In place of the Chromecast, the company will offer the newly announced $99.99 Google TV Streamer,
They’re replacing it with a very similar product. Nothing to see here.
Google is discontinuing the Chromecast line
Submitted 3 months ago by surfrock66@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/6/24214471/google-chromecast-line-discontinued
Comments
Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 3 months ago
LaggyKar@programming.dev 3 months ago
A more expensive, clunkier product, with a bunch nog needless fluff in it.
DampSquid@feddit.uk 3 months ago
Enshitification 101
NegativeInf@lemmy.world 3 months ago
You mean twice the ram (1 gig more than the shield), 4 times the storage (32 gigs), and a better remote (chirping find my remote feature, programmable button, and less shitty volume buttons)?
Yep. Sure sounds worse considering it also supports all the same features of the chromecast 4k and AV1 decoding.
fraksken@infosec.pub 3 months ago
For which they will be able to offer subscriptions in a year or 2.
Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 3 months ago
Now with AI!
I’m not sure why they didn’t just call it the chrome cast gen whatever though.
Thann@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
Similar product that costs 4 times as much and has AI features…
Telodzrum@lemmy.world 3 months ago
The low-power streaming box is dying. It’s not completely without reason, 4k playback is actually a bit demanding.
We are in a place where the 2017 nVidia Shield is beginning to show its age and that leaves the AppleTV as the only powerful and capable consumer set top box on the market. This new option from Google will at least provide some competition and an option outside of Apple’s ecosystem.
balder1991@lemmy.world 3 months ago
woelkchen@lemmy.world 3 months ago
They’re replacing it with a very similar product. Nothing to see here.
Like they do with messengers every couple of years.
Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 3 months ago
Or music streaming apps.
lemming741@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Seemed monthly at one point 🤣
cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 months ago
and before that they already replaced it with google tv with chromecast
avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
Caught on the clickbait, hook, line and sinker.
_pete_@lemmy.world 3 months ago
I feel the original Chromecast was probably the last truly great original Google product, it was simple, it was inexpensive and it worked - you just plugged it in, joined your network and you were off, there really wasn’t anything like it at the time.
I really hate what they’ve become.
Quill7513@slrpnk.net 3 months ago
What’s funny is that was actually the start of them becoming who they are now. There’s a litany of evidence they stole the Chromecast technology
Natanael@slrpnk.net 3 months ago
The remote playback control over network patents? I can’t see why those patents should be valid, everything there has prior art done in the 80’s
bam13302@ttrpg.network 3 months ago
What changed? I thought that is still what they did.
CameronDev@programming.dev 3 months ago
Chromecast with Google TV made the “simple” casting worse for some apps like Netflix. Instead of it casting directly, it would spawn the Netflix app and make you use the remote to reselect the show you wanted to see.
_pete_@lemmy.world 3 months ago
I feels like they either badly copy (see Gemini) or don’t think about what they’re offering (see Stadia’s busted business model) they’re content to milk the existing services they’ve already got and make them worse by cramming in more ads (see YouTube, Google’s search result pages) and they cut out or dictate the web through their monopolies (see AMP and Chrome) rather than working with other parties to make good products.
They feel like Hooli in Silicon Valley, basically the definition of a fat tech giant who doesn’t do any innovation of their own.
Head@lemmings.world 3 months ago
I still have and use one. Will it stop working now?
Gloria@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
“Yes I know the customer learned that product name and has a good connotation with it, but how about we change the name to something completely different?”
Quill7513@slrpnk.net 3 months ago
“Our current product offering is less than $50. We were thinking the next iteration should be $300”
Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.world 3 months ago
It’s also built with the same SoC as Walmart’s Google TV box that sells for $50.
Caligvla@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 months ago
Really, rebranding from Chromecast to Google TV Streamer? Who the fuck was the genius that greenlighted this?
kandoh@reddthat.com 3 months ago
Hi, I’m the project lead on Chromecast and I’m here to talk about what my team’s been up to maintaining this popular product
The board: yawn
Hi, I’m the project lead on the new Google TV Streamer that we’ve just launched, let’s look at these exciting new adoption numbers and talk about how we plan to keep this incredible momentum going
The board: Wow! Amazing stuff plz take this large bonus
BleatingZombie@lemmy.world 3 months ago
I knew someone who worked at a really well loved local restaurant. One day a new manager came in and IMMEDIATELY wanted to change the name. According to him, you should change a restaurant’s name every 2 years
Why would you ruin the recognition you already have? He was also planning on changing the name to be the exact same as a business down the street. I think he was an idiot
piccolo@ani.social 3 months ago
“Give this man a raise and promotion” – some MBA somewhere
Natanael@slrpnk.net 3 months ago
Because the dude comes from a corporate world where everybody’s known for stagnation, not quality, so changing the name gets rid of am association with stagnation BUT also gets rid of an association with quality if that’s the reputation you’ve built up and these types can not understand that because they’ve never worked in a place putting quality first
Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
Probably the same guy that greenlights unwanted UI changes in all their products.
jdeath@lemm.ee 3 months ago
they make 6.1 million dollars per day for their executive savvy
csm10495@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Yep. Someone thinks the Google name has some crazy value.
thezeesystem@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Me - Ok Google, give me a open source way to turn my raspberry pi into a 4k streaming box.
