Google Podcasts to shut down in 2024 with listeners migrated to YouTube Music | TechCrunch

The app was not very good but it was pretty lightweight at least, and had no ads. Sad to see it go.

Now this YouTube Music Podcasts thing seems a bit off to me. It's not clear from the description if the podcasts are coming straight from RSS feeds like other, normal podcast players or if hosts have to upload them to the YouTube system.

If it's the former, I don't see why anybody would bother with the app since there are many adless alternatives to YouTube (podbean and antennapod are pretty neat), and at most Google would only get a little extra bit of interest data for said ads.

But if it's the latter this means that they are trying to do with podcasting what they did to music, attempting to consolidate a single big hub for it (regardless of whether the authors consent) and creating their own new chokepoint. A lot of people already post other people's podcasts on YouTube with dubious permission.

If successful, that'll be yet another medium completely enveloped by the Google ad industry. I would like to pretend people would be too angry at midroll ads in their history podcasts, but the boiled frog is mush at this point.

It's kinda funny because I just watched a Doctorow interview from a couple years back where he talked about this exact thing happening. Let's see how it plays out.

Edit: apparently it is direct uploads only, but Google promised it'll have RSS feeds next year. Might as well pirate all those shitty "2 bros talking" dead podcasts for some dollar.