Time to get out of Google Podcasts for anyone that is still using the service.
For anyone getting this news here. On Android, one of the best replacements is AntennaPod.
Podcast Addict is not quite as streamlined, but has many more features.
My favorite feature is the "Automatic Rewind" combined with "Incremental rewind". It adds a rewind everytime you pause and resume an episode that increases the longer the podcast has been paused. It means that if I briefly pause, for example to respond to. Some one in real life talking to me, then it will automatically rewind 5 seconds when I start the podcast again, so I can hear the sentence I was in the middle of in full. But if I leave a podcast alone for a week, then it will rewind 1 minute so I can get fully back into the context of what I was listening to.
The dev is also very responsive if you reach out with any issues.
I have used this for years now. It's really great. I have it set to skip the first 7 minutes of only certain podcasts because they usually have 7 - 8 minutes of ads. I also have it skip silences, which speeds up listening more than I first thought it would.
Podcast Addict is exactly the kind of app I wish were in vogue again. Rather than dropping features and hiding options in a race to be "streamlined", it's a properly designed piece of software in the classic sense: its a tool first and foremost. It prioritizes usability first, aesthetics second, and gives you all the buttons and levers to make it your own.
Like, it's the kind of app where if you're using it and think "eh I don't like this one thing", if you look in the settings, there's probably a way to turn it off. God damn what I wouldn't give for this to be common place design philosophy again.
Dev is really cool and responsive, too.
This is exactly why I run Linux on all my computers, and run as much open-source software as I can, build my own home server, and set up my own home-automation. It does have a time cost, over convenience, but being able to tailor everything to my needs and wants is a wonderful feeling.
But yes, it would be wonderful if this was a more common mentality in software in general. Especially on mobile devices.
That time cost is spent optimizing, learning, and growing as an engineer. I wasn't always a full time, highly paid system engineer. It started at home, and I marketed those skills.
Indeed!
Another vote for Podcast Addict. It works with Android Auto in my car :â -â )
Now to listen to all these shows I have downloaded...
What you describe is also a feature of AntennaPod.
Edit: AntennaPod is also open source.
Awesome! I actually downloaded Antenna Pod to compare, but I can't seem to find this setting, could you point it out to me?
I don't know if it's actually a setting, I've only noticed the behaviour. Neat little feature!
Iâve always been a fan of Pocket Casts personally.
I have a lifetime membership with PocketCasts, but I don't know if I'd chose it today with the subscription. A few months ago, they shipped a buggy version and I temporarily switched to AntennaPod and was considering staying.
Oh yeah, forgot about that. I'm grandfathered into the lifetime too. Good point!
AntennaPod and was considering staying.
How do you deal with multi OS support?
I don't use multiple devices anymore, so it's not an issue for me.
I love Pocket Casts. Sadly I have a hard time recommending it to new people since they switched to subscription model payment. The reason I love it is because of what it was, not what it is. I'm grandfathered into the "pay once, own forever"and if I wasn't I would probably be using something else these days. I'm still gonna throw it in as a recommendation though, because it's damn good and people should make up their own minds in whether it is worth the payment.
I use the free tier and it is very good. Does everything I need. I won't pay for a subscription for a podcast app, so it's shame I can't buy it to show my appreciation.
In any case, the free tier is really good.
I pay $10/year for my podcast app (Overcast). Considering it does everything I want it to do that a lot of other apps donât (or didnât, years ago when I started with Overcast), and I use it 8+ hours a day it seems reasonable.
I don't mind their subscription model. All the subscription features -- cloud storage, folders, desktop app, extra themes -- really feel like bonus features that aren't essential.
I guess. I don't know what I would do without the desktop app and the cloud storage though. I just log in somewhere and everything is synced up and working.
It depends on your usage, for sure. For me, I'm more on the side of not seeing much there that's valuable enough to subscribe to, though I'd probably pay a few bucks for the app just to support them. I think that if you're happy with Google Podcasts, though, you'll be happy with Pocket Casts without a subscription. It's not like you have to pay for basic functionality, like downloading or queuing episodes, which is the evil version of the subscription model.
I really like this app, not so much paying a subscription. But I wanted access on both my phone and my PC and that was the only way to get it.
I recommend Podcast Republic. Maybe recommend that to people?
I can't recommend something I do not use.
So use it for a week đ đ
I have pocket casts set up the way I want it and, as I previously said, own the full featured product for life without extra costs. I just don't see a reason to.
That's fine. I was just saying if you wanted to recommend any other options to your friends who ask you, Podcast Republic on Android is a solid choice to consider. That's all.
Also a big fan of AntennaPod, I switched to it back when Google first announced they were axing Podcasts and thought I'd have a lot less time to abandon ship than I ended up with.
Looking at the data safety info, I think I'll go with Antenna Pod
Completely fair, it it however worth mentioning that you can disable this data collection in settings.
To be fair perhaps they want to make it possible to download the podcast unencrypted in MP3
deleted
I feel like podcasts and their apps is what TV and movies should be.
Users pick the app they want to use. They optionally pay a fee or not. The app has any and all TV, Movies, music, etc. they want. In the back end, media rights holders have a pre-defined revenue split agreement.
I'm a big fan of Podcast Republic. Great dev, feature-rich, and a much improved UI from when I first started using it.
For iOS, Overcast is the only correct answer
I have come to rather like Downcast on iOS myself. Should check it out if you never have.
I still use the default app. What can be better there?
I like that I can create my own playlists with multiple sort options. It also has more speed options, as well as its own âshorten pausesâ thing where it clips down awkward pauses and stuff.
Please elaborate.
I went to download it, and apparently I already had! Now to start subscribing to everything again...bleh.
Oh, sweet! Thank you. I'll see if I can figure this out this weekend.
PodcastAddict is better in my opinion
Yeah podcast addict was the shit
Thanks for the recommendation. I was wondering what else to try as I sure as hell don't want to use YouTube and it doesn't seem like you can have a separate podcast playlist in Spotify.
I tried AntennaPod but went back because of Android Auto. I just found this showing how to get AntennaPod on AndroidAuto!
Ah got ya, I imagined there was a joke I there but it flew over my head lol. Good one though
Nah they done it before with chat
Your sarcasm detector requires calibration.
fuck it, do gmail next, force me to find a proper provider
who exactly thinks it's good that things are this ephemeral? what's the point of even using and enjoying and getting invested in something when they constantly pull this shit?
Gmail is too valuable a source of advertising data
In other words, Google won't kill what they can use to harvest your data.
Proton mail!
Proton's legit
I mean, before Gmail, I had a new email address every 2-3 years. I've had Gmail for what, almost 20 years? That's not what I'd define as "ephemeral."
Finding an alternative is the easy part. You can get yourself a domain on Namecheap, and get an email attached to it for pennies.
Issue is that a lot of services out there don't consider alternative email providers as valid. Some as a protective measure against spam, some because... fuck knows why, honestly
Another day another piece of Google tech tossed in the trash
Google: Wanna see me create another great app and space then do no advertising and deep 6 it like, well whenever. wanna see it again?
they are like the bad version of valve with their IPs.
No advertising is correct, first I ever heard of this was hearing its getting cancelled
Tip: just don't use Google products. Highly unreliable company.
Ty I was gonna post that link lmao
I was looking for you "OMG GOOGLE IS KILLING EVERYTHING!" people. They don't have infinite money, stuff costs money to run and if it isn't as popular as their other services obviously they'd shut it down. People use their products for free (monetarily) for years and then bitch and complain when something gets shut down, never having paid a cent.
People use their products for free (monetarily) for years and then bitch and complain when something gets shut down, never having paid a cent.
Next time click on the link before commenting.
I see someone like him and block him instantly, knowing I just made life better.
Scared of differing opinions I see đ€Ł
Yeah, some things that cost money were killed off, but that's what happens when they try making everything. Most people have never paid a dime to Google.
Every single thing I use gets changed, ruined, shut down, canceled, moved, merged. It never ends.
Wound up giving up and using Google podcast BECAUSE other ones I used kept getting shut down.
