Google TV: Coming soon to a screen near you

October 7, 2010

Google TV is a new platform that combines traditional TV programming with the World Wide Web. Based on the Android operating system, it provides television sets with access to all kinds of multimedia, applications and websites from the Internet. Users will be able to zap from watching regular television channels to surfing the Internet via Google’s Chrome browser along with Adobe Flash, using their Android or iPhone as a remote control.

Google TV is set to revolutionize not only the way we use our TV sets, but also the way the Internet is conceived as a whole. Music and movie industries will never be the same after the launching of Google TV. Google is aware of the milestone is creating and it has involved many big companies from both hardware and software industries into the project, including the likes of Logitech, Intel, Sony or Adobe. Many content providers have also expressed their interest in joining the project, such as Turner Broadcasting (TBS, TNT, CNN, Cartoon Network and Adult Swim), NBC Universal (CNBC Real-Time), HBO (HBO GO), NBA (NBA Game Time), Amazon (Video On Demand), The New York Times, USA Today, VEVO, Pandora, Napster. Even social media outlets like Twitter and online networks like blip.tv have jump on the bandwagon.

Such interest is perfectly understandable. A recent report from In-Stat predicts a huge increase of online video consumption over the next five years, largely driven by growth in adoption of web-enabled electronics. The total number of US households that own web-enabled video devices will nearly triple to 98 million by 2014, with 57 million US households watching full-length online content on their connected TVs. The revenue generated by online video displayed on television is projected to reach $17 billion by 2014.

Like Android, the Google TV system will run on an open-source platform that will enable developers to create all sorts of applications and widgets for the system. Google TV will also support a set of TV-specific APIs for navigating TV content.  Since Google TV uses Google Chrome as a browser, the safest route for web developers is to make sure that their websites render correctly on that browser. Flash is also fully supported, so the possibilities are endless.


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