Google’s phone app no longer searches Google Maps

Enlarge / The Google Phone's Play Store listing still touts Nearby Places as a major feature. (credit: Google)

9to5Google reports that Google has killed off the Google Phone app's "nearby places" feature. Google announced the impending death of the feature in February, saying: "We've found only a very small number of people use this feature, and the vast majority of users go to Google Search or Maps when seeking business-related phone numbers." Now it's really dead.

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View more storiesThe "Nearby Places" feature in the Google Phone app seemed like a useful and common-sense feature. It connected the power of Google Maps to the phone app, allowing the phone search bar to not only look through your contacts but also businesses listed in Google Maps. When you want to call the local pizza place, just type in the name, rather than some arcane string of numbers, and hit "dial."

The feature has been around on Pixel phones since at least the Pixel 2 and has been generally available to anyone who downloaded the "Phone by Google" app in the Play Store for the past few years. It was a perfect "Google" feature, combining the company's OS, breadth of online data, and search into a useful function. Google has made its AI-infused phone app a primary selling point of Pixel phones over the years, so stripping it of features is weird.

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