Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge
Ten years ago today — July 24th, 2013 — Google announced a $35 streaming stick called the Chromecast.
I was one of the first journalists to lay hands on the dongle, and it wasn’t yet clear how big a deal it’d be. The demo was choppy! It could arguably be classified as a me-too product given Apple’s AirPlay was already three years old and Miracast was a buzzword across the industry. (Do you even remember Miracast? It was on, like, every smart TV.)
And of course, the Chromecast was compared to the Nexus Q, arguably Google’s worst hardware flop in history.
But $35 to sling the Netflix and YouTube you’re already watching to your television screen turned out to be a magical notion — The Verge’s Nilay Patel called it a no-brainer for…