Well, at least they aren’t outright throwing the functionality in the trash.
There’s something to be said about brand recognition, and Google just doesn’t listen.
Gemini soon to be rebranded Allo Assistant All Access Chat
… Plus
Google, stop fucking with your own shit.
I’ve heard it’s because creating/reforming things rather than maintaining them is more valued at Google with their current company culture.
Their company culture sounds like shit. They should be more like Valve. Make a great thing and then forget it exists until it sucks just because it’s too old.
A friend who worked at Meta said pretty concisely, “You get rewarded for coming up with something new, not improving something old.”
It’s pretty common across most orgs really. Google just seems to have perfected it. Which might actually mean they’ll kill it soon!
This is America in general.
Google: “Thanks for your feedback, we hear you loud in clear. In response, we’ve launched 5 new messenger apps (only 3 available in your region), changed the names and branding of 3 other messengers, and completely discontinued 8 other messenger apps. We hope you enjoy playing our little game of Three Card Monty trying to figure out which messenger actually works now.”
Well, at least they aren’t outright throwing the functionality in the trash.
Yet
At least they’re not killing the protocol.
Yet.
They already killed MiraCast for their Embrance, Extend, Extinguish Chromecast…
I’m not defending Google but I think the change is just an admission that the old “Chromecast” branding is outdated. It wouldn’t surprise me if less than 5% of users still regularly cast from a desktop browser.
🙋♂️
I would do it more often, if firefox would fucking finally add it into the browser.
And no, that weird plugin doesn’t count. It’s buggy as hell
It’s literally the only reason I have chrome installed
Pretty sure they can’t bundle it. AFAIK the libraries required for it ship with Chrome / Android and it’s not an open standard. The hacky weird workarounds are people brute forcing it.
I don’t even use their browser and if anything I’d want a full video cable replacement and not just stream specific things.
if less than 5% of users still regularly cast from a desktop browser.
Wait, I could do that?! It doesn’t matter a ton at the moment, but I might want to do that in future. I’ll have to look into it.
All I know is I appreciate their slow roll. Everytime they break something I replace it with the non-Google option. I’ve got a small nuc as my main HTPC tied into my plex. Been waiting for an excuse to swap my first Gen Google hockey Puck from like 2012 in my bedroom.