Pocket Casts has been reliable for me for years. I don't even use their pro features, but I pay anyway because it's so cheap. Highly recommended.
I will never shut up about pocket casts. Their multi-device sync is wonderful. I can pick up where I left off on any episode from any of their apps. They've even got a pretty decent UWP app that I use on my Windows installs. They also have rock solid Chromecast support.
I loved it so much I bought the lifetime pass a long time ago. At any rate, I can't recommend pocket casts enough!
I need to check out the lifetime pass price, thanks for reminding me!
Unfortunately, I believe they stopped offering it some time ago. :(
Awh man. Oh well, I'll keep paying.
it seems antennapod recently got the play state sync feature using gpoddersync.
Another great app for podcasts I can recommend is Podcast Addict. Free and it's full of great features.
To clarify, Pocket Casts is also free. đ I just recommend supporting them because the pro price is so cheap.
Supported!
Cheap? Unless someone snagged Pocketcasts when it was still a one off payment app, it is NOT cheap. Heck, I can pay for YouTube Premium, Spotify Premium and still have money left for one more streaming service to plug into before I hit what Pocketcasts wants me to pay. The app is good but it is the very antithesis of cheap.
Wow, that's odd.
I'm paying 119 SEK/year for the Plus tier, which is the result of a price raise some time ago as well. But I see now that it's 533 SEK/year all of a sudden for new customers.
Still, that's not too expensive, honestly. If you need the features, it's pretty good.
I don't, so I won't pay that amount of my account is put on that price point...
Thank you for ideas to look into.
My pleasure!
Way of the world. At least the churn of enshitification means we get some new good stuff for a little while.
FFS Google's killing another app I use all the time
At this rate I half expect Google Play books to be dead before 2025
YouTube Podcasts coming to the YouTube Music app delivered to you by the Google Play game delivery app!
*being shut down in 2025
I've tried to listen to some podcasts on YouTube music. It really doesn't work well compared to Pocket Casts.
They need to separate the music and podcasts more clearly and make managing podcast playlists more intuitive
My favorite part of YT Music is how it's a terrible interface for YT videos. Second favorite part is the total mixing of music playlists and video playlists.
I buy all my ebooks on Google Play and then export them via ACSM converter and back it up (you can only convert and exported file once)
Sounds smart might give it a go, but why not simply download epub direct from an ebooks retailer?
I'm not sure what an ACSM file is, think you could give me a TLDR?
My understanding is it is a file linked to your account that links to the epub file. It lets you and only you download your copy of the epub file you purchased.
I'll never forgive them for killing iGoogle. I missed my start page so much...
Is there a way to download any books bought as pdfs?
I don't believe so
I tried to figure out how to through the app but I unfortunately couldn't find anything
Or even download them so I can view them outside of the play app?
Selfhost Audiobookshelf
I'll have to check this out for sure as I primarily listen to audiobooks rather than reading physical books or reading ebooks
They're just so much more convenient with my shitty work schedule
10 Google: Weâre so rich! Letâs make a product!
20 Google: kills product
30 goto 10
You forgot major adoption and promotion for all parties involved.
That's why I never used it, because I knew it will happen. Better to use some other solution. I wish there was a third party option to google chromecast and all the home devices that works as well.
I can't speak for the rest of the home products, but Roku is a pretty good alternative to Chromecast
I hate that all the TCL TVs this year changed from Roku and Google this year to just Google. Give me some variety and competition. Also, I like their simpler out-of-the-box interface better with less ads and such, even though the Google TV interface is more customizable.
ROKU TV HAS ADS AS WELL?
Yes they do. Usually one big ad on the side of the screen. And they may if you use certain screen savers. I think the city scapes one puts ads in it. Note: all the ads I mention are static images without sound.
Is there any TV software without ads that works well?
Hoo BOY does Roku have ads!
When I installed PiHole on my network and used it as my local DNS, the TOP blocked domain was "scribe.roku.com". It was calling home like 5000 times a day. We were thinking every single remote push maybe.
Blocking those domains made the entire interface speed up drastically, and got rid of the giant box ads on the side as well. (It's just a big empty frame now lol).
Rokus are nice and cheap if you can mitigate their rampant data harvesting.
I just gave up and attached a small form factor PC to my TV.
What are you using for control? I wouldn't mind scrapping my Roku for something a little more robust but using a mouse and keyboard on my home television seems kind of ...awful.
I picked up a Logitech K400, it's working well enough for now. I'm still evaluating the best use cases and access methods for everything but it's good enough for when I need to just toss a browser up on my screen. Much more convenient than going to my PC in another room to cast a tab; I got tired of getting off the couch just b/c a stream needs to be refreshed.
Thanks for the response
Yeah, I have one of those at work on a central presentation machine. It does ok
Maybe my problem is more getting away from windows and moving to kodi or something. Trying to run a regular desktop GUI from across the room is just an uncomfortable thing.
FWIW I'm dealing with that issue, too. You can size things up and make it work okay but it's not an amazing experience. I'm also looking at an alternative UI since the vast majority of what I want it for is browser based. I'm exploring some flavors of linux, but I have yet to encounter something that gives me the TV-like interface with PC functionality behind the scenes.
What's a good alternative to Google maps? I'm getting sick of it.
Another service that I didn't know google even offered until they announced it was dying. There are so many sources that podcast apps can pull from that we don't need half as many as we have.
I actually really enjoy it. It's my go to no frills podcast app that isn't paired with music or other extra stuff
I used podcast addict. It does what I need it to do.
It does what you need it to do because it does everything. Podcast Addict is one of the most feature rich apps.
podcast addict is fantastic, I tried a lot of different options before settling on it
I now use pocket cast , it's similar with its simplistically but still different.
I've been using AntennaPod and it is no frills and works flawlessly.
Podcasts are just mp3s (or whatever other audio format like ogg). Authors/pod casters should just host them on their site and be done with it. Why let some other company take a lion share of your ad profit. We need less centralized services and more distributed services. Use lemmy or mastodon to promote them. :)
There is value in aggregate discoverabilty via these sites. They also post to all of them not just one. Podcast advertising is dying across the board.
I use it, I like it and it works with zero issues. It also easily works with my Google Home speaker. So of course it gets shut down. Because obviously. Sigh.
That said, Pocket Casts on iOS is also quite decent.
Same I pivoted to PocketCasts
Odd, I use the same on mobile and max hub and find they only sync on way. If I listen to one on the hub I have to manually remember where I left off.
Pocket Casts has both an Android and iOS version. If you pay for their "subscription" their web app also works, though I've never used it I've heard good things.
They say it's crazy YouTube could end. I'm not so sure.
I don't think they have any qualms about shutting down YouTube but I think they're afraid of the backlash. It's such a unique treasure trove of cultural significance that is not out of the question for the US government to step in and tell them to put at least some of it in the Library of Congress or to work with other organizations to preserve it. And they'd rather let it run than be bothered.
I've heard a theory that says that Google isn't interested in any of their products for the product's sake. They're all data-gathering experiments. Once they're done mining that particular kind of data they shutter the project. If they ever need to revisit that category later, they make another similar product.
It would certainly explain why they shut down certain projects in the face of commercial success, or why they keep revisiting the messenger app over and over in different ways.
It would also explain their inept attempts at monetizing YouTube. Keeping an experiment alive past it's expiration date is unfamiliar to them so they have no idea what to do with it.
YouTube is the app around which both Google Play Music and now Podcasts are shutting down, so I doubt YouTube will go away. I wonât be surprised, however, if other apps are incorporated in like Play Movies and Play Books even.
Shitting down YouTube would be like shuttering Gmail or even Search. Seems unlikely.
Looking forward to the launch of YouTube Books /s
I know it sounds funny, but to clarify I meant for delivering audiobooks.
Arent Play Movies already integrated in YT?
A movie and tv show I "bought" in the store are only watchable on YT.
Google shutting down youtube would be such a huge confidence loss that I don't think they would ever recover. It'll never happen unless things change drastically.
Thru could decide to incorporate it separately (which would be ironic considering it started out separate and they forced it into Google), and then let it find its own way.
