It’s super weird. They made a big deal about it being wi-fi, which meant it wasn’t tethered at all to the specific device you were using, it sent commands over wi-fi to the Google server which then sent the video to the device you were using. That meant that you could play on any device and the controller would work.
Now it sounds like it’s just a normal controller that communicates through the device you’re using, but worse since you can’t even use it wirelessly on your PC/laptop/phone/tablet.
I wonder if wi-fi just added too much latency to the experience so they’ve abandoned that.