Google has teamed with Netflix and Amazon to produce “Google Chromecast,” a device that this blogger says will disrupt mainstream media. And I’ll go a step further and says that Google Chromecast will kill mainstream media as we know it in just two years.
Why?
First, understand what Google Chromecast does. It allows you to put your YouTube videos onto a big screen television, using your smartphone or tablet or computer. It sounds simple, which is the whole point: it is simple. And, at $35, it’s cheap. You can get it at Google Play, Amazon, and of course, at Netflix.
And it’s Netflix that will realize a huge gain from the use of Google Chromecast. The distributor of the online hit House Of Cards is now in a place where its content can be easily seen on a big screen television.
The very moment you elect to buy and then to use Google Chromecast, even if it’s just for 15 minutes, that’s 15 minutes you spent not watching standard television and cable. Imagine if that 15 minutes becomes 30 minutes? How about an hour? The numbers could grow fast.
This all comes at a time when eyeballs are moving away from television as we know it – tuning in to a network to watch a show. Between online shows and webisodes, and video-blogs like mine, there’s already the content, but the problem was you could not see it on your big screen TV.
Problem solved with Google Chromecast, and just one year after a Nielsen study reported the following:
1) The percent of people worldwide who watch TV at least once a month dropped from 90 percent to 83 percent over the past year.
2) The percentage of people who watch video on a computer once a month – 84 percent – is now higher than the percentage who watch TV.
In total, this development spells doom for traditional television and cable, and a promising future for online video content producers.
More soon.