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Don’t forget Google already abandoned Google TV once: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_TV https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_TV I bought it as a gift

Don’t forget Google already abandoned Google TV once: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_TV https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_TV I bought it as a gift for someone once and they cancelled it and deleted the SDK.

josteink 6y ago
Maybe this will be a product which Google cancels twice then. Would that be a first?
- nickff 6y ago
  "Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat." -Winston S. Churchill (quote likely true but original provenance unknown)
tehlike 6y ago
don't know about google tv, but chromecast is wildly successful.
- Spare_account 6y ago
  Is product success a useful metric for whether or not Google cancel services?
  - achtung82 6y ago
    Usually yes.
  - animationwill 6y ago
    >> Is product success a useful metric for whether or not Google cancel services? Yes. Unsuccessful products get cancelled. The successful services get to stay but the customers get hit with "insane price hikes": https://www.geoawesomeness.com/developers-up-in-arms-over-google-maps-api-insane-price-hike/ https://www.geoawesomeness.com/developers-up-in-arms-over-go...
    - treesknees 6y ago
      Except for Reader, Inbox, Cloud Print, the Nest API, Code, among many others I'm sure. It doesn't seem to matter whether they're successful or popular.
      - tehlike 6y ago
        I was a big reader person, but google is victim of its own success. These products were barely above a few million users. At google scale,1% is more than 15m person, and usually 1% is not justifiable
  - tiz_io 6y ago
    Yes. But also no. RIP Reader.
    - falcolas 6y ago
      Probably didn't help that there wasn't an easy path to monetization for Reader.
      - mbreese 6y ago
        Huh? If Google didn't want to charge a fee for use (which doesn't seem to be how Google works), then they could easily have inserted their own adds into the RSS feeds. Or had an ad bar in the Reader interface. It seems like Google of all places would have been able to figure out how to support that with ads. I just don't think that they wanted to. It didn't fit into how they thought people would be interacting with the Internet in the future, and I can't say they were all that wrong...
        tehlike 6y ago
        Too small of a product for google scale. See my other comment in this thread.
- Someone1234 6y ago
  Combing both Chromecast and Android TV (e.g. Nvidia Shield) has a less than 10% market share. Making it smaller than Samsung, Amazon, and much smaller than Roku (market leader). It seems to have a hardcore audience that think the world of it (or who haven't tried anything else), but most of the market moved on years ago. If anything this Google TV "Chromecast" is designed to make Chromecast relevant again.
  - TulliusCicero 6y ago
    I've heard that outside the US, Android TV is very successful.
    - OkGoDoIt 6y ago
      At least in China, so many TVs and projectors and set top boxes use Android under the hood, but they are so heavily customized it’s sometimes hard to tell. And it’s definitely not standard “Android TV“
    - mikecoles 6y ago
      Android, yes. Google, no. There are so many knockoffs of knockoffs of Android STBs that you usually pick them up for < $30.
  - vorpalhex 6y ago
    > If anything this Google TV "Chromecast" is designed to make Chromecast relevant again. Chromecast has always had the issue that it's main users are the tech savvy who are comfortable controlling everything via smartphone. That's not a huge percent of the population. By adding the remote and going for the play of helping you navigate cross app, they seem to be trying to extend out to less savvy users who need a more guided product. Overall it seems like the longterm plan is to push their subscription services, since I can't imagine they make great money from the devices themselves. Increasing user base is the best way for them to achieve that goal.
    - AshleyGrant 6y ago
derefr 6y ago
Back then, "Google TV" was its whole own OS initiative. This was years before Android TV was a thing. But Google TV had far less wide-ranging industry support than Android TV has today. And Google TV needed industry support, because it was literally just an OS platform (like Android TV) rather than something Google was able to push by shipping its own hardware. No third parties interested in integrating the platform? No point. This go-around, "Google TV" seems to be just some first-party Chromecast hardware running an OEM skin over Android TV OS. Much lower CapEx. Far easier to justify as a Google project. (And it's a logical strategic move, too. A lot of smart TV manufacturers are shipping crap Android TV implementations that plaster advertising everywhere; and the advice everyone gives to get around that is to get an Apple TV, because Apple's tvOS doesn't force ads on you. That gives the Apple ecosystem a foothold in otherwise-Google-ecosystem homes and businesses. Google is likely willing to spend a lot of money to prevent Apple getting that foothold.)
- stefan_ 6y ago
  Google literally just added auto-playing semi-fullscreen video ads to Android TV in August: https://9to5google.com/2020/08/05/android-tv-homescreen-ad-cinematic-feature/ https://9to5google.com/2020/08/05/android-tv-homescreen-ad-c... As long as Google makes its money selling ads every one of their services is just one lousy executive seeking "synergies with the ad business" away from ruining the experience.
- rektide 6y ago
  This is incredibly wrong. Android 3 honeycomb was the basis for Google TV. Most of those APIs were quickly deprecated. Please read: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_TV_(discontinued) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_TV_(discontinued)
Splendor 6y ago
Wikipedia has moved the discontinued Google TV page here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_TV_(discontinued) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_TV_(discontinued)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
animationwill 6y ago
Looks like someone moved the wikipedia link to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_TV_(discontinued) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_TV_(discontinued) ... so now my post looks inaccurate

josteink 6y ago

Maybe this will be a product which Google cancels twice then. Would that be a first?

nickff 6y ago
"Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat." -Winston S. Churchill (quote likely true but original provenance unknown)

tehlike 6y ago

don't know about google tv, but chromecast is wildly successful.

