GoogleTV Coming Soon?

An anonymous reader writes "Flexbeta writes that Google is looking to hire a full time project manager for GoogleTV in Mountain View, CA. The candidate must posses experience developing/launching products in one or more of the following areas: interactive TV, set-top-boxes, personal video recorders, video-on-demand, IP TV or cable TV technologies. Google recently announced their interest in the text messaging market by releasing GoogleTalk; this came to no surprise to many that were already hearing rumors month's before GoogleTalk was released. Google is also working on providing free WiFi service to some regions of the San Francisco bay area. Google is without a doubt expanding their operations beyond the search engine market which makes the possibility of GoogleTV realistic. "

Comments

DRM?

[rovingeyes]

So I hope their content will be DRM free, right?

Re:DRM?

[Anonymous Coward]

*SLAP*

how you doing Susan?

*wink*

Re:DRM?

[Deekin_Scalesinger]

I'm not sure that they are turning evil, necessarily (no evidence to the contrary either) but they sure seem to be getting into a whole lot of areas awfully quick. Anyone wanna bet aganist me that by 2010 we'll have googlebank.com (whoops, seems like some entrepenuer got it already...)

Re:DRM?

[Radres]

No banking, but Google Wallet?

Re:DRM?

[mikes.song]

googlebank.com

Do you mean bank.google.com?

Re:DRM?

[Kimos]

I work for a Canadian Telco that's just making the move into digital TV. The reason we're in the middle of implementing DRM on our network is so that we can expand the content we can provide. Most of the larger providers won't sell to us unless we sign a contract with them saying that their content locked and managed when it is sent out to customers. If Google goes DRM-free it would seriously limit what they would be able to provide...

Re:DRM?

[Chyeld]

DRM is not inheritantly evil. Unreasonably restrictive DRM is evil.

I have no problem with iTune's Fairplay implementation, and I have every confidence that Google would be able to come up with something just as good in terms of comprimise between the content producer and the consumer.

Re:DRM?

[MikeFM]

DRM is evil. It controls how the consumer can use what they've fairly bought. It makes it more difficult for other artists to sample and extend works. It makes it less likely that content will still be accessible to future generations.

If not evil then at least short-sighted and selfish.

Re:DRM?

[Chyeld]

DRM is the compromise the consumer makes to have available to them a quality digital version of a work. Without DRM, there is no incentive for the artist to provide the digital version, as DRM'less digital versions can be immediately redistributed.

A good DRM scheme is one where the consumer's ability to use the work in the manner they wish isn't impacted while the ability to simply redistribute millions of copies is curtailed.

iTunes' implementation of Fairplay is such a system in my eyes. Yes, the AAC files are protected. But you can authorize up to five computers to play them, you can stream the music over the network, you can even reduce the quality of the file by burning it to CD and then re-ripping it into a DRM'less version.

As many people bitch about the fact that the music industry not adapting to the new age of digital (which I whole heartedly agree with), a lot people still seem stuck in the whole "Tape" generation of thinking where copies weren't detrimental because they never came close to the quality of the original. That isn't true anymore and you need to stop acting as if it were. Unauthorized copies, while not as a horrible threat as the suits want to make it seem, are a problem.

It doesn't take a white beard and half a century of experience in the world to realize that anytime you have a setup that depends on everyone playing along, a setup where one person can screw it up for the rest of us, that not only is that person going to exist but they are going to make it their goal in life to screw it up just to be an A-hole.

Your goals should not be to stamp out DRM but to work to find a setup where both sides of the equation feel as if they have gotten a fair trade out of the deal.

Re:DRM?

[Dominatus]

Files on iTunes are compressed. CDs are digital, considerably higher quality, and DRMless. The compromise should be that Im paying almost as much as a real CD for compressed music in a non-tangible form. It should NOT and I repeat NOT restrict what music player I can play it on, forcing me to sacrifice quality if I want to play what I bought on a non-iPod.

Re:DRM?

[MikeFM]

I'd bet that by 2007 we'll have Google's versions of PayPal and EBay. It wouldn't be at all hard to improve on their crappy interfaces. I'd guess Cafe Press / Yahoo Stores could be a target too.

Re:DRM?

[Anonymous Coward]

DRM is the compromise the consumer makes to have available to them a quality digital version of a work.

