We have gone full circle. I started with Google Music which had both music and podcasts at the time. Then they took podcasts out of Google Music and made me install a second Google Podcast app just to listen to my podcasts. Then they shut down Google Music and forced me to move to YouTube Music. Now they are shutting down Google Podcasts and integrating that back into YouTube Music. Like WTF.
It's amazing how incompetent they seem in this area. They even shut down another podcast app before your journey began, called Google listen.
Luckily, although you might want Google's proprietary music player to access their subscription content, there's absolutely no reason to use a Google podcast app. I am a fan of Antennapod[0], which is available on F-Droid.
> t's amazing how incompetent they seem in this area
You may be surprised at how competent they look internally. If I were a betting man, I'd say each of those transitions went into a promotion/performance packet. I count at least 3 product teams competent at developing podcast features, and were likely rewarded for it.
The only successful products I can think of from Google that were entirely of their own making are Google Search, GMail, and Chrome. Their other successes all came from acquisitions, like YouTube, Maps (KeyHole), Docs (Writely), Android, etc. They deserve some credit for their cultivation and maintenance of these products, but they did not create them.
The one thing they got right was Chromecast. And they ruined it with a stupid remote and interactive UI while still using underpowered hardware. I use a Shield TV now.
benefit of google podcasts compared to antennapod is that with google podcasts I can start a podcast on one device and later continue where I left off on another device (e.g. listen on mobile then switch to desktop).
I don't use this functionality myself and can't vouch for it, but have you looked into the synchronization options? It seems as if it should be possible. They support self-hosting as well. [0]
I loved Google Play music. Used it for years. Switched to Spotify when they shut it down and I don't particularly like Spotify, but I have enough custom playlists on there now I'm probably not going to switch unless something forces me to
100% agreed. I was a paying customer for years, but finally switched to Apple Music when Google shut it down. A significant downgrade, IMO, but not as bad as YouTube Music at the time.
This is what really annoys me. For certain there will be people at g noticing this constant bouncing about so that some pointless product manager can get their promotion and bonus. They are noticing the damage this does to them. And it's even possible they are highlighting it. But they are completely unable to do anything about it.
Bingo. This is the reason. The higherups that approve promos are mostly tech-illiterate, so if you're a manager that oversees maintenance/fix work that isn't new and shiny and sexy and dressed up with marketing, you're never getting promoted and neither are your reports.
Tbh I think the moves make sense to a certain degree. Users like apps focused on specific experiences so if a user group is big enough or growing enough it makes sense to cater to that. Podcasts were briefly looking promising so spinning them off into a separate product probably seemed like an easy way of acquiring users who only cared about podcasts. Now it's the present though and it turns out podcast momentum was a shortlived trend in terms of commercial relevance and that a completely separate app is a waste of resources. Sorry to be harsh to the podcast fans but in reality I'm amazed they even preserved them at all when there's no shortage of podcast content published to YouTube already because of its reach. If people are already cross-promoting that much anyway you may as well just merge them over.
Full circle is splitting it off again to Google Listen. Either way I wanted to migrate to podcasts for a couple years but they never had opml support. I just hope they might take it slightly more serious now, add some playlists and transcription since it's part of youtube. But knowing Google.
