According to Google, the Chromecast was originally conceived by engineer Majd Bakar. His inspiration for the product came around 2008 after noticing the film-viewing tendencies of his wife Carla Hindie. Using her laptop, she would search for a film to watch on a streaming service and add it to her queue, before closing her laptop and using a gaming device to play the film on a television. She took these steps because she found television interfaces difficult to use to search for content. Bakar found the whole process inefficient and wanted to build a phone-based interface that would allow video to play on a large display through a small hardware device. After joining Google in 2011 to work on products that "would change how people used their TVs", Bakar pitched the idea for the Chromecast. Development on the product began in 2012; late that year, Bakar brought home a beta version of the product for Hindie to test. The device was launched in July 2013.[5]