Sure, keep telling yourself that. And in the meantime explain how your reply answers any of the points raised in the GP about Fair Use or the fact that the DRM doesn't go away when the copyright on the work expires. Copyright is a social contract and it needs to stay that way, enforced by social activities like peer pressure and lawsuits. Trying to embody a moral and legal code into technology... is pointless.

Re:DRM?

[Hans Lehmann]

Who defines "unreasonable". You can bet it will be them, and not you.

Re:DRM?

[Chyeld]

Your first statement contradicts your second. If AAC files are of lesser quality than a CD, then converting them to CD to be able to play them where ever (which iTunes allows) would not reduce the quality of the file.

If AAC files are of a greater quality then a CD, then your first argument that you are paying the same price as a CD is meaningless.

The fact of the matter is iTunes DOES allow you to burn to CD. So anytime you wish to remove the DRM, you can do so. And if you truly wished to do so, you could even use a program such as Playfair or Hymn to allow you to remove the DRM without converting the file in anyway whatsoever.

People who complain about something as lax as iTunes' version of Fairplay are the ones who are never going to 'get it'.

The WHOLE point of copyrights was to assure the author that their works would not be stolen enmass as soon as they were released. In the world before digital, this was fairly simple. Copies were either guaranteed to be of lesser quality than the original or would require so much effort to create that there were few who would find the work and risk of punishment worth doing.

That is NO LONGER TRUE. Anyone can rip off a work if it's not protected and just as the RIAA has unwittingly proven, there is no way you can possibly catch everyone doing it once it gets to that point.

You need to wake up and realize, just as the music and movie industries need to, that the world has changed and sitting there bitching about how it's so unfair that they expect you to compromise is the equivalent of the RIAA sitting around bitching about how the internet is killing the music industry.

You are both stuck in the old world analog view of life.

Re:DRM?

[Peter La Casse]

DRM is the compromise the consumer makes to have available to them a quality digital version of a work. Without DRM, there is no incentive for the artist to provide the digital version, as DRM'less digital versions can be immediately redistributed.

Less incentive? Sure. Necessary to perpetuate the current content distribution paradigm? Sure. But no incentive? None at all? Without DRM, nobody would ever create any digital content?

That's a stretch. See http://www.bradsucks.net/ for a counterexample.

A good DRM scheme is one where the consumer's ability to use the work in the manner they wish isn't impacted while the ability to simply redistribute millions of copies is curtailed.

"Good" DRM appears to be impossible, or at least not invented yet, by my standards. Here's how I wish to use digital media: I want to store it on my file server and access it on whatever device I happen to be sitting in front of at the moment. I want to be able to access it with a variety of programs, and when it's out of copyright (I'm an optimist) I want to be able to manipulate it to my heart's content with a variety of tools that I'm able to apt-get (or write myself, if I'm ever so inclined.) I want to be able to access it locally even when my internet connection is down, and even when the content provider I acquired it from goes out of business / stops making content / decides they don't want me to access the content any more. (I don't enter into contracts that give the content provider that power.)

Tivo + Slingbox is close. MythTV is close. CD music has been there for years.

Re:DRM?

[pavon]

DRM is the compromise the consumer makes to have available to them a quality digital version of a work. Without DRM, there is no incentive for the artist to provide the digital version, as DRM'less digital versions can be immediately redistributed.

If there is no incentive without DRM then there should also be no incentive with it. Because DRM is a myth.

DRM only restricts people who own legally obtained copies from using them in non-approved manners. It can do nothing to prevent people with illegally obtained copies from using or distributing the work. Furthermore, it can do nothing to prevent people who have legally obtained copies from converting them to non-DRM form.

This is because unbreakable DRM is theoretically impossible. Every DRM scheme ever created has been broken shortly after it became widely used, and once a single person breaks the DRM on a work then you are back to where you started.

Therefore, the restrictions enforced by DRM are inherently limited to those who chose to obey the law to begin with, while it is no barrier those who choose to infringe on copyright.

DRM is compromise - a compromise where the consumer agrees to give up his fair-use rights, the electronic companies agree to complicate thier products, and in return none of the parties, media producer included, get anything of value in return.

Sorry, but that is not the kind of compromise that I want to make.

Re:DRM?

[GoClick]

I wonder how well that goes over when Canada and the US have such vastly different laws regarding what a private person can do with broadcast content.

I wonder about GoogleTV, so if I search for a program on something rather ordinary like say soap will I get 1000 programs on SOAP ?

I KID I KID!

