Case in point: A Chromecast-only generation of Vizio TVs flopped, forcing the company to change course and develop its own smart TV apps platform. However, Google also quickly hit a ceiling, with a significant number of consumers unwilling to give up on their remotes altogether. The company sold "tens of millions" of Chromecast streaming adapters in the following years, Google Nest GM and VP Rishi Chandra recently told Protocol. It paved the way for Roku and Amazon to also introduce inexpensive HDMI dongles, and it conditioned millions of users to think of their TV as a surface to watch content beamed from their phones, without any app galleries and menus on the TV screen. Shaped like a key and retailing for just $35, that first-generation Chromecast in many ways redefined the streaming device market. The launch of the new streaming device comes a little over seven years after Google first introduced the original Chromecast streaming adapter.
More interesting than the hardware specs is what the device says about Google's ambitions for the living room and the evolution of the smart TV market. Many of the device's features were already known from a series of leaks, which included retailers selling the device ahead of its official Wednesday launch date, as well as an earlier Protocol report about its content-forward UI.
The device, which retails for $49.99, combines Google's existing Chromecast tech with a redesigned Android TV interface that emphasizes content over apps, highlighting movies and TV shows from a variety of publishers directly on the home screen. Google is taking another stab at conquering the living room: The company officially unveiled its new streaming dongle, Chromecast with Google TV, Wednesday.