In aspects of dropping extraneous discovery messages, a device application can initiate a discovery message in a device, such as a multicast message initiated for network discovery or discovery of network services. The device implements a status module that can interpose the routing of the discovery message in the device, and determine whether a response to a previous discovery message was received. The status module can also determine a device state of the device, where the device state can indicate whether a discovery message response is necessary. The status module is implemented to drop the discovery message if the response to the previous discovery message was not received and based on the device state indicating that a discovery message response is extraneous.