YouTube is too big and dominates too much of certain spaces for streaming. Shutting it down would be stupid. If Google no longer wanted it, it would make WAY more sense to sell. Someone would pay billions for that.
Edit: also, YouTube made $8billion in ad sales last quarter. YouTube ainât going anywhere right now.
Well, to be more clear, I was trying to say that YouTube could end as a business for Google. I'm not sure if YouTube is doing well right now, financially, and these whole ad management looks like a desperate move.
YouTube has recently been exceeding street expectations and made $8billion in ad sales last quarter alone. Even when revenue took a 2% dip a while back, that business is still a damn cash cow.
Yeah, I still doubt it long-term. It's become truly annoying to watch YouTube videos without workarounds/Premium these days. Their membership is also more expensive as time goes by. I guess, as long as it is a monopoly, they may keep pushing this. Maybe it's just me, but feels tired.
Room to give a shout out to Podverse, free and open source!
AntennaPod is another great option. I've already switched after the initial announcement.
Absolutely love AntennaPod
I gave AntennaPod a try and was blown away at the granular control you are allowed over everything. Its a fantastic app that set a new standard for what I look for in an other apps now.
I needed this rec, thanks.
google tries not to kill one of it's products challenge (impossible)
Google seems to be caught in an awful feedback loop. I feel like at this point, most tech savy people are weary to try new Google services for fear of liking them, but eventually getting shutdown. In turn causing those tech savy users to not recommend it to their friends/family that actually might cause it to grow.
Honestly don't know how they get out it without either losing tons of money on maybe side projects or happening across the one things that's so good it's impossible to not use. The latter seems more unlikely by the day
I'm long past attaching anything important to new google services. They'd have to pay me to use their shit.
Lol this is just google reader for your ears
Anyone have a suggestion for a alternative simple light weight podcast app for android?
Edit: I installed antennapod and it's exactly what I was looking for. Very light weight and even open source. Thank you for all the suggestions.
Pocket casts. Also, you might be able to export your podcast subscriptions from Google Podcasts in opml format.
Antenna pod is great. I switched to it from google podcasts a couple months ago figuring this would happen.
Seconding AntennaPod, it's been my daily driver for years. Open source, good community, continual improvements.
Thirding! (is that a thing?)
I recently noticed it has the option to import/export your subscriptions, which is useful for backups or if the podcast app you're migrating from supports the .opml file format too.
Great suggestion. Thank you both!
Podcast Addict
I recently stopped using this. I prefer paying for things so I know they will be taken care of, but their price increases came without any improvements to the service for a while. If you are okay with paying though, it's pretty good.
AntennaPod is free and has worked well for me so far as a replacement. It isn't as intuitive with its discovery feature, but it works well enough.
This was my favorite but I thought it shut down
No, they got acquired by Automatic (AKA that Wordpress company). Theyâre still plugging along though.
Pocket casts, fucking amazing!
I've been using the BeyondPod app. Simple and has a cast feature.
It's the only one that I've found that has Smart Play. I'm not sure why not all podcast players have this, it's such a great feature. Going back to something without it, would feel like going back to the stone age.
Another +1 for AntenaPod. It's fantastic.
Podcast addict
Podcast Republic. I don't know if it's the best, but I'm used to it and it does everything I want and nothing I don't want. It's also open source.
I've been using BeyondPod for years.
Podkicker
They didn't market this very well. Literally the first time I'm hearing about this
Name literally one thing that Google markets well.
Well, we use the word Google to mean using a search engine now, so that one was done pretty well. Otherwise I'm not sure.
As a Google Fi user, I really should be looking for something else.
Fi hasnât been competitive in many years anyway. You can get more and faster data for cheaper.
Honestly depends on location
Where I live, all the towers are Verizon (same signal as Google Fi) and US Cellular, and it's cheaper than both
Verizon has prioritized traffic so other carriers get faster speeds than Fi over the same network.
I'll have to disagree here. Not only is the base plan for Fi cheaper, by a landslide, than any alternative I have, but it's also flexible. On top of that, they allow me to pay 0$ extra when I travel, on both calls, and data. That alone is a gigantic selling point to me, because it eliminated any need for temporary local sim cards
Yeah with fewer features and extra bullshit like not being able to tether, no intl coverage, no wifi calling etc. I have yet to find a real replacement for fi.
I learned with Google music never get involved with Google with something you'll want to use daily. Google music hands down was the absolute best music service I've ever used. Google is like a kid with ADHD bouncing around from project to project never to see them through.
I used it from the start, I got in on the beta, and while it was nice, I wouldn't say "it was the absolute best". IMO Spotify is just as good, in fact I'd say it's better. It was nice that you could upload 20,000 of your own songs, but that was back before we had hundreds of gigs available on our phones.
Why do you consider it "the absolute best"?
For me it was the ability to upload my own library and stream it without a subscription, I ended up switching to plex and running my own server for a while but yeah Spotify just has the best deal with no effort so I caved to that especially with a family plan you can't beat it.
IIRC Play Music was a paid service, it probably had a free tier with ads/commercials, but I definitely paid for it. That's how I got grandfathered into YouTube Premium (when they launched YouTube Red as it was called it came "free" with the subscription to Play Music) and can't go back to the free tier or deal with the various hacked clients and ad blockers. It's been over a decade of ad-free YouTube (except for the sponsor segments everyone does now, I do use SmartTube on my Nvidia Shield to skip those).
Yeah I think at some point they started subscriptions but you were able to keep your old library from before
As a former Google Play Music user and lover, it was the recommendations. I haven't found another service that shows me even a significant fraction of the music I like that Google did. I've switched to Spotify but it constantly recommends songs I've already heard or don't like and the shuffle feature gives me the same ~50 songs from a large playlist. It's something I've accepted but I miss the Google recommendations deeply.
Have you tried Pandora? I always thought Pandora was better at recommending music than GPM was, but it was close.
I'm the opposite, I never really used GPM's recommendations because I knew what I liked and had tons of ripped CDs in my collection. After we all ditched MP3s and went to streaming I still stuck with what I knew. I only switched to Spotify about 2 years ago and it has opened me up to a bunch of smaller artists in Europe (I'm in the US) that I would have never found on my own. One of them (Green Lads) I've listened to for 2500 hours this past year thanks to their recommendations.
Yet another Google product that goes into the grave.
virtually everything that Google developed in-house was a failure. Videos, social media, WiFi balloons, smart cities. They couldn't even keep an RSS reader running.
Years ago, Google shut down services I used and since then, I donât get involved in anything they put out there on the market. This will include their AI service.
Only thing they are allowed to provide me is email. Iâm even using YT and search drastically less.
Why even use their email? Itâs not encrypted so youâre the only one who can read it. They can read it too, and they do. They scan your email and use it to target ads at you. Bought something? They collect that data and look at the receipt, exactly how much you spent on each item. Thatâs creepy and weird.
Recommend switching to an encrypted email provider like Skiff, Proton, or Tuta. Iâve used all, but really digging Skiff at the moment.
Why use it
Good UI and I don't care that they're scraping my email for anything, I don't even see the ads they want to serve me thanks to my ad lockers
Extra work to move to a new email for literally no gains for me
Ignorance is bliss
Lol, this is why people don't like the FOSS evangelists, you act like pricks that are better/smarter than other people
I use it because I'm less concerned with email privacy than you and it has a good UX
lol it must be nice being stupid
FOSS and privacy are 2 completely different things. If Gmail software was FOSS his points would still be relevant. Try to dislike people for the right reasons at least.
Yeah, hate me for being kind of abrasive. Like me for being right and having your best interests at heart, not some corporationâs.
Hey, makes no difference to me. There are a lot of reasons to protect yourself and your privacy online. Ads is one. Government snooping is another. Hackers stealing your data is another. Rogue employees snooping on your data is another (countless stories of Facebook employees reading their exes private messages, Iâm sure itâs happened at Google too). Being logged into Gmail makes it possible to track you on nearly any website you visit since Google trackers can phone home with your unique identifiers is another!
