It’s so wild that Google would rather weaken their own brand than just keep a secondary frontend around. It would require minimal maintenance cost (given the size of their company, just have 1-2 fulltime devs working on keeping it in shape and updated), and it could access the exact same backend as the Youtube Music app.
Weird.
And don’t misunderstand me, I really don’t like Google Podcasts for podcasts, but I also admit that having a separate app for podcasts is superior, as you listen to them very differently than you listen to music. Spotify amiably shows how their recommendation algorithms absolutely cannot handle someone listening to both, anyways.