Spare_account 6y ago
Is product success a useful metric for whether or not Google cancel services?
- achtung82 6y ago
  Usually yes.
- animationwill 6y ago
  >> Is product success a useful metric for whether or not Google cancel services? Yes. Unsuccessful products get cancelled. The successful services get to stay but the customers get hit with "insane price hikes": https://www.geoawesomeness.com/developers-up-in-arms-over-google-maps-api-insane-price-hike/ https://www.geoawesomeness.com/developers-up-in-arms-over-go...
  - treesknees 6y ago
    Except for Reader, Inbox, Cloud Print, the Nest API, Code, among many others I'm sure. It doesn't seem to matter whether they're successful or popular.
    - tehlike 6y ago
      I was a big reader person, but google is victim of its own success. These products were barely above a few million users. At google scale,1% is more than 15m person, and usually 1% is not justifiable
- tiz_io 6y ago
  Yes. But also no. RIP Reader.
  - falcolas 6y ago
    Probably didn't help that there wasn't an easy path to monetization for Reader.
    - mbreese 6y ago
      Huh? If Google didn't want to charge a fee for use (which doesn't seem to be how Google works), then they could easily have inserted their own adds into the RSS feeds. Or had an ad bar in the Reader interface. It seems like Google of all places would have been able to figure out how to support that with ads. I just don't think that they wanted to. It didn't fit into how they thought people would be interacting with the Internet in the future, and I can't say they were all that wrong...
      - tehlike 6y ago
        Too small of a product for google scale. See my other comment in this thread.
Someone1234 6y ago
Combing both Chromecast and Android TV (e.g. Nvidia Shield) has a less than 10% market share. Making it smaller than Samsung, Amazon, and much smaller than Roku (market leader). It seems to have a hardcore audience that think the world of it (or who haven't tried anything else), but most of the market moved on years ago. If anything this Google TV "Chromecast" is designed to make Chromecast relevant again.
- TulliusCicero 6y ago
  I've heard that outside the US, Android TV is very successful.
  - OkGoDoIt 6y ago
    At least in China, so many TVs and projectors and set top boxes use Android under the hood, but they are so heavily customized it’s sometimes hard to tell. And it’s definitely not standard “Android TV“
  - mikecoles 6y ago
    Android, yes. Google, no. There are so many knockoffs of knockoffs of Android STBs that you usually pick them up for < $30.
- vorpalhex 6y ago
  > If anything this Google TV "Chromecast" is designed to make Chromecast relevant again. Chromecast has always had the issue that it's main users are the tech savvy who are comfortable controlling everything via smartphone. That's not a huge percent of the population. By adding the remote and going for the play of helping you navigate cross app, they seem to be trying to extend out to less savvy users who need a more guided product. Overall it seems like the longterm plan is to push their subscription services, since I can't imagine they make great money from the devices themselves. Increasing user base is the best way for them to achieve that goal.
  - AshleyGrant 6y ago

derefr 6y ago

Back then, "Google TV" was its whole own OS initiative. This was years before Android TV was a thing. But Google TV had far less wide-ranging industry support than Android TV has today. And Google TV needed industry support, because it was literally just an OS platform (like Android TV) rather than something Google was able to push by shipping its own hardware. No third parties interested in integrating the platform? No point. This go-around, "Google TV" seems to be just some first-party Chromecast hardware running an OEM skin over Android TV OS. Much lower CapEx. Far easier to justify as a Google project. (And it's a logical strategic move, too. A lot of smart TV manufacturers are shipping crap Android TV implementations that plaster advertising everywhere; and the advice everyone gives to get around that is to get an Apple TV, because Apple's tvOS doesn't force ads on you. That gives the Apple ecosystem a foothold in otherwise-Google-ecosystem homes and businesses. Google is likely willing to spend a lot of money to prevent Apple getting that foothold.)

stefan_ 6y ago
Google literally just added auto-playing semi-fullscreen video ads to Android TV in August: https://9to5google.com/2020/08/05/android-tv-homescreen-ad-cinematic-feature/ https://9to5google.com/2020/08/05/android-tv-homescreen-ad-c... As long as Google makes its money selling ads every one of their services is just one lousy executive seeking "synergies with the ad business" away from ruining the experience.
rektide 6y ago
This is incredibly wrong. Android 3 honeycomb was the basis for Google TV. Most of those APIs were quickly deprecated. Please read: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_TV_(discontinued) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_TV_(discontinued)

Splendor 6y ago

Wikipedia has moved the discontinued Google TV page here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_TV_(discontinued) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_TV_(discontinued)

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

animationwill 6y ago

Looks like someone moved the wikipedia link to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_TV_(discontinued) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_TV_(discontinued) ... so now my post looks inaccurate