Also, I really like the new /. setup, although I was looking forward to XHTML 1.1 but I guess I can't have the world now can I? It's going to take a lot of work to get colapsable comment trees working in GreaseMonkey again :P

Re:DRM?

[AeroIllini]

I wholeheartedly agree.

In the age of perfect digital copies, distributing DRM-free content is akin to a Ferrari dealership allowing test drives without requiring so much as a deposit, driver's license number, or even a name from the customer. Sure, it's illegal to drive off in that Ferrari and never return, but it's extremely easy to do so and the chances of getting caught are slim (ok, maybe Ferrari was a bad example due to the low percentage of them on the road, but the analogy still stands). Keep in mind that if this actually happened at a car dealership, people would most likely blame the dealership for not requiring a deposit before the test drive. From a purely statistical point of view, theft is inevitable when you leave your back door open.

Because of that statistical certainty, digital content distributors have two methods of locking the back door: they can either restrict distribution of the content with DRM, or see to it that content acquired through third party channels is inferior to the real product. The second option is much, much harder, since people could redistribute whatever added value the distributor put in the product (a good example is special features on DVDs... with BitTorrent, one can share multiple files under one share, and those extra files could contain the special features on the DVD, and even the cover artwork).

However, restricting distribution is not as easy as it sounds, either, especially when you factor in fair use and non-infringing copying such as format-shifting or time-shifting. Since the DRM itself is making decisions about how you are allowed to use the material, how can it tell whether this copy you are making is for your iPod, your car, another computer you own, or for 10,000 of your closest friends? The short answer is that it can't tell. So it has to make certain assumptions and allow the most common fair uses, while restricting everything else.

FairPlay, for example, allows songs to be burned to CD, but you cannot burn the same playlist more than a certain number of times (7, if I remember correctly). That seems like a really fair restriction to me. Theoretically, I should be able to make as many CDs of the same playlist as I want, as long as I'm not giving them to other people. I could wallpaper my room with copies of that playlist if I wanted. But because the ratio of "people who make more than x copies for the purposes of distribution" to "people who make more than x copies just for themselves, and never distribute any" is so high, it makes sense to restrict the number of copies one can make of a single playlist.

There are two extremes to DRM: no restriction at all, and no consumer rights at all. Good DRM will be a compromise between the two; it will allow the majority of people to exercise their fair use rights, and it will stop casual* distribution of the content.

--------
*I use the word "casual" here purposely: for those people determined to get something for nothing, the mantra "If I can hear it, I can pirate it" still stands. To continue our Ferrari analogy from before, these would be the people trying to steal the Ferrari by paying the deposit with counterfeit money and giving the dealership a fake ID. These people will always exist, and no amount of DRM will stop them from distributing content. But for the majority of users, if it is convenient to buy the real product, they will. If it is not convenient for them to distribute the content to others, they won't. Many of the problems people have with DRM currently stem from the fact that it is not convenient to use the product once it's paid for, since the DRM is too restrictive. Given the monopolistic nature of most of the media in this country, market forces won't take care of this problem. We still need to fight for consumers' rights in DRM schemes, but we will never accomplish anything if we fight for the removal of all DRM.

Re:DRM?

[hazzey]

The problem is that your exact statement can be said about the time when CD's first came out.

Tapes were cheaper, and were easier for artists to "sample and extend work". To use that new CD that you bought, you were locked into owning a CD-player. This has nothing to do with how ubiquitous CD's have become, just how they looked at the begining.

Re:DRM?

[Distinguished Hero]

If the consumer buys a product that has DRM in it, they get what they bought. The consumer always has the choice to not buy the DRM product (TV shows are not required to live). Similarly, they have the choice to only buy non-DRM products (if there is enough of a demand for these, someone will supply them). Basically, DRM gives the creator more control over whatever they create. The creator is not forced to use DRM in their product if they choose.

You are opposing giving content creators more choice in their distribution methods (and consumers as well, I suppose). I, on the other hand, am pro-choice.

Furthermore, if you do have such a problem with selfishness, I suggest giving up all those resources you are no doubt hoarding for yourself e.g. computer, TV, clothing, basically everything beside some clothing and the smallest amount of food required to keep yourself alive. Anything else (and I would like to see someone debate this) is pure selfishness (unless you have children, but even they are selfish objects born out of your selfish desire for sexual gratification and genetic propagation).

Re:DRM?

