Three or four years ago I loved my Chromecasts, but it's crazy how much worse they have gotten in that time. They used to have a really simple setup and then "just worked" from there. Now though, they regularly disappear from every device we use them with in my household and have to be setup again. The setup flow has changed several times over the past few years, always for the worse. Once everything is (re-)setup, they still fail to connect or lose a connection often enough to be a big annoyance.
I'm not a fan of smart tv apps for all of the reasons discussed on HN, but they work so much better for me than Chromecast I've started using those instead whenever possible.
They have such economies of scale now, and such vertical integration that they can sell you things like speakers for free as long as it has voice integration and sucks up all of your data.
The only reason they don't sell a TV for $200 is they already get all that data from the current TV providers. Chromebooks at $99? Sure, why not.
And eventually nobody can compete. Users must be in google, or amazons ecosystem or be super rich to avoid it. Companies must hope that google or amazon never move into their space because they can be obliterated. This is a "kinder" version of what microsoft got anti-trusted for in the 90s.
Google does these promotions all over, to get more Home’s into... homes.
We got a free one with our YouTube Premium subscription, another free one with our Spotify Family Plan, and another free one from our ISP (though I’m not sure if that was paid for by google or the ISP).
I'm not a fan of smart tv apps for all of the reasons discussed on HN, but they work so much better for me than Chromecast I've started using those instead whenever possible.