Google TV Could Transform the Entire Living Room Experience

When it comes to Google and business models of its different properties the formula seems to be remarkably consistent: produce something which makes sense in terms of enabling the end-user, make it available free, market it using the power of the Google brand, monetize it using the Google dominance in ads and search.

Google TV is a case in point. Right now, for anyone who may have missed it 'Google TV' is basically a free operating system which enables all the gadgets running in your TV set to suddenly become smarter, more interactive and web enabled. This would allow the TV in your living room to become a portal for the world wide web and you could benefit from streaming movies, Google ads, Google search and almost anything which you may want to do online (like share movies and comments, write or read movie reviews and take your passive TV viewing experience into the wonderland of interactive digital participation).

Google TV is free and available right this instant. So, why has it not taken off?

Well, apart from the fact that for something to take off there has to be demand for it of some kind, the economics also need to make sense. The Android OS, for instance, was something consumers and telephone carriers did not know they needed, until it started to appear everywhere and proved that it was cheap to implement and easy to integrate.

While smartphones were, well… smart, and the Google Android OS only helped to make them smarter, TV sets are pretty dumb and Google TV, in order to work requires some Intel chips to be installed. This cuts into the bottom line of goods which are already aggressively priced and makes it difficult for manufacturers to get on-board. It also does not help that, at this time, just like in the pre-Google Android days, manufacturers are experimenting with their own proprietary systems.

Does this mean the deal is dead and Google TV will never take off? Far from it. Unlike Android, Google TV does not have any serious contenders. Sony and Logitech have already signed up to be on-board and it will only take one more big deal from Google (like, let's say Toshiba) to reach the tipping point.

Google TV is one of those 'needs' consumers are not yet aware of but that means next to nothing. In 1999 hardly anyone felt the need to Google anything and today we almost cannot live without it. So, time and patience and Google's slow spread of the word are right now guiding Google TV to a TV set near you. Stay tuned.