Google’s phone app no longer searches Google Maps
Enlarge / The Google Phone’s Play Store listing still touts Nearby Places as a major feature. (credit: Google)
9to5Google reports that Google has killed off the Google Phone app’s “nearby places” feature. Google announced the impending death of the feature back in February, saying: “We’ve found only a very small number of people use this feature, and the vast majority of users go to Google Search or Maps when seeking business-related phone numbers.” Now it’s really dead.
Google kills product
Google’s phone app no longer searches Google Maps
Google will no longer back up the Internet: Cached webpages are dead
Google announces April 2024 shutdown date for Google Podcasts
Google News is shutting down purchased magazine content, offering refunds
This week’s dead Google products: Google Podcasts, basic Gmail, and more!
The “Nearby Places” feature in the Google Phone app seemed like a useful and common-sense feature. It connected the power of Google Maps to the phone app, allowing the phone search bar to not only look through your contacts but also businesses listed in Google Maps. When you want to call the local pizza place, just type in the name, rather than some arcane string of numbers, and hit “dial.”
The feature has been around on Pixel phones since at least the Pixel 2 and has been generally available to anyone who downloaded the “Phone by Google” app in the Play Store for the past few years. It was a perfect “Google” feature, combining the company’s OS, breadth of online data, and search into a useful function. Google has made its AI-infused phone app a primary selling point of Pixel phones over the years, so stripping it of features is weird.
