Google Currents officially dead with latest update, pushes users to Play Newsstand

Google Currents never really got much traction from the start. Anyone in the market for an app that did what Currents offered were far more likely to go with a better alternative that had more support, like Flipboard. Then, when Google released Play Newsstand, it was obvious that Currents was on its way out. Now, Currents is officially dead.

Google pushed an update to the Currents app today which officially takes it offline. If you were to launch the app now, all it would do is present you with a

screen telling you that Google Play Newsstand has replaced Currents and it gives a link to launch you into the Newsstand app. All other functionality that had existed in Google Currents has been stripped out.

The Currents app even goes so far as to clean up after itself. When you run the updated version of the app and tap through to Newsstand, Currents will clear its app data and disable itself. Given that the update drops the storage footprint of the app from 5.4MB (plus news data) to just 860KB, it won't make much of an impact on your device even if you don't fully uninstall it.

If you are a Currents diehard, the old version of the app still works, but it is unclear if that will continue.

source: Android Police

12 Comments

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posted on 19 Feb 2014, 22:27 2

1. deathgod (Posts: 122; Member since: 23 Nov 2011)

This story would have been great hours ago :(. Unfortunately I had my Currents app set to autoupdate, and man I'm pissed! Newstand just plain sucks! The navigation, layout, etc, is nowhere near as good as Currents is. This update should have been a manual one, where users got to choose whether they wanted to have their Current version uninstalled. Anyone who doesn't have a backup of Currents is screwed. You've been making some really bad moves lately Google...

posted on 19 Feb 2014, 22:47 1

2. alrightihatepickingusernames (Posts: 474; Member since: 29 Dec 2013)

Damn, I actually really liked Currents. Luckily I don't have auto update on anything for this very reason.

posted on 19 Feb 2014, 22:50 1

3. alrightihatepickingusernames (Posts: 474; Member since: 29 Dec 2013)

Havana haha haha haha, I just checked the most helpful reviews, almost all of them were one star and I didn't see any five star ratings.

Hopefully they'll work on it... But I can't recall Google admitting to a mistake they've made...

posted on 20 Feb 2014, 06:08 1

8. apple4never (Posts: 1064; Member since: 08 May 2013)

find an older version apk and then just don't update

posted on 19 Feb 2014, 23:36 2

4. chocowii (Posts: 470; Member since: 30 Jan 2014)

Google Currents always do is slow my Nexus down.

posted on 20 Feb 2014, 10:53 1

11. cezarepc (Posts: 718; Member since: 23 Nov 2012)

True.

posted on 20 Feb 2014, 00:04 2

5. Stuntman (Posts: 836; Member since: 01 Aug 2011)

I never liked it. I use Pulse.

posted on 20 Feb 2014, 00:29 1

6. __0__ (banned) (Posts: 242; Member since: 07 Jan 2014)

New stand is like currents with newer UI.

Why can't I fully uninstall currents on my nexus 7 ? Now I have a newstand app and a currents app that shows me the same information

posted on 20 Feb 2014, 02:48

7. bagou01 (Posts: 22; Member since: 20 Nov 2013)

i'm not on autoupdate, however currents is nowhere on my n5 already, not in activated nor disasbled apps...

posted on 20 Feb 2014, 09:39

10. Augustine (Posts: 1043; Member since: 28 Sep 2013)

I had it disabled on my N5 and didn't even notice its vanishing, perhaps with the 4.4.2 update. Good riddance.