Google TV Unveiled
Today Google made the announcement that we all have been waiting for — Google TV. Although bugs are still present in the demo, the implications are pretty clear what Google is going all out for the 4 billion TV users worldwide. Or shall we say, advertising to the 4 billion TV users global.
Google has stated that while computer usage is around 1 billion users, and mobile is around 2 billion users, TV is where the real money is at with 4 billion viewers globally. Furthermore, Google thoroughly understands that people in the United States spend 5 hours a day watching Television. That’s 70 billion dollars annually in adds just for the United States alone.
Google isn’t the first company to attempt this, Google believes they can put steel on target the first time. There are four things Google will be focusing on:
* With Google TV, you’ll spend less time finding, more time watching
* We’ll also show you more ways to personalize content
* We’ll make existing TV much more interesting
* This is much more than a TV
“TV meets web. Web meets TV” is the slogan Google is going with for this new campaign. All customers will have to do is hook up to their existing cable or satellite box to the Google box. Google TV uses search to give you an easy and fast way to navigate to television channels, websites, apps, shows and movies. The hardware will include a keyboard and a mouse, and of course it will work with Android phones or you can use multiple Android devices to control the same TV. You will also be able to voice search on your Television via Android devices.
Google TV is built on Android (2.1 as of now, upgrades to come for sure). Naturally it runs Google Chrome for the browser with Flash.
Whats really cool, being this is an Android-powered device, Android apps will work on your TV. With the unit, there will be two application frameworks: web and Android applications. You can expect to see a new SDK for the Google TV as well. And YouTube has a new product they’re launching for just for Google TV: it’s called YouTube Leanback — this will be an optimized way to use YouTube on the big screen.
Google has multiple partners in this adventure in order to bring the Google TV to market. As of this moment there will be three Google TV devices. Sony will have TVs and Blu-ray players with Google TV incorporated. Logitech will also have it’s box, while Intel will power all manufactured units with their Atom processor.
If that wasn’t enough Google also partnered with Dish Network — there will be an enhanced Google TV experience with the dish. And Best Buy is in on the action with a retail partnership.
The Google TV will launch this coming Fall. Sadly, the platform won’t launch for developers until next year sometime.
Like I said, Google is going all out on this one. Wonder what Apple will do about this, after all….. Apple has called it’s Apple TV Top Box. Check out the video after the break.
via TechCrunch
