Google is quietly ending support for the decade-old Chromecast
Google has ended support for the original Chromecast, about a decade after the launch of the $35 streaming stick in 2013. A post announcing the end of support has appeared on multiple Google support Pages. “Support for Chromecast (1st generation) has ended,” the notification brought to our attention 9to5Google is reading. “These devices will no longer receive software or security updates and Google will not provide technical support for them. Users may notice a performance degradation.”
The end of support seems to have arrived at the end of April, when a support page with firmware versions for each Chromecast model was last updated. It doesn’t sound like the remaining first-gen Chromecasts will stop working immediately, but their functionality will likely break slowly over time as the ecosystem around them updates and moves forward.
It was an affordable solution at the time
The original Chromecast was a small and surprisingly popular key-sized device designed to plug into an HDMI port on your TV and stream video content from your phone, tablet or laptop to the big screen. At just $35, it was an affordable solution for getting video streaming apps on your TV at a time when many people had yet to make the transition to smart TVs.
Google would release several more Chromecasts over the years, including a 4K model in 2016. But the most recent model, the 2020 Chromecast with Google TV, added its own remote to the equation. The streaming stick had its own interface rather than simply relying on content from your smartphone, marking a major shift for the Chromecast lineup.
While support for the first-generation Chromecast is officially over, Google hasn’t really been updating the device on a regular basis. 9to5Google reports that the most recent update was released last November, which itself was the first update released for the device in over three years.
