Goodbye Google listen!

The android app on its release in 2009 scored the hearts of many Podcast enthusiasts. The Google listen was the one without any superfluous features. The package contained crisp features with lesser fiddling. This was android ready and was available for free in the android market.

Curtains Down:

Google is known to bring the curtains down on apps branding it as “outdated.” The history of closing affected Google listen, Google video, igoogle. But pulling down the curtains on a fantastic app has made the users asking for more. Lucky for people who have already installed but much to their disappointment the app won’t download any new podcast releases. All they can do is – use it as a player to shuffle and play the downloaded Podcasts.

So what has google to say about it in their blog?

“We launched Google listen through Google labs in August 2009 to give people a way to discover and listen to podcasts. However with Google play, people now have wider variety of podcast apps so we’ve discontinued Listen. People who have already installed the app can still use it, but after November 1 Podcast search won’t function. You can access the podcast subscription in google reader in the listen subscriptions folder and download them from the Import/Export tab.”

November 1 is the D-day for earlier users. The app has been covertly pulled off from the store. Google killed the app as it did with its earlier products because they could focus on their main attractions like the google.com, search engine, google play, mail services and video services. With the closing of services altogether google needs to wrap up 150 company maintained blogs. The “house cleaning” as termed by CEO Larry Page continued with the dropping of aardvark, desktop, fastflip and Image labeler services.

It is also said that Page brought down the shutters on Google health and Powermeter. The cleansing affected the social software unit, a thirdparty acquisition by google that worked independently of the google+ team.

We are to expect the cleansing of the other products too. Google wishes to retain their focus regardless of the fact that the existing users are left in the lurch. The best free android app is now officially dead and there is a zero percent chance of it arising up even as a zombie.

We all pray for you may your podcast soul rest in peace!