Google launches Podcast app for Android

Google has launched Google Podcasts for Android on Tuesday this week. The app will use Google’s recommendations algorithm to give people personalized recommendations for different podcast channels. Before the launch of this standalone app, podcasts were available through third-party apps and Google Play Music.

Google Podcasts aims to make it easier for people to find listen to podcasts, Google said in a tweet yesterday.

The Product Manager of the application, Zack Reneau-Wedeen, said that there is a lot of room for growth when it comes to listening to podcasts. He believes that creating a native first-party Android app for podcasts has the potential to double the listener ship of podcasts worldwide.

More than 2 million podcasts were made available on the app on its launch day. There is a section “For you” on this app that shows you new episodes, episodes in progress and episodes that you have downloaded of the subscribed podcasts.

If you scroll down, you will come across top podcasts in different categories such as Arts, TV & Film and Religion and Spirituality. You cannot create playlists of podcasts to listen to unlike in Overcast. The podcast app is integrated with Google assistant. So, wherever you have assistant enabled, you can search and play podcasts. The application also syncs your progress with all Google products so, if you haven’t finished a podcast on your way back home, you can finish it on Google Home as you get back home.

The future plans of Google Podcasts include an introduction of artificial intelligence. Among the features, one feature will add closed captions to your podcast that will enable you to read while you are listening to the podcast. This closed captions option will also allow you to skip ahead and read what is coming in the show later on.

According to research done at Google, one-quarter of podcast hosts are female while the ratio of people of color is even less than that. Google plans to promote podcast production to counter that. You can download the app here.