By Amir Efrati and Greg Bensinger
Google unveiled a device to help people connect their TVs to mobile devices so that they can view and listen to Web content on the biggest screen in their homes.
The two-inch device, called Chromecast, looks like a thumb drive and is based on Google’s ChromeOS software. The device, available today for $35 at Bestbuy.com Amazon.com and the Google Play store, also works with Apple mobile devices.
Chromecast will allow people to select YouTube video content using their Web-connected tablet, for instance, and have it play on their television. It echoes similar technology from Apple called Airplay and from Microsoft called Smartglass.
Chromecast plugs into the HDMI port of a television and prompts a person’s mobile device to download a Chromecast app and then connect the device to a Wi-Fi network.
The device works with Android smartphones, Chrome-powered laptops and even Apple’s iPad and iPhone. “We have a multi-platform approach…and we go where the users are,” said Google’s chief of Chrome and Android, Sundar Pichai, in an interview at an event in San Francisco.
Chromecast is the latest example of Google flexing its hardware-manufacturing muscle. Pichai said the company worked with a hardware maker in Taiwan to build the device, which he said he hopes will be embedded within new TVs and other devices in the future. Earlier this year Google introduced a a ChromeOS-based laptop designed and manufactured with an undisclosed Asian partner, and in 2014 it will release its Google Glass wearable-computing device.
Chromecast represents another effort by Google to become a bigger fixture in people’s living rooms, one of the growing battlegrounds in consumer tech. Amazon.com is working on a set-top box for streaming video and Apple too is developing television technology, according to people familiar with the companies’ plans.
Google’s past TV efforts have had some challenges. GoogleTV, software that is embedded in some TVs and devices that connect to televisions, was released in 2010 but failed to gain much traction. Pichai on Wednesday said new Google TV devices, which help people search and watch both cable TV and Web connect, will be released in the future.
Google’s Android unit also has been working on developing a videogame console, people familiar with the matter have said.
Watch a video with WSJ’s Amir Efrati discussing the new Chromcast device:
