But why? I don't see a financial motivator here, unless there is some long-game that I'm not aware of. In theory, driving users to websites in a search result is likely just going to make Google more money from displaying ads.

The only thing I can currently think of is they actually are trying to improve the user experience.

If you listen via Google they not only know what you listened to but for how long you listened, which parts you skipped over or stopped listening at, and whether you listened to the ads or not. All that information has value to them. Being able to say these people googled your product within 72 hours of hearing your ad on these podcasts is very valuable.

Maybe they indirectly want to 'improve user experience' (so you're less likely to leave) but it's not their terminal value.

Why would it be more profitable to send users to the BBC website?

This is the company that decides shades of blue by conversion numbers.

1. You see a podcast you're interested in

2. You go to the BBC's website

3. You discover you need to download BBC Sounds (if in the UK)

4. You download the app

5. You register with a username and password (and UK postcode, which narrows you down to the street where you live)

6. You press play and start listening

or

1. You see a podcast you're interested in

2. You press play and start listening

Wouldn't anyone prefer #2? Including the BBC's programme makers?

I'm a non-UK listener and use the BBC Sounds app all the time. The only thing that's unavailable are program downloads.

Unless you're side-loading on Android, which is perfectly possible too, but that's not quite "being available".

They're splitting it into "Google Podcasts" and "YouTube Music"

Not only a great podcast app, but it respects your Freedom. It's the only thing I miss about not having a smartphone.

All other services (Spotify, SoundCloud, Apple, etc.) serve podcasts on their own properties but if Google does it it's monopolistic. To me such claims about Google have become too overused and have lost their meaning.

I don't blame BBC though for sticking to their guns because they really want user analytics and think have the weight to pull out. The justification they provided is just misleading.

The BBC already have all the consumption data that they would expect - IP address, device, time listened, etc - in their own server logs. Just like a normal podcast player.

So... what user analytics do the BBC actually want?

There's a standard NPR have written to improve this, but it requires the podcast players to implement it. It's very privacy-respecting but I doubt Apple will implement it, so it's probably going to be a non-starter unless the big podcasters like the BBC hold the line.

For Google Podcasts, "downloaded" = "listened", since it has no auto-download feature. So they are (excepting the minority who manually download) actual listens.

You remind me that I should add a sniffer for RAD support in my Podnews pages, so I'll go and do that. My own podcast has RAD tags in it.

In the UK how do you compete for news eyeballs and try and make it pay when the BBC news is for free?

Imagine your business is weather forecasting, the same applies.

Then there is the small matter of the license fee. Most people just pay it out of fear of being caught by one of the legendary detector vans. But you can't have a TV or a monitor that also does TV without being hassled for the rest of your days.

It is getting that way online. I only listen to the BBC on DAB radio, if I sign in to their player thing I know I can't trust myself not to watch some lame series on iPlayer meaning I will have to pay up.

The BBC has an important propaganda role in informing the national conversation and keeping British people British. I am not saying that cynically, that is what the voice of empire is there for. They aren't trying to sell you product, it is more subtle than that, essentially propaganda though, controlling the latitude of available thinking.

They need to be more careful about closing down their reach as people like me go off-piste and start listening to stuff that would never make it onto the BBC. Once you have done that and realise the world thinks differently to the allowed BBC viewpoints there is no going back.

I don't see this as the BBC standing up to the monopolistic evil Google, I also think the BBC are not whiter than white.

No, I'm sure a lot pay because having a good public service is important, even more in this day and age, compared to the Murdoch owned media you get in the UK.

Of course the BBC isn't perfect, but it doesn't mean there's nothing to appreciate.

They used to send a postage paid envelope, and you could return their "you're a criminal" letter indicating that in fact their supposition was incorrect.

Now, they don't include an envelope IIRC, certainly not postage, so you have to pay [a small amount] every time they decide to accuse you falsely of being a criminal. I'm against that in principle.

So, I thought, I'll waste my own time and go online and fill out the form ... except they demand additional PII from you. Which I'm not happy about giving to Capita, and shouldn't need to, name and address should be sufficient for the legal purposes here.

Thus, we're left waiting for them to make the next move. Which they did, they sent someone around: I stated we didn't watch broadcast TV and don't need a license. They went away.

So, that's the end of it, right?

Nope, they sent two people the next time, who asked for my wife (clue: license fee is payable against premises), didn't show ID, nor identify themselves in any way. When asked they said they "needed to come in" to check we didn't have a TV, they have no need to and no legal right of access [without a warrant]. When I made the same statement as before "we don't need a license ..., not using your services" they threatened "we'll just keep coming".

Great huh.

What really grates with me is that you have to register your details to even use the services on iPlayer now, so they would see clearly at the BBC end that we've stopped using their service.

So, they presumably will continue to waste money until we get an injunction against them for hassling us.

That said, I still support the licence fee. Eventually they'll require your licence number for iPlayer and then they'll probably be able to cut back on the annoying spam.

If I had the option of not paying and losing access to BBC channels, I probably would. I'd miss Doctor Who but they only do that every few years now.

For a long time the Met Office had their private arm. So if ITV et al. get the private version of the Met Office and the BBC have the Met Office then it can be hard to get in to that business.

A lot of things that make sense with a state ownership model of the economy fall apart when you have things like 'producers choice' or the Met Office expected to make a buck in the private sector.

Ultimately though there are two sources for weather information and it comes down to who gets the observations data and who has the super computers. In the USA they have the public/private model right. The government has the computer and the data is available for free. In the UK (the only other place with the observations/supercomputer combo) the idea is to make money off it in this weird privatised state business sector that the Met Office finds itself in.

The internet makes the data a commodity of sorts, who knows where it comes from and how accurate it really is. In the olden days of regional TV you would have actual forecasters who knew their area. Imagine you have a lake in the Alps and the computer gives you the data for the mountain top for the town by the lake below. The nearest observations come from the airport on the other side of the lake. A professional forecaster who knows the observations for that town would be able to work it out properly and have an informed guess for the town, and hack the model accordingly.

The BBC and other broadcasters have stepped away from having that aspect of local TV with the human aspect of a quality weather forecast. I guess it matters not if the observation data is getting better.

The BBC does. Thus giving them plenty of opportunities to upset just about everyone.

* Cut funding for a public service

* Wait for the quality of that service to inevitably go down

* Say that it's terrible due to needless government bureaucracy

* Privatise it