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Comment by gclawes | Hacker News Reader

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gclawes·

> Google TV Streamer (4K)

Oh, so they're just rebranding and not making it a dongle anymore....

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I suspect that being a dongle is part of the appeal of Chromecast for many people.

At least I definitely don't want more visible external boxes behind/next to my TV, especially if they don't even need line-of-sight to the remote since that's all Bluetooth anyway these days.

> I suspect that being a dongle is part of the appeal of Chromecast for many people.

Exactly. Also: I just want to watch stuff. I don't want AI or smart-home features.

This feels more like they're actually killing this product, because the replacement is far too expensive.

So it will no longer appeal to market in the same way.

So I think this means that Google sees that there's not enough profit in the low end Internet Smart features for HDMI anymore.

The rebranding makes sense, because I don't think people see it as "Google Chromecast", but simply "Chromecast" and not associating it with Google.

Google has a really horrible brand reputation though. Would be bizarre if someone at Google thought tacking "Google" on a product would improve the product's reputation.

Does it have a horrible brand reputation? The tech savy people complaining about the account review procedures are not the mainstream consumer.

Yes, I do think it does have a horrible rep for the layman.

Yes it does.

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