9to5Google reviews that Google has killed off the Google Phone app’s “close by locations” function. Google introduced the upcoming dying of the function in February, saying: “We’ve discovered solely a really small variety of folks use this function, and the overwhelming majority of customers go to Google Search or Maps when looking for business-related phone numbers.” Now it is actually useless.
The “Nearby Places” function within the Google Phone app appeared like a helpful and common sense function. It linked the facility of Google Maps to the phone app, permitting the phone search bar to not solely look via your contacts but in addition companies listed in Google Maps. When you need to name the native pizza place, simply sort within the identify, quite than some arcane string of numbers, and hit “dial.”
The function has been round on Pixel telephones since no less than the Pixel 2 and has been typically obtainable to anybody who downloaded the “Phone by Google” app within the Play Store for the previous few years. It was an ideal “Google” function, combining the corporate’s OS, breadth of on-line information, and search right into a helpful perform. Google has made its AI-infused phone app a major promoting level of Pixel telephones over time, so stripping it of options is bizarre.
Google claims that the function is being killed as a result of it was utilized by a “very small variety of folks,” but it surely additionally may be 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 Nearby Places search round August 2023. Here’s 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 have been delivery with the function disabled. One motive for Google’s obvious disinterest within the function is that the phone app’s Nearby Places searches took site visitors away from Google Maps. Maps exhibits advertisements within the search outcomes, and the phone app did not.