Google - Got it. Playing Tyler Swift on living room tv
Me - wtf?
avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
HardKernel makesa a few ODROID models that come with available Android TV builds. Some have the same chipset as the AMLogic on the CCwGTV 4K and they aren’t terribly expensive. If I wanted an open source Chromecast replacement I’d go for that.
exanime@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Add it to the pile of dead google projects
treadful@lemmy.zip 3 months ago
Dead successful projects.
dev_null@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
Nope, though the clickbait title would make you believe so. Nothing is discontinued.
sushibowl@feddit.nl 3 months ago
The Chromecast is a small $35 dongle that goes behind your TV. This new thing is a whole $99 set-top box with an AI integration. They’re not really the same product.
exanime@lemmy.world 3 months ago
They are literally no going to make the dongles any more
w2tpmf@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Killedbygoogle com
I_Clean_Here@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Did y’all even click the article?
It will be rebranded, basically, to become the Google TV streamer.
“In place of the Chromecast, the company will offer the newly announced $99.99 Google TV Streamer, which launches on September 24th.”
SpaceCadet@feddit.nl 3 months ago
$100 though … a Chromecast used to be like $35.
Yambu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 months ago
Rebrand to increase price by an ungodly amount to circumvent massive backlash ✅
Laborer3652@reddthat.com 3 months ago
I mean this is what Google does though. Some new exec comes in, rebrands existing tech to solve some problem, support continues for a few tears, rinse and repeat until google decides it isnt worth it and kills the entire platform.
surfrock66@lemmy.world 3 months ago
It’s a different device. Already, the existing google tv workflow is different than the chromecast, which was phone control first. Now, it brings up an app which favors navigation with the remote. If I want a set top box, I’ll put a kodi box in…I wanted a dumb dongle which could be controlled from a phone. It’s fundamentally a different product.
My hope is that casting decouples as a concept from being a google protocol. Even though Amazon is backing it now, I hope MatterCast can become an open casting standard. My vision is having MatterCast be an installable add-on to Kodi, and then an ultra-light image can be made for super low-end devices supporting audio and video (or both).
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 months ago
RIP to a real one.
Back in the day when streaming was cheap as hell and made sense as all things were on Netflix, having a Home Mini with and a Chromecast was bliss.
I used to have a shortcut for the phrase “I’m so tired”, it would start playing Star Trek TNG on the Chromecast monitor and it just werked. Saved me from a bad trip once too, I was really uncomfortable on 135ug so in a desperate attempt to hold onto reality I said “alexa…uhmm…uh…hey google play RoboCop” and it just worked.
Only thing is played the wrong RoboCop (2014) but that only distracted me from spiraling further, like “hold up Samuel L Jackson was in this?”
It feels weird to say but I was a genuinely happy customer. Now all that’s left of it is the pihole I used to block ads for it.
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 3 months ago
I pretty much exclusively used my chrome cast to bypass smart TV bullshit and stream my movies and TV shows stored on my pc and phone to my TV.
jeena@piefed.jeena.net 3 months ago
The Chromecast was one of the few things I really liked made by Google. I always have one in my travel bag and it's basically like bringing your own home theater to the hotel with you. I had a time where I lived in hotels and AirBnB's for almost a year and this thing was god send.
They have some other device which they want to sell which will replace it, but that one is big and clunky, not meant for traveling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSSI_Ht6Mis
WanderingVentra@lemm.ee 3 months ago
Dammit. I like it for the same reason. Why does Google keep doing this?
intensely_human@lemm.ee 3 months ago
Because they worship incompetence.
jdeath@lemm.ee 3 months ago
well, it’s just in their DNA. institutional inertia is a helluva drug!
AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee 3 months ago
$
poopkins@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Connecting a classic (non-Google TV) Chromecast to a new WiFi (or heaven forbid a hotel WiFi with a capture portal) was always such a pain. And casting over networks without mDNS is flaky at best and otherwise downright impossible.
By contrast, I’ve loved taking along my Chromecast with Google TV to hotels, along with:
- A VPN client installed it already,
- An Android phone that can create a WiFi AP while connected to the hotel WiFi,
- A Bluetooth speaker and my Bluetooth headphones paired to it so I get great audio as well.
This has been a complete gamechanger and a genuine upgrade over yesteryear’s Chromecasts.
