Google and Partners Seek a Television Foothold
Google and Intel have teamed with Sony to develop a platform called Google TV to bring the Web into the living room through a new generation of televisions and set-top boxes. — The move is an effort by Google and Intel to extend their dominance …
Context & Ripple Effects
Google has been circling the living room for years without committing hardware: TechCrunch speculated about an Android-style Google set-top box back in late 2007, and the Times reported that same year that Google's TV ambitions centered on tracking television ad audiences. What changes with this announcement is that the ambition now has named silicon, screen, and software partners.
The trio matters analytically: Sony supplies the sets, Intel supplies chips looking for growth beyond PCs, and Google supplies the platform — the same OS-plus-services stack it used to enter mobile with Android. For all three, this is an attempt to carry existing dominance into a room they don't yet own.
First-order effects
- Sony gains an operating system and Web services for its televisions and set-top boxes at a moment when connected-TV features are becoming a purchase criterion, while Intel wins a candidate volume market for its chips outside the shrinking PC refresh cycle.
Second-order effects
- Rival TV makers and set-top vendors must field competing connected-TV stacks of their own rather than treating Web access as a premium add-on, and cable/satellite operators see a third party positioning itself between them and the viewer's interface.
- Content owners and networks face a partner that wants full-Web browsing on the TV — the same open-access logic that unsettled publishers on the desktop now aimed at pay-TV economics.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the television converges toward the smartphone structure: commodity hardware, a licensed OS layer, and ad-funded services capturing the value — shifting leverage from broadcasters and cable gatekeepers to whoever controls the TV's software platform.
The trend: Consumer electronics is reorganizing around the smartphone playbook — chipmaker plus device maker plus ad-funded platform — as Google, Intel, and Sony try to replicate the Android model in the living room.