[MikeFM]

Except that CD players made no effort to keep you from recording from them. They didn't stop you from copying them should you actually have some method of doing so and they didn't try to encrypt their data to keep you from using it in any way they might think unprofitable to them. You had the reasonable use of what you'd paid for if you could afford the equipment to do it.

That isn't true with DRM at all. You can't go out and build your own DRM player from scratch if you really want to and play that media any more. They've made a serious effort to make media inaccessible and that would be illegal.

Re:DRM?

[Lord_Dweomer]

"Without DRM, there is no incentive for the artist to provide the digital version, as DRM'less digital versions can be immediately redistributed."

Bullshit. What about all the artists providing high quality work digitally for free. The incentive of course being that people buy their discs and go to their shows etc. You are making a statement that is just what the big media congloms want you to believe....that DRM is necessary.

They may feel its necessary in order for THEM to keep providing content, but I say fuck em, since there's plenty of people willing to provide it without.

Re:DRM?

[birge]

What a well-reasoned, thoughful post. Except media companies did just fine in the hundreds of years before we had DRM! It's a little hard to argue your theory when we have already tried the experiment and proven you wrong. The ability to copy works freely didn't destroy creative industries in the previous few centuries, I'm sure they'll do ok without DRM in the next few. It may be a bit easier to copy with digital media, but we had digital media sans DRM for a while, too, and life on the planet was fine. And analog loss never stopped people from copying one iota. The ONLY thing that's different now is distribution over the net changes the scale. But it also increases awareness of good music. Any loss of sales will be due, in my opinion, to stupid record companies selling worse versions of music than that freely available illegally. Why would you pay for a crippled version when there are free ones out there without restriction? To do the right thing? Please. I'd rather never obtain any new music than pay for crippled music. And I'd rather download music illegally than never listen to new music. I think most people's calculus is about the same, even if they don't explicitly realise it.

It's quite possible the exact opposite of your thesis is true: that DRM will destroy a media company. I will NEVER buy a track from Apple after hearing all of my friends deal with problems arising from switching computers or upgrading their OS. Hell, I've downloaded their free tracks and got so sick of the DRM issues with my iPod that I just erased all of them. I don't trust DRM. Apple loses their key servers (I hope they have backups outside of earthquake country) and every sucker who bought $1000 of music loses it all. Probably won't happen, but there are other ways to lose the keys. I like the fact that when I buy a CD, I can encode the songs and have them forever, give them to my grandchildren if I like when I die. DRM is partly a way to keep the music from pirates, and partly a way to limit its lifespan. Have you read the license closely? Is your music transferrable?

Re:DRM?

[MikeFM]

The big media companies have a strangle hold on their industries that keeps serious competition from forming. These companies don't really compete with each other so much as unite together to squish any upstart competition and to work to pass laws to protect their market. Yes, I think competition should be formed and will be formed but it probably won't be commercial due to the methods of these cartels to stamp out their enemies. More likely open content concepts will eventually worm into the minds of people who can produce such things and we'll begin to see commercial quality open/free media become more popular outside of software. Then these companies will begin to fight a war that makes their worry over copying and P2P seem laughable. That is no reason not to expect them to respect fair use rights though.

DRM robs future generations of their cultural heritage because there is no reason to think they'll have access to any of this media in the future as the machines to access them become phased out. Unlike sculpture, books, records, cds, etc it is not just going to be possible to find the needed information to access this media and even if you could build a player it still wouldn't work because it'd require a key. Combined with laws that make it illegal to reverse engineer DRM that is a kiss of death for future use of this media. That alone should disqualify DRM-protected media from deserving a copyright. Laws making defeating DRM should also be removed.

I guess you're example is perfect. Pro-choice, as always, is an excuse for lazy selfish people to destroy the life of others. :p

It's mere ranting to compare owning physical items with owning IP. If someone can figure out how to take a copy of my TV, clothing, etc without taking my copy then I have absolutely no problem with it. I wouldn't say I'm hoarding such things either as I find them little better than trash. Owned things can be useful and fun but they are not something to base your life around if you want to enjoy your life. If someone came and took my TV or other items I wouldn't throw a huge fit and start suing every which person I could come up with some complaint against.

Re:DRM?

[Dominatus]

When I go from AAC to CD I do not gain or lose quality. It remains the same. However, when I RE-RIP the CD, which Im going to do because I want my music on my PC, if I compress it, which I also must do unless I want huge WAV files, I will lose quality.

stimtv...

