Google Podcasts and Google One VPN join Google’s product graveyard 🪦

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Google has, shall we say, a nasty habit of bringing its products and services to a swift end. In the space of just two weeks, Google Podcasts and Google One VPN successively closed their doors.

Killing applications to focus on others🔫

Google Podcasts, as its name suggests, was Google’s application for discovering and listening to podcasts from a smartphone or the web. However, since 2023, its existence has been numbered. Indeed, the web giant had announced that it would be discontinuing the service, in order to concentrate on YouTube Music. As of April 2, the service is no longer available in the United States.

Ten days later, Google One VPN is bowing out. Introduced in October 2020, this VPN service included in the Google One offer will probably not blow out its fourth candle. Indeed, Google has announced that it will end the service by the end of the year. The company told the 9to5Google website that « not many people use it ». Google prefers to focus on other tools in its Google One offering.

Google’s application graveyard 🪦

The end of these two services is not an isolated case, quite the contrary. In fact, there’s a website that lists all the services abandoned by Google: Killed by Google. To date, the site lists 295 products and services scrapped or already condemned by Google. It includes services launched with great fanfare, such as Stadia, as well as high-potential services like Inbox.

It almost seems as if when one of their products can’t display advertising, their main source of revenue, it has very little chance of surviving. With such a poor track record, it’s hard to trust Google over the long term.

What do you think of these closures? Do you use these applications? Tell us in the comments.

Sources : The Verge,  9to5Google