google tv

Google premieres web TV
May 21, 2010 - 11:35AM

Google TV concept launched

Google expands its kingdom into the living room with an ambitious new service that meshes television viewing with surfing the web.

Internet giant Google is out to expand its kingdom to the living room with an ambitious new service that lets people mesh television viewing with surfing the web.

Google TV, developed in partnership with technology titans Sony, Intel and Logitech and launched in the US overnight, fuses the freedom of the internet with television programming.

Google executives vowed their TV platform would succeed where offerings such as Apple TV have foundered and hopefully capture some of the $US70 billion ($85 billion) American TV advertising market.
Sony CEO Howard Stringer stands near a Google TV display. Photo: AP/Paul Sakuma

Sony CEO Howard Stringer stands near a Google TV display. Photo: AP/Paul Sakuma

"Google TV is a new platform that we believe will change the future of television," Google group product manager Rishi Chandra said after unveiling the new service at a software developers' conference in San Francisco.

"Users don't have to choose between TV and web; they can have both."

Google TV, which is powered by Google's Android software and Chrome web browser, can be accessed using upcoming web-enabled television sets from Sony or set-top boxes from Logitech that route web content to existing TV sets.

The set-top box is key to Google TV. It's a search box, just like on Google's web site. It looks through live programs, DVR recordings and the web, delivering a relatively compact list of results that can be accessed with a push of the button.

Web television has been a minefield for the world's most creative and deep-pocketed companies and, in a sign of the challenge, embarrassed Google engineers struggled initially to get their TV demonstration running, asking the audience to turn off their cellphones, which were interfering with TV remote controls.

Web surfers have never left their desktops for the living room, and television watchers have kept their remotes pointed toward familiar territory despite attempts by Microsoft and by Apple, which was the focus of frequent jokes.

Sony and Logitech said the sets and boxes would be available in the United States in time for Christmas and would be rolled out internationally next year.

"The transition from TV to web is totally seamless," he said during the demonstration for thousands of developers which featured a few technical glitches.

"To the user it doesn't matter where I get my content, whether it be live TV, DVR, or the web. They just want access to it," Chandra said.

Initially, advertising served on Google TV will be the same as seen now by television viewers or web surfers but the internet firm said it was pondering ways to tailor advertising to the platform.

"Millions" of channels

Google TV product manager Salahuddin Choudhary said in a blog post that Google TV would allow TV viewers to get "all the [TV] channels and shows you normally watch and all of the websites you browse all day".

"This opens up your TV from a few hundred channels to millions of channels of entertainment across TV and the web," Choudhary said. "With the entire internet in your living room, your TV becomes more than a TV - it can be a photo slide-show viewer, a gaming console, a music player and much more."

Not the first

Google is not the first technology company to attempt to unite the TV set and the internet and a number of electronics manufacturers are already offering web-enabled televisions or digital set-top boxes.

Yahoo jumped into the internet television arena more than a year ago, teaming up with manufacturers including Sony, Samsung, VIZIO, and LG to embed software "widgets" that let viewers link directly to designated websites.

Google executives said previous efforts had failed because proponents of the technology had dumbed down the web for television, closed it to participation by others and made people choose between using the web or television.

"It's much harder to marry a 50-year-old technology and a brand new technology than those of us in the brand new technology industry thought," Google chief executive Eric Schmidt acknowledged to the audience of developers.

Yahoo responded to Google's announcement with word that it was expanding its service to new devices.

"There is no doubt in my mind that the next phase of the internet revolution will be televised," said Yahoo Connected TV chief architect Ronald Jacoby.

Choudhary said the internet-enabled televisions, Blu-ray players and companion boxes from Sony and Logitech, which are powered by Intel Atom computer chips, would be available in the American autumn through Best Buy stores.

Logitech boxes will feature computer keyboards that act as Google TV remote controls. On-screen home pages will let people search television programming as they do the internet.

Sony chief executive Howard Stringer described it as "a very big deal".

"I can't stress that enough," Stringer said on stage. "When you put all this, as we've done for the [autumn], into the world's first internet television, the opportunities are, in a sense, just mind-boggling."

Google did not announce pricing for the TV sets or the set-top boxes.

Sony is among the electronics companies that brought internet-capable televisions to market, but those sets have typically been limited to letting people access specific websites such as Yahoo or YouTube.

"This is a much broader platform," Stringer said of Google TV. "This is a much more robust platform, which is expandable and grows. It's going to be an eye opener."

Android as remote

Engineers showed off new versions of the Android mobile phone platform, which competes with Apple's iPhone. Android also will run Google TV, turning Android phones into controls that can be used in the same room as the television or remotely across the web.

AFP, Reuters