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Comment by rightbyte | Hacker News Reader

Chromecast are such annoyingly neutered devices.

I bought one originaly assuming I could stream local videos to it or like read them from a network drive, but Google force SaaS cloud everything on the user.

There is not even a proper way to remote control it.

Just BS workarounds on what should have been core functionality.

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I suspect google also neutered the hdmi capability of Pixel phones to push people into Chromecast as well.

Ye the engineering culture at Google is really user hostile. I would go as far as calling it toxic.

At one high end hotel I wanted to simply connect the room's TV to my laptop over HDMI. Unfortunately no HDMI socket, confirmed at the reception and with their technician... "just share the screen over chromecast, it's so cool you only have to install an app". Is Google lobbying even at the hotels?! Sounds innocent but the decision "our hotel will have chromecast instead of HDMI" looks like... there were some incentives.

How much profit for Google is it per TV? I have a hard time believing it is worth the hazzle for the hotel to make a deal, but surely as some bribe to the procurement officer at the hotel (think McDonalds' ice cream machine deal) or the TV supplier might have some spyware deal with Google?

I thought this about them when they first released, and was disappointed that it wasn't more of a local streaming device.

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