Firing the people that do the work to make the company money is just good business! They’re a dime a dozen, just hire another 2 managers and a couple marketing execs and soon you’ll be printing money! /s [these companies are freaking dumb]

It’s crazy what you can get away with when you have some money and no sense!

For the people that don’t want to read the article, this seems especially relevant:
But much has changed since 2022: Embracer, which owns Gearbox, bet the house on a $2 billion deal with a Saudi investment group that fell through in 2023. Ever since, its many, many properties have been hit by layoffs on a near-monthly basis.

On Android you can install unapproved apps and even entire app stores. The barrier to having people install your app is a couple of taps (approximately as difficult as it’d be on Windows when you’ve got to approve UAC a time or two).

So, it is kind of ridiculous in comparison that they lost but Apple with an entire walled of ecosystem that you can’t bypass without finding a zero day exploit won their case.

With that said, I know a lot of people who only buy Apple BECAUSE of that walled off ecosystem and conversely I know people that primarily buy Android for their relatively open system, so I’m in the minority where I think neither Google nor Apple should have to change in this particular regard. Both companies suck, but charging the same price they always have for their app store isn’t the issue I’d fight them over.

+1 for AntennaPod, has tons of options but also gets out of your way if all you want to do is find and listen to podcasts.

I can’t see Google ever adding in all the options people want in a podcast app into YouTube Music, it’s just never going to happen.

I would expect they’ll probably use it to try and switch you over to the video version (if it exists) since it’s going to have the more expensive ads (I assume the video ads are more lucrative anyways), which isn’t overall a bad thing, but also not really a good one either.