[Anonymous Coward]

hmmm some other people are working on the whole internet tv stuff...http://www.stimtv.com/

Re:stimtv...

[overpayd]

don't forget about these guys: http://veoh.com/team.php

Re:stimtv...

[dynamo]

try http://stimtvmusic.com/ instead.

TiVo Competition

[mysqlrocks]

personal video recorders, video-on-demand

Sounds like TiVo is going to have some more competition.

Re:TiVo Competition

[thuh Freak]

look at the end of the blurb.

Google recently announced their interest in the text messaging market by releasing GoogleTalk; this came to no surprise to many that were already hearing rumors month's before GoogleTalk was released. Google is also working on providing free WiFi service to some regions of the San Francisco bay area. Google is without a doubt expanding their operations beyond the search engine market which makes the possibility of GoogleTV realistic.

paraphrased: google's been doing some non-search stuff. so, uhm, maybe they'll do somethign with tv. you heard it hear first, folks!

Re:TiVo Competition

[kfg]

This is what happens when you "make it big," in a niche market you are the acknowledged experts in and go public. You have bags of other people's money which you are required to invest, so. . .

you exapand into markets you know little to nothing about already well populated by experienced competitors. . .

and blow your original company on it.

KFG

They should just buy...

[bc90021]

...this company.

Disclaimer: I don't work there, but I did interview there.

Re:They should just buy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, just get 'em to call Leo Laporte and the TWiT gang. Those guys seem to be chomping at the bit to get into something like this.

First TV, then movies, books, radio, etc.

[Jubalicious]

I for one welcome our new Google overlords...

Re:First TV, then movies, books, radio, etc.

[mfender9]

GoogleVision - the TV that watches you back...

Re:First TV, then movies, books, radio, etc.

[MrRogers2]

GoogleVision.ru?

Re:First TV, then movies, books, radio, etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

does anyone else here think google's sudden, horrific and flame or glory time is near? going ipo was never a good idea as far as i can tell. what did they need that extra money for? now they no longer has sole control of their beast. with stockholders that bought a stock that tripled in a very short time they are going to expect continued profit. what happens if that never shows? what if google does not pay dividens, what happens if there is a scandal? the most hurtful is a scandal, this will most likely be blown completely out of proportion due to googles do no evil policy people will drop the stock like a rock and the price will fall as well. if people feel that the stock is loosing momentum then the day traders will sell, price will soon fall further and soon mom and pop who put life saving into the company now have nothing left. this will be the most likely of the scandals added to that no one will deal with them after a massive stock fallout sealing their coffin. if google wanted to do well they should have stopped at advertising. you can search well and provide sites with some advertising revenue that is good. no need to go public, staying a privately held company would let the company satisfy themself not stock holders. google could have saved itself but soon as it went public it doomed itself to a slow painful death that will help no one.

Re:First TV, then movies, books, radio, etc.

[RabidJackal]

Why stop there? Picture the Innovation of Google Fridge! Browse the contents of your fridge from the comfort of your PC! Finds the most relevant food based on your query.
Google Desk Fan! Blow the information towards you at great speeds!
Then somewhere along the line Google Toaster, Google VCR, Google Microwave and maybe even Google Earth!
Hey... wait a minute...

Re:First TV, then movies, books, radio, etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

Best. Soviet. Russia. Joke. Ever!

Re:First TV, then movies, books, radio, etc.

[dratox]

In other news, Google is rumored to soon launch GoogleU.S., their new governmental system to compete with the U.S. Constitution.

The crawling chaos, Nyarletgoogle?

[Cyclometh]

Crazy. And people compare Microsoft to the Borg. What's next, GoogleLaundromat? GoogleBeer? (beer Googles?)

The mind, it boggles.

Re:The crawling chaos, Nyarletgoogle?

[deathcloset]

I'm thinking that next comes GoogleGoogle, which lets you search google like never before!

Re:The crawling chaos, Nyarletgoogle?

[screevo]

or Boogles.

Re:The crawling chaos, Nyarletgoogle?

[hungrygrue]

No, next is google beta beta - It will be a search engine to find all of the various google beta services like google mail, google news, google maps, google local, google scholar, google wireless, google tv, google mobile, etc. etc.

Re:The crawling chaos, Nyarletgoogle?

[hungrygrue]

Oh hea, I forgot: google secure access, google desktop search, google print, google personalized homepage, google personalized search, google web accelerator, google ride finder, google suggest, froogle, google compute, and (wtf?) google sets...