Good UX is a piss-poor reason to not care for your digital privacy, not just because itâs less important than the nuts and bolts, but because there are providers that offer encryption with good UX. Skiff is on par with Gmail. Proton isnât far off. They both offer free tiers. Skiff almost offers the same amount of free storage as Gmail. The only difference is you donât have that gross feeling like someone could stalk you on every website you visit, or read your messages.
Just advising you to use protection, for your benefit. But go ahead, bang the hooker without a condom. It doesnât impact me in the slightest whether you heed this advice. I say this as someone who was one of the earliest adopters of Gmail. I had a Gmail account before they were publicly available. I donât use that shit anymore.
They aren't using my emails for anything interesting as far as I can tell. Google ad sense either recommends I buy something that I bought months ago and don't need another one or recommends me content that I have zero interest in. I get so many ads for Epoch Times and Hillsdale.
Yeah I don't directly use any Google service that I'm not paying for. They either shut it down monetize the hell out of it or change how it works so that I have to change how I do things.
Same, but I still use Google docs to store copies of all my published work.
It's been known for over a year that they're planning to replace it with YouTube music
Google has tried like three different podcast apps and they all suck.
I switched to Antennapod already. Nothing to complain about.
AntennaPod is amazing, literally my favorite app ever
Another one bites the dust !
There's a website called "killed by google"
It's nice to see the giant graveyard of products they hyped up and then killed when a tiny percentage of people stopped using it for an instant.
Another one bites the dust
Sing it (another one bites the dust)
And another one gone, and another one gone
Another one bites the dust
Hey, I'm gonna get you too
Another one bites the dust
Time to get out of Google Podcasts for anyone that is still using the service
I have a Gmail account that catches/forwards stuff now and again that I signed up for over a decade ago, before I used a password manager and kept track of everything, and YouTube. A Google store line of credit, too, for pixels. Everything else I've migrated to my own website, or my own 'cloud'.
There was a big issue with Google Store/Fi Store a few years ago where devices were being 'lost' in transit, and it ended up being FedEx employees stealing them and resealing the packages. But Google's handling of the situation was absolutely shit, and two years of reading horror stories usually around bf or the holidays, drove me to migrate my account, one service at a time, to somewhere I could actually control and trust - as it is well-known that if you do a chargeback on G, they axe your gPay access, which means you can't buy or pay for anything: drive/photo storage, gOne, devices, apps/music/movies/games/books, app subscriptions, pay your bill on Fi or gDomains... and if it happened to me, I would not sit quietly with no device for weeks or months while G put the blame and suspicion on me. Fuck all that. Chargeback baby, it's not gonna be my problem anymoreeeee~
Took me from an outspoken G fanboy to 'run the fuck away' within 24 months, and all it took was stories of other's being treated like shit and being on the hook for hundreds or a thousand+ dollar devices, over and over, while support did fuck-all and the actual people 'investigating' were not accessible by any means.
This is ofc on top of G axing shit because they feel like it. Run your own mini server, own your data, don't be at the non-existant mercy of a massive soulless corporation.
Same shit happened when the Steam Deck released in 2022 as well. A bunch of them disappeared into FedEx. Fortunately, Valve promptly took care of anyone who was affected.
I have a few accounts for this purpose. I know at least one service I've had forwarded for years.
I jumped ship from most g- products years ago. I really should log into my accounts again and have anything necessary sent directly to my real email.
For a company that seems to want customers, they sure seem to also hate customers.
I know it sounds like a cliche, but you are not Googleâs customer. You are a âuserâ and Google sells users to their customers. Your data and attention are their products.
So when I buy a phone from Google, I'm...? A customer. In my opinion, and probably some legal sense as well. I'm also their user, sure. But if I purchase something I'm a customer.
There is a small sliver of Google that wants you as a customer. Maybe thatâs the sliver that makes the Pixel line, but Pixel phones are not Googleâs business, Googleâs business is acquiring your information and selling it or leveraging it to increase ad revenue. Google is not a hardware company, though they sell hardware. Google is not an entertainment company, though they will sell you movies and music. Google is not a consumer software company, though they do provide software and services targeted at consumers and businesses. Google is an advertising company. If you buy hardware from them, and you like it, thatâs great, but they are less concerned about your experience as an end-user than they are about acquiring your data to further their ad sales. If making a quality experience for you as a user Improves the likelihood of acquiring more data, they improve the quality of your experience. But if an improved experience hampers their ability to acquire more revenue through ad sales, they will hamper your experience or shut down a product that isnât directly increasing their data collection and add sales. See: rolling everything content related into the YouTube brand and increasingly hampering the experience of those who use ad blockers or privacy focused browsers.
You may consider yourself a customer of Google, but until youâre giving them millions of dollars every quarter, you are just a user. Googleâs profits from every hardware device theyâve ever sold is just a rounding error on a single quarter of the massive amounts of money they make selling ads.
I mean... Okay. But they're still begging us for money. YouTube and Google are asking us for subscriptions to many of their services, like YouTube premium, Google One Drive, etc. So yes, I do consider myself a customer no matter the percentage of their revenue I make up.
they are less concerned about your experience as an end-user than they are about acquiring your data
I guess this is my issue, as a customer, with them. I'm not willing to pay for garbage customer support and customer relations.
Now, a new support article details Google's plans to kill the product, with a shutdown coming in April 2024.
I think all the core podcast features exist somewhere, but they are buried in several menus.
There are more podcast-centric features sequestered away in YouTube Music, where a button with the very confusing label "Save to library" will subscribe to a podcast feed.
Music is a different interface, site, and app, so none of these billions of YouTube viewers are seeing these podcast features.
But this is the future of Google's podcast content, so the company is plowing ahead with it.
If you're looking to get off Google's wild ride and want something straightforward that works across platforms, I recommend Pocket Casts.
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I am, what's a good alternative.
I absolutely love Podcast Addict.
That's the best one I found because of all the options. Prioritizing podcasts and auto downloading and adding them to the queue is so good. I listen to a news podcast that is like 10 minutes long everyday and I like that I could have it downloaded and play first on my commute then continue where I left off on the other podcasts without having to do it manually like with spotify
I'll add another vote for Podcast Addict.
I like Podcast Republic because it's easy to keep it simple for troglodytes like myself who don't want or need all the bells and whistles.
I love AntennnaPod - except when I'm in the car. It doesn't have Android Auto support.
Unacceptable for me! That's almost the only time I listen to podcasts, while driving...
This is probably a good time to download your favorite podcast offline while they are available. Because some might not ever comeback.
Great. Now use kasts and Antenna Pod
How does this impact listening to podcasts on Google home devices?
I use Spotify for my podcasts, but I will never check out YouTube Music podcasts. Having 2 ads before the start of a podcast as if I'm watching a YouTube video is just unacceptable for me.
Other than being relieved when they removed the podcast from Google play music (after shoehorning it into the GPM app for no good reason), I didn't really use this much. Pocketcasts has pretty much always done what I needed.
Aaaaand this is why I didn't move my podcasts to Google Podcasts.
Good. Podcast index 2.0.
Called it!
To their credit, at least they're still trying to build stuff. Microsoft avoids this problem by no longer innovating and just buying into whatever is trending. (Not that Google also isn't doing the same). If you never build anything new, you never risk killing a product that didn't trend, which happens a lot.
I think if they decide to kill off a product they should be required to open source it.
Required by who? Lemmy posters? How would this possibly be enforced? What constitutes a product vs a feature?
It's not even like Google podcasts was anything special, there's tons of better alternatives.
I think that if google wants to kill a product they should ask users to vote and not decide on there own. If they continue this trend they will keep loosing people to their competition.
For anyone getting this news here. On Android, one of the best replacements is AntennaPod.
Podcast Addict is not quite as streamlined, but has many more features.
My favorite feature is the "Automatic Rewind" combined with "Incremental rewind". It adds a rewind everytime you pause and resume an episode that increases the longer the podcast has been paused. It means that if I briefly pause, for example to respond to. Some one in real life talking to me, then it will automatically rewind 5 seconds when I start the podcast again, so I can hear the sentence I was in the middle of in full. But if I leave a podcast alone for a week, then it will rewind 1 minute so I can get fully back into the context of what I was listening to.
