Podcasts became the 294th victim in the long list of closed Google projects. It became known that it would be shut down in September, and now the company has started showing a message about it to some users visiting the site.

what’s next

The good news is Your data will not be lost until July. Users will be able to keep their data until this date; so if you have a list of podcasts you want to export, you can do so and then import them to other supported services.

Announcement announcing discontinuation of service effective April 2 / Ars Technica screenshot

Google Podcasts was Google’s third podcast service, following Google Listen (2009-2012) and Google Play Music Podcasts (2016-2020). Turning off the service will clear the area. unification of all audio and video content under the YouTube brand. Many users already have a decent podcast function in YouTube Music, but it obviously doesn’t work the way they want.

Google Podcasts has always been a bit buggy and inconsistent. The project grew out of the Google Search team’s desire to index podcast content. It all started in 2016, when you could see a podcast player embedded directly into Google search results. It only worked on google.com and the Android search app. It was then spun off into a separate application, then another.

This last one, which the company closed, wasn’t perfect either. It didn’t have many functions, there were no updates and improvements – apparently the company cooled down to it and “killed it”.

But now podcasts It will be possible to listen directly to YouTube Music, which will not require a paid subscription.. Testing has been going on for months and is still not public. The company has shut down its previous service and has not yet fully launched its new service.