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Comment by raydev | Hacker News Reader

They explicitly call it "premium" in the launch page. Time to move upmarket in the hopes of actually making a profit.

Roku sells dongles at the same price point, without many other services with which to subsidize the hardware. I am sure Roku monetizes the users in the same ways as Google can, so I do not understand how Google cannot make a profit from them.

> Google cannot make a profit from them

*enough profit

Remember that Google has sunset many products because those profits pale in comparison to search and advertising.

Sure, but I do not see how that improves by focusing on the “premium” hardware. Unless the box is actually cheaper, I would expect the AI capabilities to cost more (either on cloud infrastructure or higher performance chips). Worsening their margin per unit.

People just want to watch Netflix or Disney with minimum friction. A box that is twice the price of the competition, with questionably useful AI features does not seem a winning play.

> I would expect the AI capabilities to cost more (either on cloud infrastructure or higher performance chips). Worsening their margin per unit.

This is a problem for the next exec after the one behind this has happily parachuted to his next position before the chickens come home to roost on things like "long-term costs" and "fit with the overarching corporate strategy".

How does search make them money? They are paying everyone to be their default search. Isn't search just an input of data to push ads based on the search as well as taking the user with more metrics based on the search query?

It can, but it has to support all the ads infrastructure that is about to collapse.

About to collapse? How so?

>I am sure Roku monetizes the users in the same ways as Google can, so I do not understand how Google cannot make a profit from them.

The same way Roku does not make a profit from them.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ROKU/roku/profit-m...

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