The dev is also very responsive if you reach out with any issues.
I have used this for years now. It's really great. I have it set to skip the first 7 minutes of only certain podcasts because they usually have 7 - 8 minutes of ads. I also have it skip silences, which speeds up listening more than I first thought it would.
Podcast Addict is exactly the kind of app I wish were in vogue again. Rather than dropping features and hiding options in a race to be "streamlined", it's a properly designed piece of software in the classic sense: its a tool first and foremost. It prioritizes usability first, aesthetics second, and gives you all the buttons and levers to make it your own.
Like, it's the kind of app where if you're using it and think "eh I don't like this one thing", if you look in the settings, there's probably a way to turn it off. God damn what I wouldn't give for this to be common place design philosophy again.
Dev is really cool and responsive, too.
This is exactly why I run Linux on all my computers, and run as much open-source software as I can, build my own home server, and set up my own home-automation. It does have a time cost, over convenience, but being able to tailor everything to my needs and wants is a wonderful feeling.
But yes, it would be wonderful if this was a more common mentality in software in general. Especially on mobile devices.
That time cost is spent optimizing, learning, and growing as an engineer. I wasn't always a full time, highly paid system engineer. It started at home, and I marketed those skills.
Indeed!
Another vote for Podcast Addict. It works with Android Auto in my car :â -â )
Now to listen to all these shows I have downloaded...
What you describe is also a feature of AntennaPod.
Edit: AntennaPod is also open source.
Awesome! I actually downloaded Antenna Pod to compare, but I can't seem to find this setting, could you point it out to me?
I don't know if it's actually a setting, I've only noticed the behaviour. Neat little feature!
Iâve always been a fan of Pocket Casts personally.
I have a lifetime membership with PocketCasts, but I don't know if I'd chose it today with the subscription. A few months ago, they shipped a buggy version and I temporarily switched to AntennaPod and was considering staying.
Oh yeah, forgot about that. I'm grandfathered into the lifetime too. Good point!
How do you deal with multi OS support?
I don't use multiple devices anymore, so it's not an issue for me.
I love Pocket Casts. Sadly I have a hard time recommending it to new people since they switched to subscription model payment. The reason I love it is because of what it was, not what it is. I'm grandfathered into the "pay once, own forever"and if I wasn't I would probably be using something else these days. I'm still gonna throw it in as a recommendation though, because it's damn good and people should make up their own minds in whether it is worth the payment.
I use the free tier and it is very good. Does everything I need. I won't pay for a subscription for a podcast app, so it's shame I can't buy it to show my appreciation.
In any case, the free tier is really good.
I pay $10/year for my podcast app (Overcast). Considering it does everything I want it to do that a lot of other apps donât (or didnât, years ago when I started with Overcast), and I use it 8+ hours a day it seems reasonable.
I don't mind their subscription model. All the subscription features -- cloud storage, folders, desktop app, extra themes -- really feel like bonus features that aren't essential.
I guess. I don't know what I would do without the desktop app and the cloud storage though. I just log in somewhere and everything is synced up and working.
It depends on your usage, for sure. For me, I'm more on the side of not seeing much there that's valuable enough to subscribe to, though I'd probably pay a few bucks for the app just to support them. I think that if you're happy with Google Podcasts, though, you'll be happy with Pocket Casts without a subscription. It's not like you have to pay for basic functionality, like downloading or queuing episodes, which is the evil version of the subscription model.
I really like this app, not so much paying a subscription. But I wanted access on both my phone and my PC and that was the only way to get it.
I recommend Podcast Republic. Maybe recommend that to people?
I can't recommend something I do not use.
So use it for a week đ đ
I have pocket casts set up the way I want it and, as I previously said, own the full featured product for life without extra costs. I just don't see a reason to.
That's fine. I was just saying if you wanted to recommend any other options to your friends who ask you, Podcast Republic on Android is a solid choice to consider. That's all.
Also a big fan of AntennaPod, I switched to it back when Google first announced they were axing Podcasts and thought I'd have a lot less time to abandon ship than I ended up with.
Looking at the data safety info, I think I'll go with Antenna Pod
Completely fair, it it however worth mentioning that you can disable this data collection in settings.
To be fair perhaps they want to make it possible to download the podcast unencrypted in MP3
deleted
I feel like podcasts and their apps is what TV and movies should be.
Users pick the app they want to use. They optionally pay a fee or not. The app has any and all TV, Movies, music, etc. they want. In the back end, media rights holders have a pre-defined revenue split agreement.
It's like federated media.
I'm a big fan of Podcast Republic. Great dev, feature-rich, and a much improved UI from when I first started using it.
For iOS, Overcast is the only correct answer
I have come to rather like Downcast on iOS myself. Should check it out if you never have.
I still use the default app. What can be better there?
I like that I can create my own playlists with multiple sort options. It also has more speed options, as well as its own âshorten pausesâ thing where it clips down awkward pauses and stuff.
Please elaborate.
I went to download it, and apparently I already had! Now to start subscribing to everything again...bleh.
Thereâs also the option to export Google Podcasts subscriptions as an OPML file if you want to switch to a third-party app.
Oh, sweet! Thank you. I'll see if I can figure this out this weekend.
PodcastAddict is better in my opinion
Yeah podcast addict was the shit
Thanks for the recommendation. I was wondering what else to try as I sure as hell don't want to use YouTube and it doesn't seem like you can have a separate podcast playlist in Spotify.
I tried AntennaPod but went back because of Android Auto. I just found this showing how to get AntennaPod on AndroidAuto!
https://antennapod.org/documentation/playback/android-auto
Selfhost Audiobookshelf
Google killing a product? No way
Who did they kill?
https://killedbygoogle.com/
The joke was that we're Google's products.
I liked yer joke :c
Ah got ya, I imagined there was a joke I there but it flew over my head lol. Good one though
Nah they done it before with chat
Your sarcasm detector requires calibration.
fuck it, do gmail next, force me to find a proper provider
who exactly thinks it's good that things are this ephemeral? what's the point of even using and enjoying and getting invested in something when they constantly pull this shit?
Gmail is too valuable a source of advertising data
In other words, Google won't kill what they can use to harvest your data.
Proton mail!
Proton's legit
I mean, before Gmail, I had a new email address every 2-3 years. I've had Gmail for what, almost 20 years? That's not what I'd define as "ephemeral."
Finding an alternative is the easy part. You can get yourself a domain on Namecheap, and get an email attached to it for pennies.
Issue is that a lot of services out there don't consider alternative email providers as valid. Some as a protective measure against spam, some because... fuck knows why, honestly
Another day another piece of Google tech tossed in the trash
Google: Wanna see me create another great app and space then do no advertising and deep 6 it like, well whenever. wanna see it again?
they are like the bad version of valve with their IPs.
No advertising is correct, first I ever heard of this was hearing its getting cancelled
That's not why they're killing t though, it's because they're moving it to YouTube to get subscriptions.
How long until they shut down Search? Itâs been dog shit for years.
killedbygoogle.com
Tip: just don't use Google products. Highly unreliable company.
Ty I was gonna post that link lmao
I was looking for you "OMG GOOGLE IS KILLING EVERYTHING!" people. They don't have infinite money, stuff costs money to run and if it isn't as popular as their other services obviously they'd shut it down. People use their products for free (monetarily) for years and then bitch and complain when something gets shut down, never having paid a cent.
Next time click on the link before commenting.
I see someone like him and block him instantly, knowing I just made life better.
Scared of differing opinions I see đ€Ł
Yeah, some things that cost money were killed off, but that's what happens when they try making everything. Most people have never paid a dime to Google.
Every single thing I use gets changed, ruined, shut down, canceled, moved, merged. It never ends.
Wound up giving up and using Google podcast BECAUSE other ones I used kept getting shut down.
Pocket Casts has been reliable for me for years. I don't even use their pro features, but I pay anyway because it's so cheap. Highly recommended.
