Google took the consumer electronics world in July by storm with the announcement of the Google Chromecast HDMI Streaming Media Player, a digital media dongle available at the unbelievably low price point of $35.

The arrival of the Chromecast was a big surprise for several reasons. I keep on top of all the tech rumor sites every day, and I hadn’t heard so much as a rumor that Google was working on a media dongle, much less one for $35. There’s also Google’s very checkered record when it comes to hardware releases, which included the “Nexus Q,” another media streaming device introduced in the summer of 2012 that was ultimately cancelled before release.

But the Chromecast was something different: A super-cheap streaming solution, controllable from a smartphone or tablet, and a product that was released the day it was announced. In addition, it offered “browser-casting” from the Google Chrome browser on a computer. That, and the low price point, led to the Chromecast’s instant popularity.