How Google plans to change the way you watch TV
Google chairman Eric Schmidt was on a diplomacy mission last week, reaching out to broadcasters in the UK and urging them to embrace changes in the way that viewers watch TV, as enabled by the Internet. Giving the MacTaggart Lecture …
Context & Ripple Effects
Google's television push has been running into resistance since launch: a year ago the company's plans were already causing jitters in Hollywood, and its 2010 effort with Sony and Logitech to find a television foothold produced little traction with content owners. Schmidt has spent 2011 repairing that relationship, telling reporters days earlier that Google is 'absolutely committed' to the fledgling TV business and expects many more partners for Google TV.
The MacTaggart Lecture at Edinburgh is the diplomatic high point of that campaign: rather than launching products, Schmidt is arguing publicly to UK broadcasters that internet-enabled viewing is inevitable and that they should embrace it. The speech extends a thread going back years — Google was thinking about the future of TV ads as far back as 2005 — and comes amid unconfirmed analyst speculation that Google could be the most compelling buyer of Hulu.
First-order effects
- UK broadcasters are being asked directly, by name and on their home turf, to open their schedules and archives to internet distribution — the same content-owner resistance that stalled Google TV's first year now faces a public lobbying push.
- Google TV's thin partner roster becomes the immediate test of the pitch; Schmidt's stated expectation of 'many more partners' means device makers and networks must decide whether to join or keep blocking.
Second-order effects
- Broadcasters who refuse face the same dilemma Hollywood confronted in 2010: internet-delivered viewing arrives anyway through other platforms, so blocking Google risks ceding the connected-TV interface to rivals while gaining nothing durable.
- A credible Google commitment to TV raises the stakes in adjacent content deals — including the rumored Hulu interest, which remains unconfirmed but would give Google premium programming it currently lacks.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, TV economics shift from channel-schedule gatekeeping toward search-and-app distribution, with the platform owner controlling discovery and ad targeting — the endpoint of the advertising rethink Google flagged in 2005.
- National broadcast regulators and rights holders across Europe would then face pressure to redefine must-carry and retransmission rules built for closed distribution, a fight Google is preemptively framing as inevitable rather than negotiable.
The trend: Platform companies are shifting from building TV hardware to persuading national broadcasters that internet-delivered viewing is inevitable, with content-owner cooperation replacing device launches as the battleground.