Google breaking the web again - Google announced recently they will be shutting down Google Podcasts. It's infuriating because there really isn't another website that has a clean uncomplicated playback interface to podcast episodes. It's important because there are many podcasters that don't have their own website, which makes it very difficult to share their work.
Every week I put together the newsletter and am always shocked to discover how many podcasters rely on the directories for their show pages. Google Podcasts has been my go to site for getting episode links for shows that don't have their own website. I wonder what's going to happen to all the links I've published in the newsletter. Are they just going to let them rot?
What's the replacement for Google Podcasts? I can't find anything comparable. Google makes really great websites but they do this again and again, people become reliant on them, then they just shutdown the service. If even Google can't run a Podcast Directory, what chance does anybody else have of doing it? They say they are all about the Open Web, so why do they keep breaking it? Remember Google Reader? RSS is still alive, but only just.
I wish they would consider open sourcing the code, so someone else could try to run it. We need a canonical resource for podcast episodes. #