Analysis of a Google Home APK file seems to reveal the introduction of a new marketing name for the Android TV system.
After Android Market, now the Google Play Store, Android Wear under the Wear OS brand, and Android Pay now known as Google Pay, it’s Android TV’s turn to bow out.
By sifting through Android application installation files, developers are sometimes able to spot pieces of code that refer to future features that have not yet been activated. Often these are introduced in a later update. Sometimes they don’t see the light of day until much later.
The XDA-Developers community has taken an interest in the latest version of Google Home (v.2.28). As a reminder, Google Home makes it possible to centralize the management of devices in the Google ecosystem such as Chromecast, Google Nest as well as connected objects compatible with Android.
Within the code of this application, a few lines of code refer to the name Google TV. We find for example:
At the same time, Artem Russakovskii, founder of the specialized blog Android Police recently discovered that within the database of the supermarket chain Target, the next version of the HDMI dongle is referenced as “Google Chromecast with Google TV” priced at $ 49.99.
Now Target's internal system dropped Sabrina's the price to $49.99 and renamed it to "Google Chromecast with Google TV" (not Android TV), giving legs to May's rumor from @9to5Google about the rebranding of Android TV back to Google TV (https://t.co/HV1rfeo4bK).
— Artem Russakovskii (@ArtemR) September 12, 2020
On September 30 at 8 p.m., Google will hold its back-to-school conference. Alongside the Pixel 4A 5G and Pixel 5 smartphones, the Mountain View company should lift the veil on the next Google Chromecast and tell us more about the rebranding of Android TV.
By the way, we would have rather expected a rebranding of Google Home, which is not only the name of the application in question scrutinized by the developers, but also the name of the connected speaker from Google positioning itself in front of the Apple Homepod. As for the “Android” brand, it only survives through two services: Android of course, and Android Auto. For how long ?
