What Google TV Needs to Succeed
What Google TV Needs to Succeed
There are rumors flying around about what Google TV will be in the future. Eric Schmidt claims that more than half of the televisions sold by mid 2012 will have Google TV on them. I think he’s reaching, but not by a lot. TV manufacturers are always looking for something to differentiate from their competition. As TVs get network connectivity and a bit more onboard storage, having something like Google TV will be easy and cheap. Just as we see Netflix all over the place now, I agree with Mr. Schmidt that we’ll be seeing Google TV integrated into a large number of TVs as we move forward.
But what will it take for people to actually use it? Most of our entertainment devices have functions that we don’t use. For me, the Amazon Video on Demand is one of those features. We’re a Netflix household because it’s cheap, easy and what we started with. Google TV has to be all of those – cheap (free), easy to use and fill a niche that no other device does. The most likely candidate is the aggregation of content from across devices and the web.
When Google TV first came out, internet publishers were blocking access to their content from the new device. Unless Google can convince these content owners to stop doing so, Google TV will never get mass adoption. Sure, the recent rewrite of YouTube and the dollars they’re putting behind it to secure some quality content will help, possibly greatly. Yet, it will take something significant to get people to think of watching YouTube on a tv and not on their computer. Will Google be able to pull this off? Watch and see.
Google TV
In the meantime, I’ll continue to deliberate whether or not I should have another set top box in my living room!
