Of course they are.

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.

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.

"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?"

Really, rebranding from Chromecast to Google TV Streamer? Who the fuck was the genius that greenlighted this?

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?

Add it to the pile of dead google projects

Did y'all even click the article?

It will be rebranded, basically, to become the Google TV streamer. The tech is not going anywhere.

"In place of the Chromecast, the company will offer the newly announced $99.99 Google TV Streamer, which launches on September 24th."

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 from Netflix 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 it 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. Then the home mini stopped working as well, started triggering by itself, didn't hear words right, then the Chromecast had trouble updating firmware and rebooting. Then Netflix platformed that douchebag chapelle.

Now all that's left of it is the pihole I used to block ads for it.

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

Literally all my friends know the name "Chromecast", why would you rename it

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.

"okay, what successful product are we going to kill next?"

Another one for the graveyard

I'm waiting for Gmail, it has to be soon :)

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.

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

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

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.

Edit - they also probably thought it would be a revenue stream for buying videos through Google or get their cut from some android app, but people instead watched their media from sources outside their pay umbrella

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.