A Google Chromecast timeline in 6 hardware releases

The Chromecast wasn’t Google’s first stab at creating software for the living room, but it is by far it’s most popular. Whereas the original (and now discontinued) Google TV platform tried to awkwardly marry Google’s browsing and search experiences with more traditional television, the Chromecast did one thing and did it well. Its accessibility both in terms of price (nearly all the Chromecast dongles Google released were under $50) and features (streaming audio and video from just about anywhere) made it the perfect representative of what Google does best: cleverly leveraging web-based technology to solve a complicated problem.