BuddyTheBeefalo@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
I take my raspberry pi 400 with me ($70). I don’t like to travel with expensive things. Once connected to a hotel tv, i have a full pc. I watch movies in 720p to have more fps.
C126@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Not surprised. Like chromecast audio, chromecast couldn’t really serve an adequate amount of ads. Basically it’s only value was it forced you to use stock youtube app to stream preventing any adblocking, but if you cast your screen, then it can’t stop adblocks, so it makes sense to discontinue this product. There’s some open source projects out there that might be worth looking into, NymphCast is one I saw, uses a rasberry pi.
SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 3 months ago
“okay, what successful product are we going to kill next?”
Amir@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
Literally all my friends know the name “Chromecast”, why would you rename it
108@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Another one for the graveyard
chevy9294@monero.town 3 months ago
I’m waiting for Gmail, it has to be soon :)
WarlordSdocy@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Don’t know anything about newer Chromecast but I really love my older one. Its just a dumb stick with no apps built in that I can cast stuff from my phone to. The only recent annoying thing with it is that the YouTube app changed the behaviour when you’re connected, so now instead of tapping on a video to bring up a menu asking whether to play it now or add it to the queue it now just defaults playing it now when you tap on it. Makes setting up a queue of videos really annoying now cause you have to tap on the three dots to add it to the queue now.
Antergo@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
They actually have a great product, and they’re canceling it? The new ones were kind of expensive already, but every app supported it and it was very nice
exanime@lemmy.world 3 months ago
This is why I’d never invest in anything Google.
It’s already rolling the dice to see if they enshitify things fast enough to ruin it for me, but now you know they will just kill whatever you have been using on a whim
Wrench@lemmy.world 3 months ago
It didn’t have planned obsolescence in it. People bought the 3 devices they needed for their house, and have been coasting off them for a decade. Maybe with the occasional refresh for 4k or a worn out USB port or whatever.
Just corporate greed on display here. People stopped buying them because the product was simple and did what it was supposed to for a long time. Gotta enshitify it so we see those $$$ roll in again.
redhorsejacket@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Hmm, so, last month I began to have issues with my Chromecast for the first time. I have an old 3rd gen Chromecast attached to my bedroom television (not a smart tv) for the purpose of casting obnoxiously long video essays to fall asleep to. After like a decade of essentially hassle free operation, it suddenly stopped being able to maintain a connection to my phone. I cast a video, and after approximately 10 minutes, the cast disconnects and I get a message on my phone saying “this video cannot be played in the background”. I’ve tried ever troubleshooting technique I can think of.
I know I shouldn’t attribute to malice what can be explained by other causes, but boy, seeing this news today sure makes me think about things like planned obsolescence.
Mio@feddit.nu 3 months ago
Ok. Can someone please update https://killedbygoogle.com/ with this and increase the counter with +1?
yeather@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
I know haha google graveyard funny, but over a decade of production only to be replaced by a similar product is a financial success.
BenchpressMuyDebil@szmer.info 3 months ago
My god does anybody else downvote an article if it’s blatant clickbait? How does it have 520 score? You were supposed to be better than r**dit remember?
jpeps@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Uggggggghhhhhh another one for the pile. I love Chromecasts but to be fair the latest one with Google TV was a sign that things were getting shitty soon. 22% more CPU for a YouTube machine? Who cares? A home hub that needs my TV to work? Who cares? It’s like the tech industry regrets putting everything on your phone and now they want to separate it out again. Fuck off.
MerchantsOfMisery@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
Family practically thought I was David Blaine when I got a first gen Chromecast back in the day.
SomeGuy69@lemmy.world 3 months ago
On another news “Why is everyone hating google now?” lol
overload@sopuli.xyz 3 months ago
Urgh… We own three of these devices and this news really sucks because a set-top box isn’t convenient for two of those TVs.
PlutoniumAcid@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Will existing devices continue to work “forever” or must we add them to the graveyard?
kalistia@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
And? Do they plan to put all the software open source so that the millions of hardware they sold would not go to waste in some years? We should force them to by law.
Lootboblin@lemmy.world 3 months ago
any product linked to google is a no buy. I basically dont buy anything these days. fuck that company!
MagicShel@programming.dev 3 months ago
Of course they are.
jqubed@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Google’s gonna Google
N1ghtstalk3r@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Add another casualty to the list:
killedbygoogle.com
bitflag@lemmy.world 3 months ago
They aren’t really, they are just upgrading it to a full set top box and rebranding it.
IamAnonymous@lemmy.world 3 months ago
But it went from a dongle to a set top box for more than 3 times the price. It’s not really the same device, just similar functionality.
LodeMike@lemmy.today 3 months ago
I just came to comment this exact string.
IsThisAnAI@lemmy.world 3 months ago
🙄 it’s as dead as the Nexus. Try to keep up.
Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Lol I said these exact words a second before I read this. Google is such a fucking awful company.