They’ve sold a hundred million of them and embedded it into millions of TVs. It’s not as mainstream as Chrome or Android but it’s far from a niche product, especially for people who aren’t old enough to have grown accustomed to using dedicated boxes attached to their TVs to watch everything.

I find that hard to believe...

"Cast" is a pretty ubiquitous term and, anecdotally, Chromecast is almost always the device I find when traveling.

Probably selection bias on my part, but I'd expect most people to be aware of Chromecast unless they're over the age of ~70 and fully Apple-oriented.

Seems like throwing away a perfectly well known brand.

I travel quite a bit and I've never encountered one. Never even seen one at all. I've heard of Chromecast because I go on tech sites, but they're suspiciously absent in my bubble of reality. I'm an Android and Linux user too.

It's interesting you mention upfront that you travel. Is that travel for work where you might be staying in corporate hotels?

I ask because when I have travelled for work, it's the corporate hotels that have often baked a Chromecast into their TV experience, even to the point of sorting out their wifi network so you're only able to cast to the screen in your room. Their splash screen offers "live TV" or the option to "stream from your phone".

They often don't shout about the fact that it's a chromecast doing the work, but the telltale standby screen that shows up when you're not casting something normally confirms it.

The protocol is baked into almost every TV sold now. Have you seriously never even tried it? Never wondered what that rectangle icon was in youtube videos on your phone, etc...?

At least Samsung and LG don't include them, and these seem to be the most popular brands in Europe as far as I can tell.

They both support AirPlay these days, I've never been able to use Google Cast natively with a TV here, which is a shame for my use cases (Netflix doesn't support it, and I generally don't like to have my phone connected to the TV via Wi-Fi for the entire duration of a movie).

Edit: Turns out LG is currently in the process of adding it, and Samsung seems to have support in some models as well, but it's definitely not ubiquitous.

Right, because no one buys them anymore as the feature is baked into their televisions already. They were popular originally but don't have a home. If it's just the hardware device you're talking about, sure. It's obscure now, which is why it's being cancelled.

What's frustrating in this thread is how many people are conflating the weird dongle product with the extremely successful streaming control protocol. Only the weird thing is being cancelled!

The whole thread is about Google discontinuing a physical product, not a feature baked into TV's. I've never seen the product they're discontinuing IRL.

I believe this varies widely by region. In Europe, I've never seen a TV with built-in Google Cast support, but many do support Airplay.

Part of it is how often do people buy TVs? I doubt if I've bought one in over 15 years.

A quick Google says that 40M televisions are sold in the US every year, into a market with 130M households. So... a whole lot more often than once every decade and half.

My Vizio TV calls it SmartCast. I just Airplay to it. I didn't realize until I just googled it that Chromecast is basically Airplay for Android.

Other way around; Chromecast beat Airplay to market by like four years I think. But yes, they're very comparable technologies.

One important difference is that Airplay is much more of a screen or video mirroring protocol, while Google Cast is focused on the receiver driving presentation, with your mobile device only acting as a navigation source.

Practically, this means that you can take phone calls, hibernate your computer, kill a source app on your phone, leave the house entirely etc. with Chromecast without interrupting whatever's playing on a TV or stereo, while with Airplay, playback usually stops in these scenarios. Airplay is also a bigger battery drain as a result, in my experience.

I had an AirPort Express back in 2004 timeframe that was precursor to Airplay that did beat Chromecast by close to 10 years with AirTunes. AirPlay came out in 2010. Then, in 2017, Apple released AirPlay 2.

Chromecast first gen was in 2013.

Apple actually beat Google on this one in terms of time.

How is a wireless audio technology comparable to chromecast? If it is, bluetooth audio streaming started in 1998, beating airport express by 6 years. And don't get me started on radio...

By your logic, AirPlay and Chromecast are just smaller versions of broadcast television.

Come on man

According to Wikipedia, AirPlay was 2010 (and preceded by AirTunes in 2004); Chromecast 2013.

"cast" is a ubiquitous term because of chromecast

Definitely, and the same probably goes for Pixel, Nest etc.

But those that have at least subjectively/anecdotally seem pretty happy with it – so why kill it and start from scratch?

That's reasonable. Although Chromecast also has a brand identity of dongle you plug into a TV for streaming. If you're something a lot different/more ambitious then rebranding isn't a bad idea.

I'm actually a big proponent of moving TV smarts out of the display just as I am in cars.

Wild guess: most people go "I want the Google TV thingy"

But many, many more than have heard of Google TV Streamer.

I think that's the point of:

> one that will be very visible next to a TV, and not out of sight behind it like its predecessor.

You're now advertising to anyone who visits your home.

That doesn't require changing the branding.