9to5Google experiences that Google has killed off the Google Telephone app’s “close by locations” characteristic. Google introduced the upcoming demise of the characteristic in February, saying: “We’ve discovered solely a really small variety of individuals use this characteristic, and the overwhelming majority of customers go to Google Search or Maps when looking for business-related cellphone numbers.” Now it is actually lifeless.
The “Close by Locations” characteristic within the Google Telephone app appeared like a helpful and common sense characteristic. It linked the facility of Google Maps to the cellphone app, permitting the cellphone search bar to not solely look via your contacts but in addition companies listed in Google Maps. Whenever you need to name the native pizza place, simply sort within the identify, reasonably than some arcane string of numbers, and hit “dial.”
The characteristic has been round on Pixel telephones since not less than the Pixel 2 and has been usually out there to anybody who downloaded the “Telephone by Google” app within the Play Retailer for the previous few years. It was an ideal “Google” characteristic, combining the corporate’s OS, breadth of on-line information, and search right into a helpful perform. Google has made its AI-infused cellphone app a main promoting level of Pixel telephones through the years, so stripping it of options is bizarre.
Google claims that the characteristic is being killed as a result of it was utilized by a “very small variety of individuals,” but it surely additionally is perhaps shutting it down as a result of it hasn’t labored reliably for some time now. It appears to be like like Google broke the Close by Locations search round August 2023. Here is a bug report from round that point with 100 feedback, and there are a number of Reddit and Google discussion board posts on the market. Even new telephones had been delivery with the characteristic disabled. One purpose for Google’s obvious disinterest within the characteristic is that the cellphone app’s Close by Locations searches took visitors away from Google Maps. Maps reveals advertisements within the search outcomes, and the cellphone app did not.