This May, Google announced its latest foray into the consumer electronics market, Google TV.
Designed to bring all the advantages of the Internet to the comfort of the living room, Google TV is a service that will launch this fall, allowing users to access the Internet, applications and search functions all on the large screen of their television at home.
However, many students have reservations about the service. Among them is Asa Price, a sophomore in computer science.
“Internet in the living room is a good idea, but I don’t think it’s necessary to have a dedicated device for it,” Price said. “I can just, for example, get my laptop, find any videos that I want, plug it into my TV and watch them there.”
Google TV may still find a market among the less tech-savvy, more casual consumers and those who want to find a more streamlined solution. Like MSN TV (Microsoft’s television-based Web browsing service formerly known as WebTV), Google is stressing the simplicity and convenience of being able to access the Internet from a couch.
Unlike MSN TV, which more or less locked users into either browsing the Internet or watching TV, Google TV aims to integrate the two. A good example of this is the search functionality, described by Google on its official blog, which will allow users to search for television channels, websites, apps, shows, and movies all from the same search bar. Still, Price said it’s difficult to see if the casual market will jump on with a service like this.
“Google is going to have a hard time advertising to that crowd because those people have an idea of what television is that is localized to TV,” Price said. “If you told them you can watch Internet videos, and they don’t have much of an idea of the Internet, they are not going to know about the giant library of entertainment that is out there.”
Beyond Internet access on the big screen, Google is promising applications that will be developed and optimized for Google TV in a similar vein to the apps already available for smart phones like iPhone and assorted Android-based devices. For example, there may be apps that allow sports fans to keep up with the latest scores while watching another game on the same screen, or a Netflix app that allows subscribers to stream movies directly to their televisions. And as with most Google products, Google TV will run on an open platform, allowing developers to easily make their own applications for it.
John Lee, a sophomore in mechanical engineering, said there were several scenarios for how this sort of functionality could emerge.
“I’m imagining commercials where we could, for example, see the ShamWow commercial and a pop-up comes up and says ‘Buy the ShamWow right now on Amazon!'” Lee said.
Not everyone is as wary as Price about the prospects of Google TV. Ty Prentice, a freshman in civil engineering, is among those excited for the new product.
“I would use something like this,” Prentice said. “It would make [multitasking] easier. I wouldn’t have to get up to use my computer or get up and charge my laptop. I could just turn on my TV and watch my favorite shows and do my research or whatever at the same time. It would help if you had a weather app, or if you can’t find [your shows] and had a TV guide app—that would be useful. I think it would be cool.”
The Google TV service will be distributed in a variety of ways, from Blu-ray players to TVs with the service already built in. Companies are planning the Logitech Revue, a standalone box available for pre-order for $299, and the Sony Internet TV, an HDTV with no official release dates or prices yet.
With no official release date yet, the Google TV service is expected to reach consumers before the Christmas shopping season. Whether Google TV will dominate its market in the same way previous Google products have remains to be seen, but the company has laid groundwork for a new option for consumers looking to enter the “Internet on television” realm.
