Google TV Faces Delays Amid Poor Reviews
Google TV has just enacted its first programming cancellation. — The Consumer Electronics Show next month in Las Vegas was meant to be the great coming-out party for Google's new software for televisions, which adds Web video and other computer smarts to TV sets.
Context & Ripple Effects
When Google's TV plans rattled Hollywood in August 2010, the worry was that Web video would bypass the studios; five months later the pressure has reversed. The November verdict from reviewers was blunt — usability simply wasn't included — and Google has now confirmed delays that pull its showcase out of next month's CES spotlight.
The stakes are concrete: Google TV was pitched as software that brings Web video onto television sets, and the company has just enacted its first programming cancellation, meaning less content to demonstrate even as the product slips past its biggest launch stage. For a company whose August arrival made content owners nervous, the problem is no longer access — it is whether the product works well enough to matter.
First-order effects
- Google heads into CES without the coming-out party it planned, ceding the Las Vegas stage to whatever rival connected-TV products are ready to demo while Google TV regroups.
- The first programming cancellation shrinks the content library available on Google TV devices, directly weakening the core pitch of bringing Web video to the living room.
Second-order effects
- Hollywood studios and networks that were jittery about Google TV in August gain leverage: with the platform stumbling on reviews, they can hold back programming or demand better terms rather than fear being bypassed.
- Set makers weighing Google TV inside their televisions must choose between shipping a poorly reviewed platform at retail or delaying integration until Google proves out a fix.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the connected-TV market of the early 2010s will be decided by execution quality and content rights rather than first-mover software launches — content owners, not platform makers, set the pace.
- Repeated delays would reinforce the lesson from this cycle that search-and-software companies entering consumer hardware categories live or die on interface polish, an area where Google TV's critics found it weakest.
The trend: The 2010 race to put Web video on television is turning into a contest of execution and content licensing, where a weak launch hands power back to studios and rival platforms.