🔁 Google Podcasts in-episode search is coming, shows now being fully transcribed

Jules Wang, writing for Android Police, discovers evidence of Google’s transcription efforts:

Google Podcasts is now automatically generating transcripts of episodes and is using them as metadata to help listeners search for shows, even if they don't know the title or when it was published.

This may end up as a great method for looking up shows that you don't remember much about other than a particularly snappy quote or interesting subject matter. You just have to hope that Google has those words down the way you remember them.

Maybe this will be able to make clips of these shows as shareable as YouTube videos from TV programs or movies with the help of a raw transcript. Right now, there's a whole potential audience turned off from having to dive into hours of "Games of Thrones" and there are many others missing out on long, but worthwhile listens like "Serial."

Last year, Zach Reneau-Wedeen, founder of Google Podcasts, told Pacific Content:

Right now Google is really good at giving you text and video related to your search query. With all the amazing work podcasters are publishing each day, there’s no good reason why audio isn’t a first-class citizen in the same way.