Google ditching chromecast

[nzoomed]

I suppose that was always going to happen once casting technologies was well and truly embedded in new devices.  I only ever really saw them as a stopgap measure for non-smart TVs

Yes I agree, although I find that even fairly recent TVs can either be unreliable when casting or even stop working altogether. I've seen a few issues on Android TVs that go buggy and glitchy as hell and end up having to perform a factory reset.
The big thing is that many smart TVs go out of date so fast and either the apps loose support or perform slowly.
Looks like their Google TV box is going to replace the chromecast line, but would be cool if they could have made something just as slim and compact enough as a chromecast. 
I've installed a ton of the things as an upgrade on older TVs.