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Comment by DCKing | Hacker News Reader

> What about the Chromecast and Android Wear APIs?

The Chromecast does not operate over a local connection. It is actually operated 'through the cloud' - if you are controlling your Chromecast, you're sending operations to your Google account over the internet, which are then relayed to your Chromecast which is also tied to your Google account. Note that Google supports a non-cloud dependent sort-of-alternative for Chromecasting called Miracast in AOSP.

Android Wear is heavily dependent on Google Now, Google Search's voice recognition techniques. An Android Wear device cannot do anything without access to Google's services - it is far more than 'somewhat dependent'.

So yeah, both are in Google Services because they actually fully depend on Google's services.

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Communication with Chromecast happens directly over Wifi and does not involve Google services. Chromecast uses the DIAL or mDNS protocol to discover apps on the local network. Some apps like Netflix can use DIAL protocol to control app on other devices, like Tivo or smart TVs, on the local network.

Chromecast does have a new guest mode that allows guests to control Chromecast without connecting to Wifi network. Those commands presumably are relayed through Google servers. But it isn't turned on by default.

Chromecast does need to be connected to the Internet to download the receiver app that runs on the Chromecast. If the Chromecast could cache the app, or get it from the controlling app, it could run completely disconnected from the Internet.

Documentation for Miracast in Android seems very lacking. According to Wikipedia, Google decided not to support Miracast on the Chromecast, probably because it is an open standard that would have made the effect of selling the Chromecast cheaply weaker on their goal of raising Android adoption and locking in customers. I don't think that all commands are relayed over Google, since if that were true, Android should be clever enough find my Chromecast if I was connected to another WiFi network. The delay would also make it impractical for quite a lot of people. IMO chromecast should have been based on open standards.

Android Wear would be just be as heavily "reliant" on Google Now as Android is. Google just decided to give it a proprietary version of Android that is heavily integrated with Google Now. Android Wear could do quite a lot without access to Google Services. It is actually pretty pleasant to use without talking to your watch.

It seems like we both have different points of view on this, but in my opinion Google has acted in a way that favours their interests over their customers' freedom.

For clarification, to initiate a ChromeCast session it talks to google, but the sender and receiver then establish a local websocket connection for local control.

While the GoogleCast API’s are part of Play services, the rest isn’t true. Communication between a GoogleCast device and your phone takes place mostly locally.

Both of these things being intentional choices to develop crippled hardware that's reliant on proprietary services. A huge disservice to consumers.

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