I will never shut up about pocket casts. Their multi-device sync is wonderful. I can pick up where I left off on any episode from any of their apps. They've even got a pretty decent UWP app that I use on my Windows installs. They also have rock solid Chromecast support.
I loved it so much I bought the lifetime pass a long time ago. At any rate, I can't recommend pocket casts enough!
I need to check out the lifetime pass price, thanks for reminding me!
Unfortunately, I believe they stopped offering it some time ago. :(
Awh man. Oh well, I'll keep paying.
it seems antennapod recently got the play state sync feature using gpoddersync.
Another great app for podcasts I can recommend is Podcast Addict. Free and it's full of great features.
To clarify, Pocket Casts is also free. đ I just recommend supporting them because the pro price is so cheap.
Supported!
Cheap? Unless someone snagged Pocketcasts when it was still a one off payment app, it is NOT cheap. Heck, I can pay for YouTube Premium, Spotify Premium and still have money left for one more streaming service to plug into before I hit what Pocketcasts wants me to pay. The app is good but it is the very antithesis of cheap.
Wow, that's odd.
I'm paying 119 SEK/year for the Plus tier, which is the result of a price raise some time ago as well. But I see now that it's 533 SEK/year all of a sudden for new customers.
Still, that's not too expensive, honestly. If you need the features, it's pretty good.
I don't, so I won't pay that amount of my account is put on that price point...
Thank you for ideas to look into.
My pleasure!
Way of the world. At least the churn of enshitification means we get some new good stuff for a little while.
FFS Google's killing another app I use all the time
At this rate I half expect Google Play books to be dead before 2025
YouTube Podcasts coming to the YouTube Music app delivered to you by the Google Play game delivery app!
*being shut down in 2025
I've tried to listen to some podcasts on YouTube music. It really doesn't work well compared to Pocket Casts. They need to separate the music and podcasts more clearly and make managing podcast playlists more intuitive
My favorite part of YT Music is how it's a terrible interface for YT videos. Second favorite part is the total mixing of music playlists and video playlists.
I buy all my ebooks on Google Play and then export them via ACSM converter and back it up (you can only convert and exported file once)
Sounds smart might give it a go, but why not simply download epub direct from an ebooks retailer?
I'm not sure what an ACSM file is, think you could give me a TLDR?
My understanding is it is a file linked to your account that links to the epub file. It lets you and only you download your copy of the epub file you purchased.
I'll never forgive them for killing iGoogle. I missed my start page so much...
Is there a way to download any books bought as pdfs?
I don't believe so
I tried to figure out how to through the app but I unfortunately couldn't find anything
Or even download them so I can view them outside of the play app?
Selfhost Audiobookshelf
I'll have to check this out for sure as I primarily listen to audiobooks rather than reading physical books or reading ebooks
They're just so much more convenient with my shitty work schedule
10 Google: Weâre so rich! Letâs make a product!
20 Google: kills product
30 goto 10
You forgot major adoption and promotion for all parties involved.
That's why I never used it, because I knew it will happen. Better to use some other solution. I wish there was a third party option to google chromecast and all the home devices that works as well.
I can't speak for the rest of the home products, but Roku is a pretty good alternative to Chromecast
I hate that all the TCL TVs this year changed from Roku and Google this year to just Google. Give me some variety and competition. Also, I like their simpler out-of-the-box interface better with less ads and such, even though the Google TV interface is more customizable.
ROKU TV HAS ADS AS WELL?
Yes they do. Usually one big ad on the side of the screen. And they may if you use certain screen savers. I think the city scapes one puts ads in it. Note: all the ads I mention are static images without sound.
Is there any TV software without ads that works well?
Hoo BOY does Roku have ads! When I installed PiHole on my network and used it as my local DNS, the TOP blocked domain was "scribe.roku.com". It was calling home like 5000 times a day. We were thinking every single remote push maybe.
Blocking those domains made the entire interface speed up drastically, and got rid of the giant box ads on the side as well. (It's just a big empty frame now lol).
Rokus are nice and cheap if you can mitigate their rampant data harvesting.
I just gave up and attached a small form factor PC to my TV.
What are you using for control? I wouldn't mind scrapping my Roku for something a little more robust but using a mouse and keyboard on my home television seems kind of ...awful.
I picked up a Logitech K400, it's working well enough for now. I'm still evaluating the best use cases and access methods for everything but it's good enough for when I need to just toss a browser up on my screen. Much more convenient than going to my PC in another room to cast a tab; I got tired of getting off the couch just b/c a stream needs to be refreshed.
Thanks for the response
Yeah, I have one of those at work on a central presentation machine. It does ok
Maybe my problem is more getting away from windows and moving to kodi or something. Trying to run a regular desktop GUI from across the room is just an uncomfortable thing.
FWIW I'm dealing with that issue, too. You can size things up and make it work okay but it's not an amazing experience. I'm also looking at an alternative UI since the vast majority of what I want it for is browser based. I'm exploring some flavors of linux, but I have yet to encounter something that gives me the TV-like interface with PC functionality behind the scenes.
Steam Deck ftw.
It is my everything. Seriously.
Pocketcasts is great and supports Chromecast
Thanks, I know.
Lmao. I'm shocked.
Never rely on Google apps.
The end.
What's a good alternative to Google maps? I'm getting sick of it.
Another service that I didn't know google even offered until they announced it was dying. There are so many sources that podcast apps can pull from that we don't need half as many as we have.
I actually really enjoy it. It's my go to no frills podcast app that isn't paired with music or other extra stuff
I used podcast addict. It does what I need it to do.
It does what you need it to do because it does everything. Podcast Addict is one of the most feature rich apps.
podcast addict is fantastic, I tried a lot of different options before settling on it
I now use pocket cast , it's similar with its simplistically but still different.
I've been using AntennaPod and it is no frills and works flawlessly.
Podcasts are just mp3s (or whatever other audio format like ogg). Authors/pod casters should just host them on their site and be done with it. Why let some other company take a lion share of your ad profit. We need less centralized services and more distributed services. Use lemmy or mastodon to promote them. :)
There is value in aggregate discoverabilty via these sites. They also post to all of them not just one. Podcast advertising is dying across the board.
I use it, I like it and it works with zero issues. It also easily works with my Google Home speaker. So of course it gets shut down. Because obviously. Sigh.
That said, Pocket Casts on iOS is also quite decent.
Same I pivoted to PocketCasts
Odd, I use the same on mobile and max hub and find they only sync on way. If I listen to one on the hub I have to manually remember where I left off.
Pocket Casts has both an Android and iOS version. If you pay for their "subscription" their web app also works, though I've never used it I've heard good things.
Another one in the Google graveyard.
They say it's crazy YouTube could end. I'm not so sure.
I don't think they have any qualms about shutting down YouTube but I think they're afraid of the backlash. It's such a unique treasure trove of cultural significance that is not out of the question for the US government to step in and tell them to put at least some of it in the Library of Congress or to work with other organizations to preserve it. And they'd rather let it run than be bothered.
I've heard a theory that says that Google isn't interested in any of their products for the product's sake. They're all data-gathering experiments. Once they're done mining that particular kind of data they shutter the project. If they ever need to revisit that category later, they make another similar product.
It would certainly explain why they shut down certain projects in the face of commercial success, or why they keep revisiting the messenger app over and over in different ways.
It would also explain their inept attempts at monetizing YouTube. Keeping an experiment alive past it's expiration date is unfamiliar to them so they have no idea what to do with it.
YouTube is the app around which both Google Play Music and now Podcasts are shutting down, so I doubt YouTube will go away. I wonât be surprised, however, if other apps are incorporated in like Play Movies and Play Books even.
Shitting down YouTube would be like shuttering Gmail or even Search. Seems unlikely.
Looking forward to the launch of YouTube Books /s
I know it sounds funny, but to clarify I meant for delivering audiobooks.
Arent Play Movies already integrated in YT?
A movie and tv show I "bought" in the store are only watchable on YT.
Google shutting down youtube would be such a huge confidence loss that I don't think they would ever recover. It'll never happen unless things change drastically.
Thru could decide to incorporate it separately (which would be ironic considering it started out separate and they forced it into Google), and then let it find its own way.
