5 Android apps you shouldnt miss this week Android Apps Weekly

Welcome to the 490th edition of Android Apps Weekly. Here are the headlines from the last week:

Stitcher is shutting down its podcasting service as of August 29th. The app was once hailed as among the best podcast apps available but has slid in recent years. SiriusXM, Stitcher’s owner, is expected to move the service into its subscription service to help entice more people to get it. Stitcher has been around for 25 years, so it’s a little sad to see it go.
Facebook will let people download Android apps and games directly from advertisements. This is probably a terrible idea, but it’s something Facebook wants to try. Meta intends to start a pilot program with a few choice developers later this year. Hit the link to learn more.
YouTube is implementing a three-strikes test for ad blocking. Basically, it’ll warn you when you show up to the site with an ad blocker on. Once you get enough strikes, the service intends to stop playback temporarily. This is going to be interesting, and something we think a lot of people are going to get mad at. On the other hand, it does help pay the creators people watch, which is helpful in producing more content to watch.
Microsoft is giving Bing and Edge new AI tools for shopping. The tools generate things like buyer’s guides, review summaries, and price matches. The buyer’s guides and review summaries are available as of this week. The final feature, price matching, is slated for launch later this year.
The Reddit protests actually put a pretty serious ding in Reddit’s traffic. It’s estimated that site traffic dropped by 16% over the two days when the protests happened. That’s a lot of traffic and reports are that it hurt the site’s advertiser engagement as well. However, traffic returned to normal after 48 hours, indicating that people are, in fact, going right back to it. We’ll see how this plays out long term.