Google announces GoogleTV

      10 Comments on Google announces GoogleTV

On the second day of Google’s I/O conference today, the search giant announced a new product, GoogleTV. The platform, which will be available built in to at least some Sony TVs, as well as available in stand-alone boxes (think TiVO or your cable DVR box), combines your DVR functionality (including program guide), web-based video sites like Hulu, and Netflix streaming. Built on top of Google’s mobile OS Android platform, it will also allow for some applications to run that aren’t phone hardware specific.

It looks like a compelling product and the type of integration I’d love to see, but I’m hoping competitors like Microsoft and Apple (or others? TiVo?) step up because I’m loathe to give Google more of my personal info and traffic.

10 thoughts on “Google announces GoogleTV

  1. Brendan Loy

    I for one welcome our… ah, nevermind, Google isn’t our “new overlords,” they’ve been our overlords since like 2004 or something.

  2. B. Minich

    You know, I’m really starting to dislike Google. Every time something goes wrong, and it is shown they have done something wrong (espicially in regards to privacy), their CEO gets out there and says “you know, it really wasn’t THAT big a deal that we grabbed unsuspecting people’s network traffic”. Really, Google? Really?

    Don’t be evil indeed.

  3. AMLTrojan

    Faced with the choice of giving my time, personal info, and traffic to either A. Apple, B. Microsoft, or C. Google, I’ll take Google every time.

  4. David K. Post author

    In particular there is this quote from Google CEO Eric Schmidt:

    “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place”

    So his basic stance is if you want something to remain somewhat private don’t do it?

    Then there was Google Buzz where they decided it would be a good idea to randomly connect people private e-mail connections to friends of friends of friends of friends…etc. One documented case involved a woman’s contact info being made available to her abusive ex because they both at one point had corresponded with the same person. Google’s response was “we thought people would think this is cool”.

    Or there was the whole book scanning thing, where Google decdied “we are going to violate authors rights, but hey we won’t do it if they ask us not too”.

    Google has taken a very, do first, ask forgiveness later, attitude.

    Put it another way, Apple’s primary goal is to sell you hardware. Microsoft’s primary goal is to sell you software. Google’s primary goal is to sell ad space for other people. While Apple and Microsoft may keep track of your data they don’t have as much vested interest in selling the data they mine to outside parties. That is googles PRIMARY focus, knowing as much about you as possible, and then providing that information as much as possible to the people they sell ads too.

  5. B. Minich

    David: great point. And Apple has their flaws, but they’ve never played this loose with their customer’s data. I’d MUCH rather trust my data to Apple then to Google.

  6. jamesmartin.aus

    Hai really it is good and the search giant announced a new product, GoogleTV. It is better post I every seen and it awesome…

    thanking you…

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