[II2II]

I doubt it has anything to do with the direct cost of maintenance. Google has a tendency to introduce multiple products that serve similar markets, as the article cited with Podcasts and YouTube Music. They have to cut the cruft eventually. Given the numbers cited in the article (23% listen to podcasts through YouTube Music, 4% through Podcasts), YouTube Music made more sense from the business perspective. I would imagine that is especially true when you consider that they can promote more products through YouTube Music.

That said, I somehow doubt that many people are going to transition from Podcasts to YouTube Music. There are too many alternatives out there, alternatives that would likely reflect the interests of Podcasts users better. Heck, nearly three quarters of podcast consumers are already using those products.

[tivert]

> I doubt it has anything to do with the direct cost of maintenance. Google has a tendency to introduce multiple products that serve similar markets, as the article cited with Podcasts and YouTube Music.

Besides both using audio files, Podcasts and Music are totally different markets, with different use cases, etc. Are spreadsheets and games in similar markets, because they both use graphics on video screens?

Jamming them together because of some superficial similarity is a stupid simplification, even if many users already do things sub-optimally.

Google really needs to get some cheap offshore teams that can do maintenance on the products they'd otherwise kill. They'd stop burning so much goodwill that way.

[II2II]

> Are spreadsheets and games in similar markets, because they both use graphics on video screens?

Slightly more realistic examples would be "spreadsheets and databases" or "spreadsheets and word processors". Plenty of people use a spreadsheet when data is represented in a tabular format, even when it isn't the most appropriate tool. (Tangentially, I've also heard of 4x games referred to as spreadsheet games. Though that's more of a description of play style than presentation!)

Don't get me wrong. I agree that podcasts shouldn't be jammed in with music. At least for myself. Yet when Google's numbers are saying that about a quarter of people access podcasts through YouTube, there are clearly a lot of people who do not agree!

[joecot]

They made the same calculation with Google Play Music and "merged" it into Youtube Music. Not to worry, they migrated all my music over! Except most of the Youtube "Music" was people's personal uploads of dubious quality. I ended up moving to Spotify instead.