Google Podcasts is one of the company’s latest offerings and has received some pretty mixed reviews. Landing in a market with mature products such as Doggcatcher, Pocket casts and cast box, the consensus is that Google’s app simply wasn’t ready.
Despite early setbacks, the product development team continued to build the Google Podcasts platform. The product continues to develop and this coming week, Google will be offering further functionality:
A web interface as announced by the Founder and Head of Product for Google Podcasts, Zack Reneau-Wedeen.
Rolling out this week you'll be able to search for and play podcasts directly in Google Search across Android, iOS, and desktop browsers, a step toward making audio a first-class citizen across Google. pic.twitter.com/29ohC7W9z8
— Zack Reneau-Wedeen (@ZackRW) May 9, 2019
A keen Android Police reader noted that if you grab the share link from a podcast, then change it slightly – you’ll be able to access the web interface now which suggests it’s ready, just not yet enabled for immediate access. The share links that are delivered by the app begin with https://www.google.com/podcasts but by changing it to https://podcasts.google.com/ you’re faced with a web interface where you can in fact listen to the podcast you’re linking to on your PC or laptop.
Google Podcasts wasn’t as mature as it probably should have been at launch, but Google continues to add functionality to make it more usable generally. There’s a long way to go before it’s ready to compete with some of the more mature products, but it may well entice users who are heavily invested in the Google ecosystem away for the sake of simplicity.
