You’ll soon see a ‘Google Podcasts’ app on the Play Store

• There will soon be a Google Podcasts app on the Google Play Store.
• However, the app will likely just be a shortcut into the official Google app, not a standalone product.
• We saw Google do something similar with Google Lens, with the Lens app just being a home screen shortcut into Google Assistant.

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Although Google has made it clear that it places the utmost importance on podcasts and the future of podcasting, it strangely doesn't have a dedicated podcast app. As of now, it pushes that responsibility to Google Play Music.

However, 9to5Google spotted some information at the end of May that pointed to Google integrating a podcast feature into the official Google Android app. Now, today, the same publication found that there will also be a dedicated Google Podcasts app on the Play Store.

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Now, this is where things get a bit confusing. It is not likely that the Google Podcasts app will be a standalone application. Rather, it will be more like Google Lens in that the Lens feature is baked into Google Assistant and the "app" you download from the Play Store is simply a shortcut to that feature.

9to5Google expects the Google Podcasts app to simply be an icon you can place on your home screen or in your app drawer that will directly launch Google Podcasts from within the Google app. In other words, you'll need the official Google app in order for the Google Podcasts shortcut to work.

This is the likely logo for that dedicated Google Podcasts shortcut:

9to5Google

While this seems counterintuitive (and overly complicated), it is nice to see that Google is bringing some sort of podcast functionality to something other than Google Play Music. While GPM certainly does podcasts fine, it doesn't do it nearly as well as it does music and feels more like a tacked-on feature than anything else.

There's no telling when we'll see this podcast functionality, but it should be relatively soon, as so much information is now available on the features. Stay tuned!

NEXT: Listen to podcasts through Plex! (Still in beta though)

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