Google Just Killed One of Its Best Phone Features
Google has a way of killing off some of its best features and apps. In fact, there is an entire website dedicated to the apps killed by the tech giant. Google is now also leveraging one of its phone app’s best features: the ability to search for nearby businesses.
Google first announced the upcoming change back in February, saying that “we found that very few people use this feature, and the vast majority of users turn to Google Search or Maps when searching for business-related phone numbers.” However, now the company has finally pulled the plug: 9to5Google reports that the feature has officially disappeared from Google’s phone app.
I’m not going to sit here and say that Nearby Places was my favorite Google feature. However, when it worked, it was very helpful. Here’s the kicker: This feature often didn’t work on devices, and on many newer devices it was even disabled. The Nearby Search feature, which has been around since the release of the Pixel 2, has been a long-standing reason to use Google’s phone app.
But now that it’s gone, you’ll have to turn to Google Maps to find businesses and other information you need to connect with people. This, of course, makes a lot more sense for Google, which relies heavily on the money it can make from advertising distributed through its various products. You can’t advertise on a phone app that people use every day, so it’s no surprise that this feature hasn’t been very popular in recent years—something the folks at ArsTechnica were quick to point out in their report.
However, whether this fact played a role in Google’s decision to disable the feature is irrelevant. All that matters is that he is dead and gone. And this isn’t the only feature Google has recently removed. Earlier this year , Google Assistant saw a ton of features pulled from it , including some really handy ones that a lot of people took advantage of, like the ability to set and use media, music, and radio signals. Now you will have to rely on routines for this functionality. Google has also removed the ability to send an email, video, or audio message using Google Assistant, as well as the ability to play and manage audiobooks in Google Play Books.