Google is killing off yet another product, Google Podcasts, with plans to move all podcast features to YouTube Music.
When it comes to killing off tech and making confusing changes to its product lineup, Google wins the gold star, hands down. The company is making yet another such move, announcing it will kill off Google Podcasts in 2024.
The company made the announcement in a blog post:
Looking forward to 2024, we’ll be increasing our investment in the podcast experience on YouTube Music — making it a better overall destination for fans and podcasters alike with YouTube-only capabilities across community, discovery and audio/visual switching. Later in 2024, as part of this process, we’ll be discontinuing Google Podcasts. As part of this process, we’ll be helping Google Podcasts users move over to Podcasts in YouTube Music. This matches what listeners and podcasters are already doing: according to Edison, about 23% of weekly podcast users in the US say YouTube is their most frequently used service, versus just 4% for Google Podcasts.
The company says it will gather feedback to ensure the transition goes as smoothly as possible:
In the coming weeks and months, we’ll gather feedback to make the migration process from Google Podcasts to YouTube Music as simple and easy as possible. Once we feel the migration tools are ready, we’ll release them along with clear guidelines on how they work.
We know this transition will take time, but these efforts will allow us to build an amazing product and a single destination that rewards creators and artists and provides fans with the best Podcasts experience. For now, nothing is changing and fans will continue to have access to YouTube, YouTube Music and Google Podcasts. We’re committed to being transparent in communicating future changes with our users and podcasters and will have more to share about this process in the coming months.
Given Google’s penchant for unveiling and then unceremoniously killing off services, relying on anything the company does outside of its core markets is increasingly a fool’s errand.
