As of June 23 of this year, the Google Podcast service passes away. This does not mean that Google abandons this service, far from it. What the company is looking for is to bring this type of content within its music platform, YouTube Music. Obviously, with the intention of charging for it.
The podcasts on YouTube Podcast They can be packed without having to go through the checkout, it is clear. But Google will add advertising and advertisements, just as it does in the free version of YouTube, so that users pay for the Premium if they want to get rid of these ads.
At first, we all thought that what Google was going to kill was the backend, the service that hosted and played the podcasts. But the mobile app, one of the best and with more than 500 million downloads in the Play Store, would continue to work. After all, it is an independent app, an aggregator, that does not depend on anything more than an xml feed that the user passes to it. However, it seems that this app will also disappear.
Google, why are you killing the app?
If we look at the email that has reached all Google Podcast users in recent days, the company informs that the podcasts are going to be migrated to YouTube Podcast, that we can easily migrate the data to the new platform (or to another, exporting the OPML file), and that from June 23 only this new platform will work.
What catches our attention is that it makes it clear that, after the date, it will not be possible to listen to podcasts through Google Podcast, thus understanding that they are also going to block and block the app. But it also reports that July 29 of this year will be the last day on which users will be able to export their data from this platform, or else they will have to configure their new app from scratch.
We do not understand why an app, which can function completely independently, closes in this way. It is not the same as what the company did with Google Reader, which in the end depended on a backend and servers. In this case the application does not depend on anything other than the mobile phone to function. And yet it will disappear.
Alternatives to Google Podcast
YouTube Podcast is the worst. It’s not intuitive, it’s not comfortable, it’s not pretty… it has nothing. It is true that Google has promised to improve the service so that users are encouraged to use it, but, today, it is not worth it. Apple Podcasts is probably the best alternative we have right now. Of course, if you are an Apple user, since it does not have a native app for Android. And, the truth is, it’s a shame.
Spotify or iVoox are two names that also sound a lot. But they have a problem, and that is that they are both focused on a paid business model, playing ads to users (on Spotify, even if you are premium) and not rewarding content creators. And it’s better not to talk about Podimo or Podium, an aberration that sentences podcasts that sell their soul to their owners behind a paywall.
I already talked about the best alternative a few days ago: managing the podcasts yourself. If we have a server at home we can set up a service like Audiobookshelf that allows us to add all the channels we want, or, failing that, use an app called “AntennaPod”, a free, open source app without ads (only those that the podcast itself has embedded within the recording) with which, without a doubt, we will not miss Google Podcast.