To be fair, Chromecast has lasted longer than a good number of other products from Google. And it’s easy to understate just how important — if unassuming — a product it’s been. But now, after 11 years, Chromecast has earned a plot in the Google Graveyard.
Google itself announced the death of the nearly 4-year-old Chromecast with Google TV, and with it, the entire Chromecast line, as it announced Google TV Streamer. “After 11 years and over 100 million devices sold,” VP of engineering Majd Bakar wrote, “we’re ending production of Chromecast, which will now only be available while supplies last.”
So that’s that. The first-generation Chromecast changed the way we used our phones. It was a low-cost device that made it super simple to “cast” video from your phone to anything with an HDMI port. This was back in the days in which some companies were trying to make the DLNA protocol happen — but I only ever got to stream video from an LG phone to an LG television. In Seoul. South Korea. Chromecast, on the other hand, used your phone to tell the Chromecast device where the video lived, and it’d take over from there. Unlike DLNA, your phone wasn’t actually doing the heavy lifting. And soon enough, what started as an easy way to watch YouTube videos on your television found a home in all sorts of other video apps.
Fast forward a couple of years and Chromecast got a refresh and along with it an audio-only option. The aptly named Chromecast Audio had a 3.5mm output instead of HDMI and made it simple to listen to anything that also had an analog input.
Another year later and Chromecast Ultra brought the product into the 4K era. It also was a low-cost way to try out streaming video games with the Google Stadia platform, which Google discontinued in January 2023 after barely more than two years. Two years later we got a third-gen Chromecast that kept 1080p support at just $35, but it thew in the ability to stream at 60 frames per second.
That led to the current — former, actually — era of Chromecast with Google TV starting in September 2020. Now a full-fledged streaming device with an actual operating system, this Chromecast was a fan favorite. But it always was underpowered, though that was perhaps forgivable considering the $50 price tag. But it made Google TV more accessible to more people — and gave Google a low-cost platform on which to get more to subscribe to YouTube TV.
That was then. And perhaps we should have seen the writing on the wall as Google — which more often than not has been really bad at naming things — changed “Chromecast built-in” to just “cast.” You’ll be forgiven if you had no idea that was a thing because you’d only notice it on, say, a smart TV, and even then only if you were looking closely. But the point is the Chromecast name started to be phased out earlier this year on the software side.
And now, Google’s declared the death of Chromecast as a platform. RIP.
