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Yesterday, Bill Simmons decided it was time to spill the beans on Google’s ETA for podcast support in Google Play. His Tweet suggested we’d be seeing the goods by the end of this month.
That might be a very accurate estimation as Google is now seemingly testing the changes in server-side A/B fashion. One of the gents who spotted the change gave his early thoughts on the new interface, noting that it blended seamlessly with the application to feel just as “at home” as music does.
The podcast portal brings up a page that can show either featured podcasts or just the ones you’re subscribed to. When you’re playing a podcast, you can choose to skip ahead or rewind by 30 seconds.
One of the early problems he noted was that the search function was a bit wonky. The search is universal, so even if you’re searching within the podcast tab it’ll still bring up music results. Furthermore, much of the actual podcasts were often at the very bottom of the search results.
Things look neat once you do eventually get to the podcast you’re looking for, though. A podcast page shows its logo and a description, and it’s there you can choose to subscribe or share. Once you’re subscribed you can setup auto-download and opt to get notifications whenever new episodes are available.
Unfortunately, that’s all we know right now. It’s not yet clear if it’s possible to add podcasts from an external source, which we imagine will be important for folks who listen to more obscure musings.
Now all that’s left is to get the thing into more hands, something which hopefully won’t take long now that it’s out and about.
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