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Comment by fps | Hacker News Reader

Would be great to see this functionality in the rest of google's products, but I'm not optimistic. I'd love to seperate my kids' youtube and app usage from my own on my Android TV. Why is feature parity, or hell, even coordinated product direction, between platforms so difficult for google? Look at Google Home, Chromecast, Android and Android TV - They work together so poorly you'd think they were made by competing companies.

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I say this not as an excuse, but as an explanation: these things are very, very hard to get right, and can be nearly impossible to retrofit onto existing systems. When every single one of your dozens (or at Google's scale probably hundreds) of interlocking backend systems designed at different periods by hundreds of different engineers were built on the assumption that one primary key == one account == one user, and you try to change those assumptions in anything more than a superficial way, it's a guaranteed multi-year project with a high chance of failure. Just look at the mess Microsoft is in with their accounts, also on the front page, as an example (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14159085).

And of course, once you're a certain size (that Google passed more than a decade ago), you pretty much lose the opportunity to ever start over from scratch on this sort of thing. You're dealing with legacy systems forever.

Couldn't agree more. A (somewhat large) company I worked with started working on this tech about three years ago, and still haven't gotten around to even coming close to launching it.

Can you expand on why one primary key == one account == one user doesn't hold true when you want to provide support for multiple users? In case of Google Home, each user has their own Google account and the device decides which account to use based on who's asking. How is the one primary key == one account == one user concept changing here?

You're right you can use completely different keys to access completely different account and it may not be that bad. But what happens when there's shared resources and none of your systems were designed for that?

The idea that comes to the top of my head would be controlling lights and appliances in the house. You don't have two completely different sets of lights and appliances in one house just because there are two users, it's the same set of things for both. But that means now you have to know that both users are sharing X while some other thing (such as a Gmail calendar) may be individual to each user.

Case in point: "to use this account with Drive, you must log out of all other accounts."

Chromecast and Google Home actually work really well together. So does Chromecast and Android. Not sure what you're on here.

This is because not all Chromecasts are created equal. If you have a "normal Chromecast" it works great, if you have an Nvidia Shield that comes with "Chromecast built in" it does not integrate with Home at all.

I don't have a google home, but I have android TV (NVidia Shield) and an Android phone, Android Watch and several chromecast audios. Google Assistant on my android phone and watch can't interface with the chromecasts or android TV at all. I can "cast" from any app on the phone to most of the chromecasts, but not via google assistant. Android TV can't send audio to chromecasts at all, and it's a special snowflake that can't particpate in multi-room audio sent from an android device.

I have something called "google assistant" on all 3 devices, and none of them have even close to the same capabilities or UX flows for media playback, so I basically don't even bother using it because it's just frustrating.

Google home can do that. I think it's unique in that sense, where you cannot control other devices through Google assistant without it.

Do this everyday so not following?

Even my kids every morning fight over which Bob Burgers episode from Netflix they are going to watch with the Google Home (GH) and Chromecast.

Speaking of poor interaction, I have a Android TV (Sony Bravia 4k from 2015). If I want to connect to a wireless network, when selecting a SID on the TV, the only way I may enter the password to connect is with the Android TV app.

The issue is when connecting with the app, and attempting to enter a password, the app freezes, and then force quits. Making it impossible to actually enter a password to connect the TV to my wireless network. Luckily, the WPS option works, even though it's a bit hidden.

I've tried using the app with a Nexus 6, Nexus 6P and a Pixel! There is also no on screen keyboard for the Youtube app. The only way you can search is with voice, which is not the most ideal thing to do all the time.

As of the most recent update to the TV in January, casting has become rather intermittent. Generally I must hard restart the TV before my laptop or a my phone can properly connect to the TV. The Netflix app also randomly starts and takes over control of the TV even while in the middle of running another application.

I love my Android TV, but it's a bit absurd. I now have a Chromecast Ultra connect to my TV that I use most of the time, it also allows the Google Home to use the TV.

That's weird. I have a Sony Bravia 4K 2015 Android TV as well, and it sure has an on-screen keyboard, navigatable using the normal TV remote. Not sure what's going on inside your TV, but you might want to contact someone about that.

Apparently it's already been implemented in Nougat.

http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/03/25/android-n-feature-sp...

Internal divisions are pretty competitive, so you're not far off.

big company problems - each PA or even each team within same pa will have the overhead of a large company.

ps: google employee

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