
Here comes Google TV - Anon84
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/here-comes-google-tv.html
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teilo
"The coolest thing about Google TV is that we don't even know what the coolest
thing about it will be."

That is just another way of saying, "If you build it, they will come." Not
exactly an axiom these days.

~~~
houseabsolute
My thing is, whatever happened to Google just launching things without
announcing them? They still do it for features, but no longer for products.
Maybe it's something you can't do with physical products because consumers
might postpone their buying decisions for competitors until after the launch.
Still, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth when I see us announcing things that
are not even nearly done yet.

~~~
cryptoz
> Still, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth when I see us announcing things
> that are not even nearly done yet.

What? The blog post explains that devices running Google TV will go on sale
this month. That is, within the next _27 days_ you will be able to buy a
Google TV.

How is that "not even nearly done yet"? Dude, the product goes on sale in less
than 27 days. It's probably done.

~~~
houseabsolute
It was announced many months ago. I'm using this opportunity to talk about how
unfortunate it is that we announced it so long ago and are only launching it
now. I'm not saying this current announcement itself is a fail. :)

~~~
donohoe
It was announced months ago so they was a window for developers to start
building things.

~~~
mikeryan
I'm not sure that's true (I'm not sure its not either) but in this case Google
hasn't been very open to outside developers.

They have solutions for "optimizing your website for TV" but nothing on the
dev page for developers but a coming soon. That and the fact that Android apps
won't be available until 2011

<http://www.google.com/tv/developers.html>

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irons
Nice to see Netflix, Pandora, and "more coming soon from Android Market", but
beyond that the pickings feel a bit slim.

Is it surprising that Hulu Plus isn't on board? With Netflix and Amazon as
part of the package, Google's not averse to additional subscription or a la
carte pricing, and I've got to think that Hulu could have earned higher
promotional placement than those time-filling CNBC knuckleheads.

~~~
enjo
Hasn't Hulu had a LOT of issues getting permission to be involved with
anything designed to be displayed on a TV? They've blocked Boxee and several
other similar offerings. Last I checked their content providers wanted it to
be a "everything BUT TV" service.

~~~
irons
Hulu's availability issues are entirely of its own making. The Hulu Plus
strategy is explicitly about extending that reach, starting with iOS, Xbox,
PS3, and the current-gen TiVo. They're already on TVs, in other words.

~~~
enjo
I didn't realize that... good to know actually:)

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jsean
It's funny how people still refer to Google as a search-company.

Where I live, up in northern europe, in pretty much every single news story
where google is mentioned they still say "the search giant", "the websearch
company" etc. The same way they call(ed) Microsoft "the software giant".

edit: I don't think "search giant" or even "search" is or ever was an
approprate tag for Google. It is and has always been an ad aggregating
(adregator?) company who merely used (and now even more) the vast quantity of
content on the web and the users desire to locate it as the underlying
mechanism for enabling it's business.

~~~
Zev
Google might make money from advertising, yes. But, as far as the average
person is concerned, Google means search.

Whether Google likes it or not, their name is synonymous with search. When
someone says "Just Google it", they don't mean to go to your tv and start
watching something. They don't mean to look at your phone and play a game.
They mean to go to your computer, open a web browser and search for something.

~~~
jsean
>>Google might make money from advertising, yes. But, as far as the average
person is concerned, Google means search.

Yes, exactly, precisely that is what I find funny. Not in a "you average
people, go read up on your google facts" or even in a way that I particularly
care take a stand against/with. I just find it cosmically funny somehow. If I
may stretch it a tad; almost in a dystopian, dark comedic sense.

edit: and also, you say "average", in my above post I said news stories, that
is, journalists. They really shouldn't be "average" in this context. If they
are, then yeah sure, their readers will become.

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austinalter
Strange that out of all the TV makers Sony is a partner with Google on this.
Google is only showing off media apps in the video but games are coming soon,
so Sony will be selling Bravias with a built-in Playstation competitor.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
I highly doubt that a TV with an embedded ARM processor running Android is any
serious competitor to a state of the art game console with the ability to run
1080p 3D graphics, use seven controllers, and store massive amounts of game
assets on Bluray disks. They don't even compare IMO. And yes, I have a PS3 and
a Roku box and a TiVo HD...

~~~
wmf
I don't think it's the hardware but getting your TV/movies from "ten-foot" web
sites competes with Playstation Network.

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Keyframe
Could this also mean that youtube live streaming is near public availability?

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irons
There's no connection. Live streaming will be driven by wide public
availability, e.g., web browsers. It's not going to yoked to a specific piece
of Android kit.

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wccrawford
Okay, so Sony signed some papers with them and will be offering it right on
the TV.

Will Samsung? Because that's the TV I have. Hulu and Amazon both support the
new Samsung TVs. (Or the TVs support those services, depending on how you look
at it.)

~~~
mikeryan
Not on your current TV. The current crop of Samsung devices don't have the
processing power to run Google TV. I'm pretty sure the Sony Google TVs will be
an upsell, unlike the current TV platforms the chipsets needed to run Google's
platform are _expensive_ I think you're going to need to pay for a "Google TV
enabled" device, unlike the Yahoo widgets which you get for "free". This may
change in the future but for now its not.

~~~
vetinari
Current "Internet connected" Samsung TVs aren't cheap either; the difference
to comparable basic models is in hundreds of Euros. I'm sure Sammy could get
back the price of Intel CE4x00 SoC quite easily.

~~~
mikeryan
In those cases you're paying for a better TV not necessarily for the apps
platform. You can also get a $250 Blu-Ray player with Samsung's app.

Samsung's approach is currently a walled garden - where they can subsidize the
cost of the chips and support costs by doing revenue shares with the content
providers. Google TV's flash enabled browser breaks this model which is
another reason Samsung likely won't go there anytime soon.

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jacquesm
Let's hope it won't be a re-run (pun intended) of this:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webtv>

I get pretty scared when I see references to 'how to optimize your website for
TV'.

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Goosey
I wonder how the boxee.tv team is feeling about this. Must be a little
frustrating to work for years putting together such a great product and then
see a major player come in like this.

~~~
matthewn
I was just thinking the same thing. I love Boxee, but it's difficult to see
where there will be room for them in this space once Apple and Google have
carved it up between themselves.

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schultzor
Does their integration strategy with non-Dish boxes still boil down to using
an IR blaster?

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mkr-hn
It's about the only thing that can be relied on. Anything else is proprietary
or obscure.

~~~
schultzor
True. It would be nice to be freed from needing a piece-of-junk cable box in
the equation. Or from needing a cable subscription, for that matter.

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ww520
How much you want to bet this is the precursor of Google moving into the TV ad
business?

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alexophile
Interesting that they mention integration with Netflix, which (last I checked)
doesn't support Chrome.

~~~
jerf
I used it with Chrome yesterday just fine. Maybe your Chrome doesn't have
Silverlight correctly installed, for the on-demand video? For the video that's
what really matters, the browser is just a container at that point regardless
of which browser it is.

~~~
irons
Huh, Chrome works for me too, and that's a fairly new development, like the
last month or two. Officially, Netflix streaming in a browser still only
supports Firefox, Safari, and IE.

~~~
whyenot
This seems really odd to me because I've been using Netflix with Chrome for at
least a year now, and I didn't do anything special, just installed silverlight
and it worked.

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riobard
Just ordered an Apple TV yesterday ...

