Google Is Selling Broken Chromecasts, and That's Hard for me to Accept.

I am someone who often can fixate on things that I cannot change. This has sometimes caused me great grief, especially if it is something that I know should not be a problem, even in a broken world with broken people. Things involving technology seem to affect me more than politics, but that is likely a topic for another post. One recent example is when I got two 3rd generation Google Chromecasts, and a firmware update pushed rounded corners to ALL 2nd and 3rd generation Chromecasts. Yes, ALL casted content has little rounded corners like a CRT. This has been widely complained about on the Google Support forums since about June 2020, and in November 2020, they claimed that "they have identified an issue and that the fix should be rolling out". Well, here we are in April 2021, and no fix. 

But that's not even the worst part! Get this: ALL 1080p60 YouTube content has crackling audio and dropped frames on the latest firmwares. I know this because both of my brand new 3rd gen Chromecasts suffer this exact issue. I wasted way way too much time with tech support (I am a Google One subscriber for some reason) trying to get them to understand how forced firmware updates mean that a warranty replacement is an unacceptable solution, but they still somehow didn't get it. At this point I can live with the authoritarian rounded corners (all they had to do was add a toggle, this decision has only cost them users and money, see forums) but I cannot live with unwatchable crackly 1080p60 YouTube videos!

If this were a smaller company, they would be sued for knowingly selling defective products, yet all of our passionate complaints do absolutely nothing. What does one do when you have no way of fixing an issue that a team of people paid 6 figures is supposed to fix? I did HOURS of diagnostics and testing and proved many times over that it had nothing to do with my network, yet they still kept trying to blame my network (it's impossible for it to be my fault if the network link is more than 50 megabits, which is was well above, I did speed tests too). Knowing that I worked harder for free than Google engineers had has been very hard for me to grapple with, but with time it has become easier. I guess that's the crux of it, all I need is time and I will eventually let things go, but I have spent so so much time on this issue for two 35 dollar dongles that I got on sale for 20 each, and yet it was very very hard for me to let go. I know Google has a long track record of making innovative and industry leading products and then intentionally ruining them (RIP Google+) but it's still hard for me to accept as a Google fan. I want them to succeed, I am a big Android fan. But it's almost like they are going into self destruct mode. It's so impressively bizarre.     How do you deal with unfair situations that you know even in this broken world you shouldn't have to deal with? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.