YouTube is too big and dominates too much of certain spaces for streaming. Shutting it down would be stupid. If Google no longer wanted it, it would make WAY more sense to sell. Someone would pay billions for that.
Edit: also, YouTube made $8billion in ad sales last quarter. YouTube ainât going anywhere right now.
Well, to be more clear, I was trying to say that YouTube could end as a business for Google. I'm not sure if YouTube is doing well right now, financially, and these whole ad management looks like a desperate move.
YouTube has recently been exceeding street expectations and made $8billion in ad sales last quarter alone. Even when revenue took a 2% dip a while back, that business is still a damn cash cow.
Yeah, I still doubt it long-term. It's become truly annoying to watch YouTube videos without workarounds/Premium these days. Their membership is also more expensive as time goes by. I guess, as long as it is a monopoly, they may keep pushing this. Maybe it's just me, but feels tired.
Room to give a shout out to Podverse, free and open source!
https://www.f-droid.org/packages/com.podverse.fdroid/
AntennaPod is another great option. I've already switched after the initial announcement.
Absolutely love AntennaPod
I gave AntennaPod a try and was blown away at the granular control you are allowed over everything. Its a fantastic app that set a new standard for what I look for in an other apps now.
I needed this rec, thanks.
google tries not to kill one of it's products challenge (impossible)
Google seems to be caught in an awful feedback loop. I feel like at this point, most tech savy people are weary to try new Google services for fear of liking them, but eventually getting shutdown. In turn causing those tech savy users to not recommend it to their friends/family that actually might cause it to grow.
Honestly don't know how they get out it without either losing tons of money on maybe side projects or happening across the one things that's so good it's impossible to not use. The latter seems more unlikely by the day
I'm long past attaching anything important to new google services. They'd have to pay me to use their shit.
Lol this is just google reader for your ears
Anyone have a suggestion for a alternative simple light weight podcast app for android?
Edit: I installed antennapod and it's exactly what I was looking for. Very light weight and even open source. Thank you for all the suggestions.
Pocket casts. Also, you might be able to export your podcast subscriptions from Google Podcasts in opml format.
Antenna pod is great. I switched to it from google podcasts a couple months ago figuring this would happen.
Seconding AntennaPod, it's been my daily driver for years. Open source, good community, continual improvements.
Thirding! (is that a thing?)
I recently noticed it has the option to import/export your subscriptions, which is useful for backups or if the podcast app you're migrating from supports the .opml file format too.
Great suggestion. Thank you both!
Podcast Addict
I recently stopped using this. I prefer paying for things so I know they will be taken care of, but their price increases came without any improvements to the service for a while. If you are okay with paying though, it's pretty good.
AntennaPod is free and has worked well for me so far as a replacement. It isn't as intuitive with its discovery feature, but it works well enough.
This was my favorite but I thought it shut down
No, they got acquired by Automatic (AKA that Wordpress company). Theyâre still plugging along though.
Pocket casts, fucking amazing!
I've been using the BeyondPod app. Simple and has a cast feature.
It's the only one that I've found that has Smart Play. I'm not sure why not all podcast players have this, it's such a great feature. Going back to something without it, would feel like going back to the stone age.
Another +1 for AntenaPod. It's fantastic.
Podcast addict
Podcast Republic. I don't know if it's the best, but I'm used to it and it does everything I want and nothing I don't want. It's also open source.
I've been using BeyondPod for years.
Podkicker
They didn't market this very well. Literally the first time I'm hearing about this
Name literally one thing that Google markets well.
Well, we use the word Google to mean using a search engine now, so that one was done pretty well. Otherwise I'm not sure.
As a Google Fi user, I really should be looking for something else.
Fi hasnât been competitive in many years anyway. You can get more and faster data for cheaper.
Honestly depends on location
Where I live, all the towers are Verizon (same signal as Google Fi) and US Cellular, and it's cheaper than both
Verizon has prioritized traffic so other carriers get faster speeds than Fi over the same network.
I'll have to disagree here. Not only is the base plan for Fi cheaper, by a landslide, than any alternative I have, but it's also flexible. On top of that, they allow me to pay 0$ extra when I travel, on both calls, and data. That alone is a gigantic selling point to me, because it eliminated any need for temporary local sim cards
Yeah with fewer features and extra bullshit like not being able to tether, no intl coverage, no wifi calling etc. I have yet to find a real replacement for fi.
I learned with Google music never get involved with Google with something you'll want to use daily. Google music hands down was the absolute best music service I've ever used. Google is like a kid with ADHD bouncing around from project to project never to see them through.
I used it from the start, I got in on the beta, and while it was nice, I wouldn't say "it was the absolute best". IMO Spotify is just as good, in fact I'd say it's better. It was nice that you could upload 20,000 of your own songs, but that was back before we had hundreds of gigs available on our phones.
Why do you consider it "the absolute best"?
For me it was the ability to upload my own library and stream it without a subscription, I ended up switching to plex and running my own server for a while but yeah Spotify just has the best deal with no effort so I caved to that especially with a family plan you can't beat it.
IIRC Play Music was a paid service, it probably had a free tier with ads/commercials, but I definitely paid for it. That's how I got grandfathered into YouTube Premium (when they launched YouTube Red as it was called it came "free" with the subscription to Play Music) and can't go back to the free tier or deal with the various hacked clients and ad blockers. It's been over a decade of ad-free YouTube (except for the sponsor segments everyone does now, I do use SmartTube on my Nvidia Shield to skip those).
Yeah I think at some point they started subscriptions but you were able to keep your old library from before
As a former Google Play Music user and lover, it was the recommendations. I haven't found another service that shows me even a significant fraction of the music I like that Google did. I've switched to Spotify but it constantly recommends songs I've already heard or don't like and the shuffle feature gives me the same ~50 songs from a large playlist. It's something I've accepted but I miss the Google recommendations deeply.
Have you tried Pandora? I always thought Pandora was better at recommending music than GPM was, but it was close.
I'm the opposite, I never really used GPM's recommendations because I knew what I liked and had tons of ripped CDs in my collection. After we all ditched MP3s and went to streaming I still stuck with what I knew. I only switched to Spotify about 2 years ago and it has opened me up to a bunch of smaller artists in Europe (I'm in the US) that I would have never found on my own. One of them (Green Lads) I've listened to for 2500 hours this past year thanks to their recommendations.
Yet another Google product that goes into the grave.
https://youtu.be/rimtaSgGz_4?t=12m36s
How companies this incompetent became multibillion dollar monopolies is a mystery to me.
If you rewind the video a minute or two he explains that.
I didn't watch the video. Too busy watching other videos. Sad.
Which is why Iâll never use a Google product. Well except for gmail. I donât have a choice because of work.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/rimtaSgGz_4?t=14m36s
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Lol they had podcast đ
Years ago, Google shut down services I used and since then, I donât get involved in anything they put out there on the market. This will include their AI service.
Only thing they are allowed to provide me is email. Iâm even using YT and search drastically less.
Why even use their email? Itâs not encrypted so youâre the only one who can read it. They can read it too, and they do. They scan your email and use it to target ads at you. Bought something? They collect that data and look at the receipt, exactly how much you spent on each item. Thatâs creepy and weird.
Recommend switching to an encrypted email provider like Skiff, Proton, or Tuta. Iâve used all, but really digging Skiff at the moment.
Good UI and I don't care that they're scraping my email for anything, I don't even see the ads they want to serve me thanks to my ad lockers
Extra work to move to a new email for literally no gains for me
Ignorance is bliss
Lol, this is why people don't like the FOSS evangelists, you act like pricks that are better/smarter than other people
FOSS and privacy are 2 completely different things. If Gmail software was FOSS his points would still be relevant. Try to dislike people for the right reasons at least.
Yeah, hate me for being kind of abrasive. Like me for being right and having your best interests at heart, not some corporationâs.
