Objectively, it kind of is though. No one is claiming you have to buy it or that it's a good product (privacy-wise, usability-wise, execution-wise, etc. it's all tbd IMO), it's a very interesting move that makes a lot of sense, and there are some good ideas here.
It's relatively cheap since you're not buying a touch enabled LCD panel with the device. You want the best audio and video quality? Piggyback off TV and sound system manufacturers and the fact that people who care about these things probably already sunk a lot of money on nice home entertainment hardware.
People won't have to worry about where to put another screen. You also have the fact that the living room is semantically already a "social" space, with a "stage". Most people have a couch to fit several people in front of their TV, it's essentially a room already built for video calling.
Strategy-wise, they're using their core competence (social networking) to move into the living room— which is pretty cool and unique in a world where the other options (Roku, Apple TV, Chromecast, etc) mostly rely on entertainment. Also, technology that right now only Portal has— the whole smart camera to find you in the frame thing. They probably released the other Portals before this to battle test it, since this device will probably rely more on it than previous ones.
Honestly, why don't more companies make smarter TV boxes like this? It'd be cool if Google made Chromecast more "Google". Imagine a Chromecast with Assistant built-in, that makes smarter use of your TV when you're not watching it (Google News, Google Finance, Traffic info before your commute, a couple of important calendar reminders, etc). Now I'm thinking an Apple TV with FaceTime and and Siri built-in could be cool too. I could use FaceTime on my TV more than another smart speaker, and would buy it over a HomePod, personally.
There's good ideas here. Of course, wether you want to buy is a separate issue. Honestly kind of sad there's all the privacy concerns, because it sounds like a cool device.
The bulk of your argument seems to boil down to "video calls on TV, much wow". This is not brilliant, or new. My kids were doing that on the Wii U in 2012. Probably at least a third of all conference rooms in America are equipped to do that.
Too much work to edit my comment on my phone. Obviously the Wii U chat only enabled communication with a limited audience, and I think it might be deprecated now anyway. But the Kinect does Skype.
It's relatively cheap since you're not buying a touch enabled LCD panel with the device. You want the best audio and video quality? Piggyback off TV and sound system manufacturers and the fact that people who care about these things probably already sunk a lot of money on nice home entertainment hardware.
People won't have to worry about where to put another screen. You also have the fact that the living room is semantically already a "social" space, with a "stage". Most people have a couch to fit several people in front of their TV, it's essentially a room already built for video calling.
Strategy-wise, they're using their core competence (social networking) to move into the living room— which is pretty cool and unique in a world where the other options (Roku, Apple TV, Chromecast, etc) mostly rely on entertainment. Also, technology that right now only Portal has— the whole smart camera to find you in the frame thing. They probably released the other Portals before this to battle test it, since this device will probably rely more on it than previous ones.
Honestly, why don't more companies make smarter TV boxes like this? It'd be cool if Google made Chromecast more "Google". Imagine a Chromecast with Assistant built-in, that makes smarter use of your TV when you're not watching it (Google News, Google Finance, Traffic info before your commute, a couple of important calendar reminders, etc). Now I'm thinking an Apple TV with FaceTime and and Siri built-in could be cool too. I could use FaceTime on my TV more than another smart speaker, and would buy it over a HomePod, personally.
There's good ideas here. Of course, wether you want to buy is a separate issue. Honestly kind of sad there's all the privacy concerns, because it sounds like a cool device.