Google Podcasts has reached a new milestone in the Play Store, having been downloaded half a billion times, though YouTube Music is now preparing a podcast option of its own.
On Android, Google Podcasts is an interesting “app” because, despite having its own separate Play Store listing, it’s actually part of the broader Google Search app. The same is true for a few other Google apps, like Lens and Assistant, both of which have their own listing in the Play Store.
Regardless, Google Podcasts is a surprisingly excellent player, largely due to its simplicity. It’s easy to find and listen to the latest episodes of the podcasts to which you’ve subscribed, download episodes for offline playback, and set up a listening queue. Meanwhile, the Explore tab offers an easily scrolled list of shows and individual episodes you may find interesting.
Importantly, the Google Podcasts player offers an experience that’s just good enough for many listeners, with options to jump forward/backward, tweak playback speed (pitch adjusted), and set a sleep timer. Overall, the app’s playback and discovery tools aren’t as robust as you’ll find in competitors like Pocket Casts, but Google Podcasts is a refreshingly simple and useful tool by Google standards.
That being the case, it’s no surprise to see that Google Podcasts has now been downloaded from the Play Store over 500 million times. By comparison, most other podcast apps – with the exception of apps like Spotify that have both music and podcasts – have not yet crossed the 100 million downloads milestone.
Looking at the bigger picture, though, the timing of Google Podcasts reaching this milestone is particularly interesting. Just last month, the company announced that support for podcasts would be coming to YouTube Music “later this year.”
In true Google style, though, the company will maintain the two separate podcast players in the near term, as YouTube Music will initially only support podcasts in the US. The company has also said that Google Podcasts “serves a different audience,” which implies the app may be here to stay, though only time will tell.
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