Chromecast Hits 17 Million Sold, 1.5 Billion Streams

Fancy a Chromecast? If so, you're going to have a pretty big support network to go to if you need tips on how to best use it, a little help setting it up, or if you just want someone to commiserate with as to why you've had to wait so long to be able to stream HBO shows to your device (and TV).

According to Google's Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of products, Google has sold a whopping 17 million Chromecasts since the company introduced the small streaming stick in July of 2013. And these aren't just buy-once, lose-in-a-drawer-forever devices. Google has counted the hours, and Chromecast purchasers have streamed a whopping 1.5 billion items to their devices. (There's a lot more casting recently, too, since Google executives announced the one billion figure in just January of this year.)

One interesting bit, however, is that Google still remains tied to its original hardware. The HDMI-equipped stick you can buy now is the same Chromecast you could buy two years ago. Though rumors have circulated that Google is working on a second-gen version of the device, even Googlers on the Chromecast team claim that the differences between the two would likely be imperceptible to average person.

"We're always working to update Chromecast with the the latest software and hardware components, but we don't have any new user-facing features planned for this device," said one Chromecast team member in a Reddit ask-me-anything session late last year.

"No plans for big announcement on this one. Mostly because it will have the same features as the original and most users won't notice a difference. Sorry--I can't say more about this topic."

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New Tools for Chromecast Devs Ahead of HBO Now Launch

That's not to say that Google has abandoned the Chromecast or any of that. In fact, the company took some time at Google I/O this past week to announce a number of new software updates for the device—developer-themed, of course.

A new Remote Display API should improve the "cast your screen" process, transforming it into a true second-screen experience when one streams one's device to a Chromecast. New autoplay and queueing APIs will let Chromecasts start loading to-be-watched content in the background while another video is playing, which should improve the overall streaming experience for users. A new game manager API will also make it a bit easier for developers to create multiplayer games that work with the Chromecast.