A month after cleaning its inventory of services like iGoogle and Google Video, Google is at it again with another round of app cuts.
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":502985,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"business,mobile,","session":"C"}']The most surprising member of the latest set is Listen, the podcast app that Google introduced in 2009. Google’s reason for the move is simple, if a little odd: Android users have so many options for podcast apps that it didn’t make any sense to keep updating Listen. It also probably didn’t help that the app was well-known among Android users for being a bit unpolished. So maybe it won’t be missed much.
The timing of the move is a bit funny, since Apple just released its own standalone podcast app in June. Still, it does suggest that Google could add some podcast features to its Google Music app somewhere down the line.
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Two of Google’s other cuts are less consumer-focused: the collaboration-focused Google Apps for Teams and Google Video for Business. For users of the latter app, Google is moving videos over to Google Drive, which offers similar functionality.
Last, Google is shutting down an unspecified number of its less popular company blogs, shifting content to other, more frequented ones. So no big loss there, either.
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