Killed by Google this week: Jamboard, Google Podcasts,

Google has added its Podcasts service and Jamboard whiteboarding application to the list of things “Killed by Google” this week alone.

“Starting October 1, 2024, you’ll no longer be able to create new or edit existing Jams on any platform, including the web, iOS, and Android…” Google said of the collaboration app, which launched in 2016.

Google’s associated Jamboard hardware (a $5,000 digital whiteboard with a $600/year fee) and software ecosystem are all getting the chop – in bad news for people who liked its native integration with G-Drive. (You could pull in data from Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, and whiteboard work was saved in a filetype called "Jams" in Drive.)

“Over the past couple of years, we’ve heard from customers that whiteboarding tools like FigJam by Figma, Lucidspark by Lucid Software, and the visual workspace Miro help their teams work better together.

“As these tools have grown more capable, offering advanced features such as an infinite canvas, use case templates, voting, and more, we’ve decided to leverage our partner ecosystem for whiteboarding in Workspace and focus on core content collaboration across Docs, Sheets, and Slides” Google said on September 29 in a blog and email to admins.

It also revealed this week (September 26) that it was killing off Google Podcasts as a standalone proposition and migrating its features to YouTube Music.

The company earlier this year had revealed that YouTube Music would begin supporting podcasts in the US and insists that this will be a more natural home, with a focus on community and the ability to switch easily between audio podcasts and video; something Spotify is also working on.

In a blog on YouTube the company said: “This matches what listeners and podcasters are already doing: according to Edison, about 23% of weekly podcast users in the US say YouTube is their most frequently used service, versus just 4% for Google Podcasts.”