The Enshittification of the Chromecast

My favorite Google product for a long time has been the Chromecast. It solved a problem, it was easy to use, and it just worked. It also turned watching YouTube into kind of a social experience, where everyone could connect and add videos to the queue.

My favorite thing about it is you just had to be on the network to cast. I didn’t have to make an account and add myself to a friend’s house group or something. You just connect to whatever Chromecast-capable device is on the network and start casting.

The original Chromecast was a little dongle you plugged into your TV. It didn’t require a Google account. It didn’t do anything other than give you a wifi service to display things on the TV. The Google Alexa’s could also speak Chromecast and you could play music to it.

In recent months the speaker has been barely working for me, though. It will randomly stop playing. No error or anything. Also, if you leave the network and comeback sometimes your phone randomly takes control of it and starts playing again, even if someone else is in the middle of listening to something.

The Chromecast support in YouTube has become so bad it causes me stress to use it. It used to be that when you tapped on a video to play the video, it would ask you if you wanted to add it to the queue or play it now. Now what happens is entirely unclear. What I think I’ve figured out is that if the video already happens to be in the queue, it will jump to that point in the queue. Otherwise it might ask you if you want to add it to the queue or play now. But because you don’t necessarily know what’s in the queue, you don’t know if tapping on a video is a good idea or not. You might ruin your group experience by jumping around the queue. Your best bet now is to always choose the three dots by a video and explicitly choose the action. Who thought this change was a good idea?

The true enshittification probably started with the Google TV, which was a Chromecast device which came with a remote. Why do I need a remote? The point of the Chromecast is to be this invisible thing that is just always there and working.

The next was when Google announced they were killing the dongle and replacing it with a box. The dongle just plugged into your TV and disappeared behind the TV, now you need to find a place to put this stupid device.

Google has also been increasing the account requirements on setting up a Chromecast, or Google TV, or Chromecast TV, whatever they are calling it. The last device I set up I needed a Google account and it wanted all sorts of information out of me so it could make recommendations. Hey, Chromecast, this is a one-way relationship where I tell you what to play on my TV and you play it.

I don’t know what’s actually going on in Google HQ but I imagine some product person saw an issue where Chromecast wasn’t shoving Google in your face enough and decided it was a lost opportunity that they could fix. But by fixing it you’re ruining the value of the product (at least, in my opinion).

My current company is bootstrapped and we like it that way but if I had a buttload of funding, I would love to make a hardware company that speaks Chromecast, is as tiny as possible, and just works. If you want to create an account because maybe you want to restrict who has access to it (using in a public kiosk or something) fine, you can do that if you want. Maybe some brave soul will take over the Chromecast world as Google slowly turns it to trash.