Looking back at the original Google Chromecast, which celebrated its 10th anniversary

Ten years ago today, July 24, 2013, Google announced a $35 streaming stick called the Chromecast.

I was one of the first journalists to pick up a dongle, and it wasn’t yet clear how big a deal it would be. The demo was choppy! Given that Apple’s AirPlay was already three years old and Miracast was a buzzword across the industry, this could probably be classified as a me-too product. (Remember Miracast? It was on every smart TV.)

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Original Chromecast Revealed.Photo credit: Sean Hollister/The Verge

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Original Chromecast Revealed.Photo credit: Sean Hollister/The Verge

And, of course, the Chromecast was compared to perhaps Google’s worst hardware failure ever, the Nexus Q.

But it turns out that being able to put the Netflix or YouTube you’re already watching on your TV screen for $35 is a magical concept Nilay Patel of The Verges said it was easy for laptop surfers, but frankly, the concept of cheap streaming sticks was itself. (Amazon’s Fire Stick and Rokus Streaming Stick mimicked this idea.)

Google ushered in an era where streaming gadgets were an impulse buy, a sock stuffer, and a must-have before your next hotel stay, at least until Alex Krantz’s dream of AirPlay in a hotel one day comes true.

By the time Chromecast came out in September of the same year, I almost predicted Miracast was dead. Two years later, Nick Statt wrote an article about how the Chromecast, which he sold 20 million units, was introduced into our homes as a Google Trojan horse. And when Google last disclosed its revenue in October 2017, the company had shipped 55 million Chromecast devices, including TVs and set-top boxes with Cast built-in.

Admittedly, the original Chromecast can be a bit of a daunting purchase for friends and family. Even the concept of casting takes a bit of effort to understand a video stream coming from the internet instead of a mobile phone unless you really understand it for some reason like mirroring. (AirPlay is pretty much the same.) Not all apps have a cast button, and not all work the same.

Netflix or YouTube (but usually Netflix) sometimes stopped responding to cast commands when I wanted to change shows. Since the Chromecast only has one button and no remote, I didn’t think there was a better way to do it. It also got so buggy over the years that I ended up parting with two first generation Chromecasts. My little-founded theory is that it’s overheating.

So it wasn’t much of a surprise to me when Google’s 2nd Gen Chromecast became a dangling dongle with a long bendable HDMI arm to keep it away from the TV. And I think I can speak for the entire Verge staff when I say that we’re super excited to see the 2020 Chromecast ship with a full-fledged remote control and excellent 4K playback (Dolby Vision and Atmos included) for the affordable price of $50. It means you no longer need a remote control, although you can use your phone or laptop to cast.

Google must have sold quite a few of these 2020 models, unlike the niche but fantastic Chromecast Audio.

But even if the 2020 Chromecast doesn’t cement that tradition, the original has done quite a bit. In the words of my colleague Barbara Krasnov, it ranks 39th on our list of gadgets of the decade for making streaming video commonplace in many homes. Google also kept his OG Chromecast updated for nearly a decade.

Chromecast hasn’t been the cheapest game in town for a long time. These days, Walmart sells surprisingly good $20 packs, and even Google’s recently launched $30 Chromecast limited to 1080p playback is trading with Roku and Amazon’s streaming sticks. But every company has a simple casting solution like the one Google introduced, so there’s even talk of Matter integrating them.

However, there is one shadow to the Chromecast tradition. His official Chromecast story, shared in his official Google blog post in 2015, is that Google engineer Majid Bakar came up with the idea in 2008 after seeing his wife repeatedly picking movies using her laptop and then switching to the console to watch them on the big screen. It seems that he proposed the idea sometime between 2011 and 2012.

However, a company called Touchstream Technologies claims that Google stole some ideas in the process.

This week, a jury in a federal district court in Texas delivered a unanimous verdict that Google owes $338.7 million for Chromecast infringing three Touchstream patents. The company claims in its complaint that it met with Google in December 2011 to discuss a Shodogg technology partnership and signed an NDA, suggesting that Google suddenly decided not to proceed with the partnership in February 2012.

Maybe this is just another example of patent trolling. Texas courts are known to favor companies suing over technology they never even tried to produce. But Shodogg appears to have at least made a deal in public. It will be interesting to see if the Texas ruling holds up.

Correction, 5:50 PM ET: The jury verdict was delivered on July 21st, not the 24th as I originally wrote. The news of the verdict came out on the 24th (today).

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