The Google Set-Top Box (Think Android For TV)
Deep in the Googleplex there is an engineering team thinking about how to extend Google's reach into your TV. Its work goes way beyond the Google TV ads currently being tested by EchoStar (and targeted with help from Nielsen).
Context & Ripple Effects
TechCrunch reports a Googleplex engineering team is exploring a set-top box — 'Android for TV' — though the device itself remains unconfirmed. What is confirmed around it: EchoStar is already testing Google's TV ads with Nielsen supplying targeting data, and Google's proposed DoubleClick acquisition sits pending before regulators.
Read together, the pieces sketch an ads-first play rather than a gadget play: Google has been buying its way into television measurement and ad infrastructure, and a box of its own would put the company's targeting stack physically inside the living room rather than rented through partners like EchoStar.
First-order effects
- If the rumored box ships, EchoStar's current role as Google's TV-ad test bed becomes a template for direct distribution, letting Google run targeted spots on hardware it controls instead of through partner set-tops.
- Advertisers in the EchoStar/Nielsen trials gain a path from experimental targeted TV spots to a scalable Google-run channel.
Second-order effects
- Satellite and cable operators face a software rival whose economics come from auction-priced advertising rather than subscription boxes, pressuring their own DVR and guide-software roadmaps.
- A completed DoubleClick deal would give Google the display-ad machinery to sell TV inventory alongside web campaigns, pulling TV media buyers toward one platform.
Third-order effects
- Television advertising drifts toward the measurable, targeted model that built Google's search business — the same answer-engine economics applied to broadcast inventory, with hardware as the enforcement point.
- Consumer-electronics and pay-TV incumbents would have to decide whether to license Google's living-room stack or build competing ones, echoing the platform-vs-operator fight now playing out on phones.
The trend: Google is extending its auction-based ad model from the web into television, with owned hardware as the eventual delivery mechanism.