Hey, makes no difference to me. There are a lot of reasons to protect yourself and your privacy online. Ads is one. Government snooping is another. Hackers stealing your data is another. Rogue employees snooping on your data is another (countless stories of Facebook employees reading their exes private messages, Iâm sure itâs happened at Google too). Being logged into Gmail makes it possible to track you on nearly any website you visit since Google trackers can phone home with your unique identifiers is another!
Good UX is a piss-poor reason to not care for your digital privacy, not just because itâs less important than the nuts and bolts, but because there are providers that offer encryption with good UX. Skiff is on par with Gmail. Proton isnât far off. They both offer free tiers. Skiff almost offers the same amount of free storage as Gmail. The only difference is you donât have that gross feeling like someone could stalk you on every website you visit, or read your messages.
Just advising you to use protection, for your benefit. But go ahead, bang the hooker without a condom. It doesnât impact me in the slightest whether you heed this advice. I say this as someone who was one of the earliest adopters of Gmail. I had a Gmail account before they were publicly available. I donât use that shit anymore.
They aren't using my emails for anything interesting as far as I can tell. Google ad sense either recommends I buy something that I bought months ago and don't need another one or recommends me content that I have zero interest in. I get so many ads for Epoch Times and Hillsdale.
There is also Mailfence, very good.
Yeah I don't directly use any Google service that I'm not paying for. They either shut it down monetize the hell out of it or change how it works so that I have to change how I do things.
Same, but I still use Google docs to store copies of all my published work.
It's been known for over a year that they're planning to replace it with YouTube music
Google has tried like three different podcast apps and they all suck.
I switched to Antennapod already. Nothing to complain about.
AntennaPod is amazing, literally my favorite app ever
Another one bites the dust !
There's a website called "killed by google"
It's nice to see the giant graveyard of products they hyped up and then killed when a tiny percentage of people stopped using it for an instant.
Another one bites the dust
Sing it (another one bites the dust)
And another one gone, and another one gone
Another one bites the dust
Hey, I'm gonna get you too
Another one bites the dust
I have a Gmail account that catches/forwards stuff now and again that I signed up for over a decade ago, before I used a password manager and kept track of everything, and YouTube. A Google store line of credit, too, for pixels. Everything else I've migrated to my own website, or my own 'cloud'.
There was a big issue with Google Store/Fi Store a few years ago where devices were being 'lost' in transit, and it ended up being FedEx employees stealing them and resealing the packages. But Google's handling of the situation was absolutely shit, and two years of reading horror stories usually around bf or the holidays, drove me to migrate my account, one service at a time, to somewhere I could actually control and trust - as it is well-known that if you do a chargeback on G, they axe your gPay access, which means you can't buy or pay for anything: drive/photo storage, gOne, devices, apps/music/movies/games/books, app subscriptions, pay your bill on Fi or gDomains... and if it happened to me, I would not sit quietly with no device for weeks or months while G put the blame and suspicion on me. Fuck all that. Chargeback baby, it's not gonna be my problem anymoreeeee~
Took me from an outspoken G fanboy to 'run the fuck away' within 24 months, and all it took was stories of other's being treated like shit and being on the hook for hundreds or a thousand+ dollar devices, over and over, while support did fuck-all and the actual people 'investigating' were not accessible by any means.
This is ofc on top of G axing shit because they feel like it. Run your own mini server, own your data, don't be at the non-existant mercy of a massive soulless corporation.
Same shit happened when the Steam Deck released in 2022 as well. A bunch of them disappeared into FedEx. Fortunately, Valve promptly took care of anyone who was affected.
I have a few accounts for this purpose. I know at least one service I've had forwarded for years.
I jumped ship from most g- products years ago. I really should log into my accounts again and have anything necessary sent directly to my real email.
For a company that seems to want customers, they sure seem to also hate customers.
I know it sounds like a cliche, but you are not Googleâs customer. You are a âuserâ and Google sells users to their customers. Your data and attention are their products.
So when I buy a phone from Google, I'm...? A customer. In my opinion, and probably some legal sense as well. I'm also their user, sure. But if I purchase something I'm a customer.
There is a small sliver of Google that wants you as a customer. Maybe thatâs the sliver that makes the Pixel line, but Pixel phones are not Googleâs business, Googleâs business is acquiring your information and selling it or leveraging it to increase ad revenue. Google is not a hardware company, though they sell hardware. Google is not an entertainment company, though they will sell you movies and music. Google is not a consumer software company, though they do provide software and services targeted at consumers and businesses. Google is an advertising company. If you buy hardware from them, and you like it, thatâs great, but they are less concerned about your experience as an end-user than they are about acquiring your data to further their ad sales. If making a quality experience for you as a user Improves the likelihood of acquiring more data, they improve the quality of your experience. But if an improved experience hampers their ability to acquire more revenue through ad sales, they will hamper your experience or shut down a product that isnât directly increasing their data collection and add sales. See: rolling everything content related into the YouTube brand and increasingly hampering the experience of those who use ad blockers or privacy focused browsers.
You may consider yourself a customer of Google, but until youâre giving them millions of dollars every quarter, you are just a user. Googleâs profits from every hardware device theyâve ever sold is just a rounding error on a single quarter of the massive amounts of money they make selling ads.
I mean... Okay. But they're still begging us for money. YouTube and Google are asking us for subscriptions to many of their services, like YouTube premium, Google One Drive, etc. So yes, I do consider myself a customer no matter the percentage of their revenue I make up.
I guess this is my issue, as a customer, with them. I'm not willing to pay for garbage customer support and customer relations.
at it to the growing pile i guess..
Ahh, another one for the olâ Google Graveyard.
Another one bites the dust
lol actually the first time I ever heard of it
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Now, a new support article details Google's plans to kill the product, with a shutdown coming in April 2024.
I think all the core podcast features exist somewhere, but they are buried in several menus.
There are more podcast-centric features sequestered away in YouTube Music, where a button with the very confusing label "Save to library" will subscribe to a podcast feed.
Music is a different interface, site, and app, so none of these billions of YouTube viewers are seeing these podcast features.
But this is the future of Google's podcast content, so the company is plowing ahead with it.
If you're looking to get off Google's wild ride and want something straightforward that works across platforms, I recommend Pocket Casts.
The original article contains 382 words, the summary contains 121 words. Saved 68%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I am, what's a good alternative.
I absolutely love Podcast Addict.
That's the best one I found because of all the options. Prioritizing podcasts and auto downloading and adding them to the queue is so good. I listen to a news podcast that is like 10 minutes long everyday and I like that I could have it downloaded and play first on my commute then continue where I left off on the other podcasts without having to do it manually like with spotify
I'll add another vote for Podcast Addict.
I like Podcast Republic because it's easy to keep it simple for troglodytes like myself who don't want or need all the bells and whistles.
I've been using AntennaPod recently
https://github.com/AntennaPod/AntennaPod
I love AntennnaPod - except when I'm in the car. It doesn't have Android Auto support.
Unacceptable for me! That's almost the only time I listen to podcasts, while driving...
This is probably a good time to download your favorite podcast offline while they are available. Because some might not ever comeback.
Great. Now use kasts and Antenna Pod
How does this impact listening to podcasts on Google home devices?
I use Spotify for my podcasts, but I will never check out YouTube Music podcasts. Having 2 ads before the start of a podcast as if I'm watching a YouTube video is just unacceptable for me.
Other than being relieved when they removed the podcast from Google play music (after shoehorning it into the GPM app for no good reason), I didn't really use this much. Pocketcasts has pretty much always done what I needed.
Aaaaand this is why I didn't move my podcasts to Google Podcasts.
Good. Podcast index 2.0.
Called it!
To their credit, at least they're still trying to build stuff. Microsoft avoids this problem by no longer innovating and just buying into whatever is trending. (Not that Google also isn't doing the same). If you never build anything new, you never risk killing a product that didn't trend, which happens a lot.
I think if they decide to kill off a product they should be required to open source it.
Required by who? Lemmy posters? How would this possibly be enforced? What constitutes a product vs a feature?
It's not even like Google podcasts was anything special, there's tons of better alternatives.
I think that if google wants to kill a product they should ask users to vote and not decide on there own. If they continue this trend they will keep loosing people to their competition.