Google TV with Android

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CES 2012 Google TV

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Google TV?

Google Inc. detailed its long-awaited plans for entering the living room, based on software that melds conventional TV programming with content delivered from the internet. It's a great news to all Androdians.

Google + Intel + Sony + Dish Network + Logitech + Best Buy + Adobe Systems to develop a platform called Google TV which will bring the Web into the living room through set-top boxes and a new generation of televisions.

They envision technology that will make it as easy for TV users to navigate Web applications, like the YouTube for video clips, Twitter/Facebook social network and the Picasa photo site, as it is to change the channel.

Existing televisions and set-top boxes have already been offering access to Web content with limited choice of sites. The partners will face a crowded field. In addition to the makers of traditional cable and satellite set-top boxes, Cisco Systems and Motorola, many others have entered the game, including Microsoft, Apple, TiVo and start-up companies like Roku and Boxee, which already stream video from Netflix, MLB.com and other Web sites directly to television sets. Yahoo is also promoting a TV platform that uses small software programs called widgets to use certain Web services.

Google's intention is to open its TV platform, which is based on its Android operating system for smartphones, to software developers. The company hopes the move will spur the same avalanche of creative applications for cellphones. Based on Google's Android operating system, the TV technology runs on Intel's Atom chips.

Google is expected to deliver a toolkit to outside programmers within the next couple of months, and consumers could see the products based on the software as soon as this summer.

Logitech is involved in developing other key components such as remote controls and computer speakers, peripheral devices, including a remote with a tiny keyboard.

For Google, the project is a pre-emptive move to get a foothold in the living room as more consumers start exploring ways to bring Web content to their television sets. Google wants to aggressively ensure that its services, in particular its search and advertising systems, play a central role.

Google has built a prototype set-top box, but the technology may be incorporated directly into TVs or other devices. The Google TV software will present users with a new interface for TVs that lets them perform Internet functions like search while also pulling down Web programming like YouTube videos or TV shows from Hulu.com. The technology will also allow downloadable Web applications, like games and social networks, to run on the devices. A person with knowledge of the project said that Google TV would use a version of Google's Chrome Web browser, which currently does not work on Android phones.

Google's efforts to break into television advertising date back three years. Through a program called Google TV Ads, the company sells advertising on a handful of satellite and small cable television systems, as well as some cable networks. Google says thousands of advertisers have signed up for the program, but analysts say they believe the amount of revenue generated is too small to have a significant impact on Google's overall business.

Verdict?

Advantages for Google
1. Android is Open Source and it's robust.
2. Android has been used by Major TV makers such as Samsung which is world #1 and LG, #2 already sell phones running Android.
3. Links between Android phones and Google TV bring some unusual benefits: A Google engineer, for example, demonstrated how a person could use voice recognition in his cell phone to search for a TV program by speaking its name.
4. Devices running Google TV will also be able to run applications written for Android phones and will feature Chrome.
5. Logitech's set-top box will allow people to receive Google TV without having to buy a new television set.

Huddles/Challenges
1. Distribution channels for its technology: while Best Buy said it would sell hardware from Sony and others that work with Google TV-and Dish Network said it would support it-other cable and satellite providers were conspicuously absent.
2. Conflicts: opposition from companies that try to tightly control where their content appears on TVs and the Web and which advertisements run alongside their offerings.
3. Reaching mainstream consumers: a number of other companies also are offering settop boxes that connect TVs to the internet, including Apple, Roku, Boxee, Vudu, now a division of Wal-Mart. But they have never reached mainstream consumers and struggled to gain broad adoption, in part because most consumers do not want to hook another set-top box to their TVs.
4. Television manufacturers already sell so-called connected TVs with limited internet ability, which in some cases is provided by a Google rival, Yahoo. Such models are likely to make up a quarter of all televisions sold this year. But many consumers do not even know they are buying that feature and usually make their shopping decisions based on the size and appearance of the set.
5. Apple could invest more in the TV business soon. It sells an Apple TV set-top box, which most analysts view as a lackluster product. It would now make sense for Apple to update that product, adding a Blu-ray player, for example. Or Apple could offer its iTunes services to other set-top box and TV makers, or manufacture its own flat-panel television that links to iTunes.

Key to Google's Success in TV

Google should try very hard to keep Samsung away from Apple

Google should stop showing off it's technology.
1. Everybody acknowledges Google's technology.
2. But lots of people do not appreciate Google's approach to technology.
3. Because Google lacks arts that Apple has.
4. Google should seriously consider contents that it's technology can carry.
  Who were in the I/O conference?
  1. Adobe's Stantanu Narayen
  2. Best Buy's Brian Dunn
  3. Dish Network's Charles Ergen
  4. Logitech's Gerald Quindlen
  5. Sony's Howard Stringer
  6. Intel's Paul Otellini
  Who are going to fill something into the TV.
  All of them are about making TV, how to make, how to carry, how to run...
5. Google should think how they can make people happy rather than awe them.
6. People less care about what technology can do than what they can do with it.
7. Google should find a way of gluing hundreds of thousand data with emotion.
8. "Not for the Geek like Gizmodo's Adam Frucci but for the rest of us" as Leander Kahney said.