Why Google decided now’s the time to move on from Chromecast

The Chromecast is going away after more than a decade in Google’s hardware portfolio, with the company phasing it out to make room for the new Google TV Streamer. In 2013, the timing was perfect for the Chromecast’s success. Most TVs of that era had rudimentary entertainment apps that were often slow, so beaming content from your phone to a TV made a lot of sense.

But times have changed. With the Chromecast with Google TV in 2020, Google pivoted in the opposite direction with a much more traditional, lean-back entertainment experience. Casting took a back seat to carousels of content recommendations, and native apps returned.

The Google TV Streamer is designed to build on that strategy by infusing Gemini AI smarts into the software. It’ll put smart home controls right on your TV screen. And yes, it’ll be faster than the often laggy Chromecast. “It is blazingly fast, so it’s a more premium model than what we’ve been releasing before,” says Shalini Govil-Pai, the VP and GM of Google TV. I spoke with her last week to hear more about the thinking behind Google’s $99 device, which goes on sale in late September.

“The Google TV Streamer was our response to a lot of our users saying, ‘Hey, Chromecast is great and really inexpensive. But we can get inexpensive devices from a lot of players now,’’’ Govil-Pai said. (Walmart’s Onn brand is filling out the under-$50 zone quite well with multiple Google TV streamers, and Amazon and Roku both sell devices priced in that same impulse-buy territory.)

So Google decided to focus on a higher-end device, and it viewed the Nvidia Shield — long praised as the most performant Android TV streamer — as something to strive toward. “The Nvidia Shield was our gold tier price point as well as gold tier performance, and this is really what it’s going to be with our Google TV Streamer. That’s why we’re very excited about it,” Govil-Pai said.

And yet, even right after the announcement, some of our commenters were frustrated that Google had settled for just a 22 percent boost in CPU speed. There’s a good chance this thing will still benchmark underneath the fairly ancient Shield. Why not just drop a Tensor chip into it?

It comes down to cost and keeping the Streamer at a price that’s acceptable for average consumers. “We don’t know if there’s functionality that would actually convince people to buy pricier price points than this, but the market is generally telling us right now people are probably not ready for it,” Govil-Pai said.

And even if there is eventually a higher-priced living room device from Google, it sounds like horsepower won’t be the main justification. “Over time, do we have enough functionality, let’s say from a Gemini perspective, that actually make it worthwhile to spend even more money? Then we will definitely look at it,” she said. “But at this point, I think this is the competitive price point that we want to play at.” 

Google has doubled the amount of RAM in the Google TV Streamer, which could play as much of a role as the CPU bump when it comes to ensuring smoother day-to-day performance — and keeping it that way after a year or two. The Chromecast with Google TV had a reputation for faring okay right out of the box but gradually getting laggy over time. Google’s decision to stick with Wi-Fi 5 on a streaming device is unfortunate, but at least there’s a built-in gigabit ethernet jack.

The Google TV Streamer is also relatively futureproofed as a centerpiece of the smart home. The Google Home panel will let you quickly dim lights, view cameras, trigger automations, and so on. There’s Matter support and a Thread border router baked right in, too.

As for the new software capabilities, Govil-Pai said Google is trying to address modern trends. You can use Gemini to create generative AI screensavers that are shown when the Google TV Streamer is in ambient mode — kind of like a Frame TV — or ask it to pull up photos from a recent trip. On a related note, I asked Govil-Pai why there’s still no proper Google Photos app for the company’s TV platform. “What we found in our user studies is that most people don’t actually want to open the app on TV. They just want to very quickly get to things, and so that’s why we believe the voice-based interactions — like ‘hey, show me my memories from last year’ — is the more relevant experience.”

On the Google TV Streamer, Gemini will also display overview summaries of shows and movies when you click into their detail pages. The outgoing Chromecast already shows Rotten Tomatoes scores and IMDb ratings, but this will aggregate feedback from more places. “You can see a summary across the web of what people are saying about this show,” Govil-Pai said. “Like, is it amazing? Is it not so amazing, but really good for people who love sci-fi? All of that will be summarized for you.” Google believes LLMs can also produce more fine-tuned recommendations compared to the fairly generic categories that Google TV surfaces right now.

Despite all these forward-facing features, one of Govil-Pai’s favorite new additions is among the simplest: the Google TV Streamer has a remote finder button on the back of the unit. When you press it, the remote emits a beeping sound, making it easier to find on movie night. Your move, Apple, and no… using my phone to find a remote isn’t the answer.

Photography by Chris Welch / The Verge