Were you excited to hear that Podcasts were coming to Google Play Music? Were you equally disappointed to discover, unsurprisingly, that once again Australia – or anywhere outside of the US and Canada – missed out on a new Google feature? Well, it looks like Google hasn’t completely left the rest of the world out in the cold.
Google announced today that you can now search for a podcast via the Google app on Android and directly discover and play podcasts. We gave it a go with an Australian account with no VPN and this is what we got.
That’s right you can select one of the podcast results and start streaming it right to your phone. The player even loads to your notification tray.
While this is not conclusive proof that Google will be rolling out Podcasts wider than the current release, the fact that they haven’t geo-restricted this access at least give us hope.
The new feature will be great for easy discovery of podcasts where you can search and listen in one easy step all without having to load up a specific app. For those of us who are regular listeners to Podcasts, it’s unlikely this would replace out favourite Podcast player *cough* Pocket Casts *cough* but it’s a nice addition to our podcast arsenal.
Are you a podcast junkie? Do you think you will use this search and listen feature? Let us know below.
It’s good for the casual discovery of podcasts, eg a friend tells you what they are listening to so you search it. Any serious “podcast junkie” though will have already paid a few dollars for the Pro version of the proper podcast apps – pocketcasts, doggcatcher, podcast addict, beyondpod or podbean. Then there are radio apps such as stitcher and tunein radio – these have podcast episodes too. No doubt the google service will be restricted to american podcasts too when there is so much good stuff around locally, especially from the ABC and from various community radio stations. Even… Read more »
While I don’t think i will use it, maybe to get an idea of the podcast style/content as it has popped up in my search results.
I can see this being far more relevant for people who don’t current listen to podcasts, they might happen across some in their search results and finally go “So what are these podcast things all about”
This reduces the barrier (of getting a podcast app) and discovery to podcasts by combining them into peoples search results.
‘Junkie’
No offence to a well written article but…wow.. that totally breaks how podcasts should work – which is they are automatically delivered to you (or you are notified). As you mentioned – Pocket Casts – is by far and away the best podcast tool ever and has totally enhanced my podcast experience. It is a bit expensive for an app but I have certainly got my money’s worth by how much time I have used the app. It finds pods for you, it notifies you when new episodes are released, downloads them as per your settings and then plays them.… Read more »