (which, its youtube music, why would it play video?). Not to mention that podcasts already have ads in them, so now its going to have youtube ads and also ads in the podcast. Not to mention the ad numbers have tripled, there's 2 minutes of ads every 5 minutes.

Also we already have an example of podcasting functionality being integrated into a music app: spotify. And IMO it is a complete failure, the interface is constantly fighting between podcasts and music. Two methods of consuming media that are different, making the entire experience subpar.

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