Ten years in the past immediately — July twenty fourth, 2013 — Google introduced a $35 streaming stick referred to as the Chromecast.
I used to be one of many first journalists to put arms on the dongle, and it wasn’t but clear how large a deal it’d be. The demo was uneven! It might arguably be categorised as a me-too product given Apple’s AirPlay was already three years previous and Miracast was a buzzword throughout the trade. (Do you even keep in mind Miracast? It was on, like, each sensible TV.)
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And naturally, the Chromecast was in comparison with the Nexus Q, arguably Google’s worst {hardware} flop in historical past.
However $35 to sling the Netflix and YouTube you’re already watching to your tv display turned out to be a magical notion — The Verge’s Nilay Patel referred to as it a no brainer for laptop computer surfers — and admittedly, so was the idea of an inexpensive streaming stick in any respect. (Amazon’s Hearth Stick and Roku’s Streaming Stick copycatted the thought.) Google launched the period when streaming devices turned an impulse purchase, a standard stocking stuffer, and the factor to be sure you pack earlier than your subsequent resort keep. (Might Alex Cranz’s dream of AirPlay in resorts sometime come to go.)
By September of the identical yr the Chromecast arrived, I all however predicted Miracast was useless. Two years later, Nick Statt wrote for us about how the Chromecast had offered 20 million models to efficiently grow to be Google’s Malicious program into our properties. And in October 2017, the final time Google shared gross sales figures, the corporate had put 55 million Chromecast gadgets into the world, together with TVs and set-top bins with Solid in-built.
Certain, the unique Chromecast may very well be a little bit of a tough buy for family and friends. Even the idea of “Casting” takes somewhat effort to get your head round — the video streams from the web, not your telephone, except it truly does since you’re mirroring. (AirPlay is roughly the identical.) Not each app had a “Solid” button, and never all of them labored identically.
I generally discovered Netflix or YouTube (however often Netflix) would cease responding to Solid instructions once I needed to alter applications — and it’s not like there have been different good methods to try this because the Chromecast had solely a single button and no distant management. I additionally wound up tossing two first-generation Chromecasts as a result of they received extraordinarily glitchy over time; my principally unfounded principle is that they overheat.
So it wasn’t a lot of a shock to me when Google’s second-gen Chromecast turned a dongle that dangles, with an extended, bendable HDMI arm to maintain it additional away from the TV. And I believe I can converse for the whole Verge workers once I say we had been ecstatic to see the 2020 Chromecast ship with a full-fledged distant and wonderful 4K playback (together with Dolby Imaginative and prescient and Atmos) for a cool $50. You may nonetheless use your telephone and laptop computer to solid, however that distant means it’s now not obligatory.
I wager Google offered fairly a couple of of these 2020 fashions — not like the area of interest however superior Chromecast Audio.
However even with out the 2020 Chromecast to cement its legacy, the unique made fairly a mark. We ranked it No. 39 in our “devices of the last decade” listing for making “streaming video a traditional a part of many households,” within the phrases of my colleague Barbara Krasnoff. Google saved updating the OG Chromecast for practically a decade, too.
The Chromecast wasn’t the most cost effective sport on the town for lengthy. Lately, Walmart has a surprisingly good $20 puck, and even Google’s latest $30 Chromecast that’s restricted to 1080p playback trades blows with streaming sticks from Roku and Amazon. However each considered one of them has a easy casting answer just like the one Google launched — sufficient that there’s even discuss of Matter unifying them.
There’s one shadow hanging over the Chromecast’s legacy, although. The official story behind Chromecast, as shared in an official Google blog post in 2015, is that Google engineer Majd Bakar got here up with the thought in 2008 after watching his spouse repeatedly use her laptop computer to choose films, then swap to her sport console to look at them on the massive display. He pitched the thought someday between 2011 and 2012, it appears.
However an organization named Touchstream Applied sciences is arguing that Google stole some concepts alongside the way in which.
This week, a federal district court docket jury in Texas issued the unanimous verdict that Google owes $338.7 million — as a result of the Chromecast infringes on three Touchstream patents. In its legal complaint, the corporate claims to have met with Google and mentioned a partnership in December 2011 for its Shodogg tech, says it signed NDAs, and means that Google abruptly determined to not go forward with that partnership in February 2012.
It’s doable it’s simply one other case of patent trolling. The Texas courts are notoriously pleasant to firms that sue over expertise they’ve by no means even tried to provide. However Shodogg does at least look like it was pursuing offers in public. It’ll be fascinating to see if the Texas verdict sticks.
Correction, 5:50PM ET: The jury verdict was reached July twenty first, not the twenty fourth as I initially wrote. Information of the decision was revealed on the twenty fourth (immediately).
