Google finally launched its eagerly anticipated Google TV yesterday, marking a teaming up of the search engine marketing specialists with microprocessor inventors Intel.
Google’s ”smart TV” service will allow users to browse the web, whilst enjoying their favourite television programmes. An on-screen search box will let users search for web content and even download applications, whilst watching the plethora of video content available on the internet.
As well as a partnership with Intel, Google has collaborated with Sony and Logitech in providing devices with Google TV capabilities. According to PC Magazine, Sony is to sell HDTV’s and Blu-Ray players with Google TV included. Logitech will produce a ”companion box” that can be partnered with existing televisions to enable the service to work.
A Google spokesman commented in The Guardian that the company were concerned with creating cutting edge products, saying: ”Over the past decade, the internet has created unprecedented opportunity for innovation and development across the world, but so far the web has largely been absent from living rooms.”
Looking ahead, Google commented that its new TV product will help push innovation within the industry, saying: ”The long-term goal is to collaborate with the entire developer community to help drive entertainment in the living room forward and to introduce the next generation of TV-watching experience.”
Industry commentators are hailing Google TV as bigger than Apple TV, with Wired describing Apple’s offering as ”less like a hobby and more like an embarrassing habit Google is trying to quit,” as Google TV can capture video content from across the web as a whole.
It remains to be seen whether Apple will provide a comeback to Google TV…
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