YouTube kicks off podcast strategy with new landing page
Enlarge / Try enough browsers and accounts and eventually you'll be able to see this new podcasts page. (credit: Ron Amadeo)
YouTube's podcast push started with a new "Podcasts" page. The website youtube.com/podcasts will 404 for some people, but for others, they'll see a landing page highlighting podcast content. The page was first spotted over the weekend by 9to5Google but has apparently been slowly rolling out since last month.
The podcast page doesn't do much right now. It shows "Popular Episodes" and "Popular Podcast Playlists" for random shows, and that's about it. Clicking through still only gives you the normal YouTube interface. It's a meager first step, but this is all part of the plan, which involves a major push into podcasts from Google's media brand.
Google already has a podcasting product called "Google Podcasts," which very slowly grew out of the search division in 2016. It only started to become a viable service around 2020, though, when the iOS app finally launched. Before that, there was Google Play Music Podcasts from 2015 to 2020. Before that, there was the Google Reader-powered "Google Listen," which lasted from 2009 to 2012. YouTube Podcasts will be Google's fourth podcasting platform.