Google TV has arrived, with all the attendant fanfare and raspberries one might expect. Google, in cooperation with partners like Best Buy, Dish Network, Sony, Adobe Systems, Intel and Logitech Systems, plans to integrate Web browsing and cable TV with a device (Sony TV?) running its Android operating system. The theory is that Android has proven effective and popular for cell phones competing with iPhones, so why not move it to the bigger platform and take on Apple TV?
It helps that Google (NasdaqGS: GOOG) has a partnership with Dish Network (NasdaqGS: DISH), which plans this fall to integrate support for the software in HD DVR boxes so subscribers can connect Google TV devices via HDMI cable. It hurts that the term "Google devices" is included in any description of the service.
Google TV "sounds similar to the whole tru2way cable experience," Jonathan Hurd, director of Altman Vilandrie and Company, a boutique management consulting firm focused on communications and media, told FierceCable. Hurd also questioned adding another device besides a cable or satellite box to the home entertainment system. "There are a lot of them out there but they haven't caught on to any great extent in the market."
As with many watching the Google move, Hurd is an Apple TV user. That, he said, is where Google TV might thrive "just because the user interface is so much easier to find content than the clunky cable VoD interface." But, he said, without the live content that cable and satellite can provide, Google TV is "going to be a niche in the market."
For more:
- see this story
- and this overview
- and this not-so-hot-on-Apple TV analysis
- and a little Hulu speculation
- and finally, this story
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