Google just can’t stop duplicating its services
Google is finally cleaning up its product portfolio and merging services that just make sense to merge. Both of the company’s video calling platforms, Meet and Duo, are joining forces under the Meet brand, and Google has long been in the process of phasing out Hangouts in favor of Chat. The latest move then doesn’t make any sense, at least on the surface. Google has silently launched a dedicated YouTube Podcasts website, all while it offers a dedicated podcast service of its own under the Google Podcasts brand.
As spotted by 9to5Google, a youtube.com/podcasts site has slowly started to roll out around the globe since July, with this website showing a 404 error for many but an overview of YouTube podcast content for others. Given that YouTube is a video platform, you don’t see anything resembling Google Podcasts here, though. Instead, YouTube Podcasts focuses on video formats, showcasing popular podcasts or podcast-adjacent content on the video platform.
YouTube Podcasts isn’t an official branding, at least just yet. Instead, it is more of a simple sub-page for YouTube itself, without an explicit mention that it’s supposed to be something else. This could change as the service is rolled out, but for now, the experience is as rudimentary as it can get. If you don’t look at the URL, you’ll be hard-pressed to notice that you’re on a website different from YouTube itself. The experience is much simpler than the more sealed off YouTube Music experience.
YouTube Podcasts doesn’t come as a total surprise, either. Internal material already pointed to a release of such a platform back in March. Compared to what PodNews covered back then, the current release still appears to be an early pilot, as creators should be able to better showcase podcasts and publish RSS URLs to their channels going forward. We can only hope that Google won’t build out another fully fleshed out podcasting service within YouTube, though, as it would just be confusing to maintain two separate options.
