A long time ago back in the 3GS days I was a happy iPhone user, who happened to like podcasts. There were several very nice podcast apps which I liked since they would download everything I wanted to listen to over the night and I could listen to them on my walk to work without having to boot up Windows and sync via iTunes. Then one day after an update all the podcast apps were gone from the Appstore and my phone since Apple claimed that they "Duplicated iTunes functionality". A few months later the mobile version of iTunes finally got the ability to do over-the-air synchs. And when an iTunes security update ended up installing Safari on my desktop that was the final straw.
I haven't had any experiences that bad with Google. Losing Google Reader was bad, but also made me appreciate the existence of the Data Liberation Front[1]. And I know I can install non-Google android or Ubuntu on my phone if it comes to that.
This is simply not true. There are several podcast apps in the AppStore that I'm aware of (Instacast, Downcast, Aural...) and certainly several I've never heard of. I've been using Instacast since before Apple's app came out and just recently bought Aural.
What podcast app was ever removed from the app store? There was some controversy before they started being accepted, and then problems with search in the app store. But I'm not aware of any apps that were accepted and then removed.
I haven't had any experiences that bad with Google. Losing Google Reader was bad, but also made me appreciate the existence of the Data Liberation Front[1]. And I know I can install non-Google android or Ubuntu on my phone if it comes to that.
[1]http://www.dataliberation.org/