Podcasts have always been an important source for listen to news and getting new information, even when you are offline. And one of the major podcast apps around was Google Listen. However, Google has now decided to discontinue Listen.

And if you have it installed on your device, you will still be able to use the app but the search function will stop as of November 1.

“We launched Google Listen through Google Labs in August 2009, to give people a way to discover and listen to podcasts. However, with Google Play, people now have access to a wider variety of podcast apps, so we’ve discontinued Listen. People who have already installed the app can still use it, but after November 1, podcast search won’t function,” Google stated in its official blog. “You can access your podcast subscriptions in Google Reader in the “Listen Subscriptions” folder and download them from the Import/Export tab.”

Elsewhere, Google has also decided to discontinue Google Apps for Teams, which was introduced way back in 2008. When Google launched it, the aim was to allow people with a verified business or school email address to collaborate using non-email applications from Google like Google Docs, Google Calendar and Google Talk.

However, the company later realized that Google Apps for Teams was not as useful for people as the company originally anticipated. So, beginning September 4, 2012, Google will start converting existing Google Apps for Teams accounts into personal Google Accounts, and shutting down Google Apps for Teams.

This change does not affect other editions of Google Apps.