Five years later, the Chromecast still holds its own

There aren't many gadgets that I'm still using five years after I buy them, except for maybe a laptop. Even then, that's getting quite long in the tooth given how quickly upgrades arrive these days. Chromecast and Google Cast are still things that I use multiple times a day, every day. When Google first introduced the Chromecast in 2013, the company promised to make any TV with an HDMI port a smart display with the combination of a thumbdrive-like dongle and your home WiFi. That it did, but in the months that followed, Google expanded the tech undergirding its TV accessory well beyond that $35 device.