Re:The crawling chaos, Nyarletgoogle?

[jacksonj04]

Google sets is actually kinda cool. It lets you put in a list of items, and Google will work out what it's a list of and find some more of them.

So, for example, "USA", "UK" and "Russia" will return a list including "Canada", "Australia", "France", "Iraq" etc.

Re:The crawling chaos, Nyarletgoogle?

[richdun]

So when you put in "Slashdot articles" does it just get stuck in a loop finding all the dupes?

Re:The crawling chaos, Nyarletgoogle?

[Tackhead]

> Crazy. And people compare Microsoft to the Borg. What's next, GoogleLaundromat? GoogleBeer? (beer Googles?)

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Goothulhu Menlo Park wgah'nagl fhtagn!

Re:The crawling chaos, Nyarletgoogle?

[suitepotato]

Crazy. And people compare Microsoft to the Borg. What's next, GoogleLaundromat? GoogleBeer? (beer Googles?)

The mind, it boggles
No, it Googles .

I'm thinking GooglePr0n... No, their free image search function with the filter off already does that.

Re:The crawling chaos, Nyarletgoogle?

[xobeulb]

i think you meant to say, "the mind, it boogles"

Re:The crawling chaos, Nyarletgoogle?

[netkid91]

Well at least Google isn't charging anything, or a small amount for all of their services, unlike Micro$oft and MSN. Personally I am waiting for google to become a ISP, a web host, and while we are at it a cell phone provider. I really like Google and they do so many cool things, mainly if you pay attention their goal is to help people find information on the web, with so much content on it these days, it is hard to find. I like the idea of a GoogleTV service, even if it costs 3.95 a month, and especially if doesn't need a cable/sattilite service subscription.

Re:The crawling chaos, Nyarletgoogle?

[anakin357]

In Soviet Russia, Google googles Google!

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=inurl%3Agoogl e.com

Re:The crawling chaos, Nyarletgoogle?

[radiotalent]

The difference is that so far Google has earned our trust. Much in the same way I'll open a package from my brother, I might be a little more cautious about one from Ted Kazenski or be a bit concerned about Union Carbide building a pesticide plant in my town. So far Google has shown that is (by and large) doing no evil. And until they breach that trust, I'll take them at their word.

Re:The crawling chaos, Nyarletgoogle?

[anethema]

In soviet russia, google searches YOU
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=anakin357&btnG =Google+Search&meta=

Re:The crawling chaos, Nyarletgoogle?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google kebabs, google creole, google gumbo, pan fried, deep fried, stir fried. There's pineapple google and lemon google, coconut google, pepper google, google soup, google stew, google salad, google and potatoes, google burger, google sandwich... That's, that's about it.

Re:The crawling chaos, Nyarletgoogle?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yahoo's image search is MUCH better for one-handed browsing. Or so I've heard...

Re:The crawling chaos, Nyarletgoogle?

[ljaguar]

i'm sorry that nobody got the last joke.

for everyone else
it refers the fundamental question (ambiguity?) in the set theory.

it's known as russel's paradox after bertrand russel, a seminal logician. for an easy intro, read barber paradox

Re:The crawling chaos, Nyarletgoogle?

[anakin357]

Actually your link goes to Google in Canada. Nyuck nyuck!

Splitting hairs, I know

[Xarius]

Google recently announced their interest in the text messaging market by releasing GoogleTalk;

But that should really read "Instant Messaging" since Text Messaging, at least in the UK, is synonymous with SMS on mobile telephones,

unless GoogleTalk does this?

Re:Splitting hairs, I know

[screevo]

Ever try sending a text message to GOOGL and asking it for information? It works. Google DOES do SMS messaging searches.

Re:Splitting hairs, I know

[plf5403]

Yes, it should read IM, but Google Talk is also a VoIP app as well. And a very good one at that. It also lets you know when you get a new email in your Gmail account. All hail Google...

online or over-the-air

[NetMagi]

I wonder if this station would be over-the-air or over-the-net?

Given their popularity and success of almost everything else they're launched, if they were to launch an on-line tv station with quality content I think they'd have a real shot to be in line with other major networks in a short while.

Re:online or over-the-air

[Anonymous Coward]

The Google idolatry is really astonishing. What does Google know about Television? Nothing. What do they know about content? Even less, they aggregate data, they don't create it. Google is cool, but they are not going to compete with a traditional TV network. At the very best they could hope to innovate around them.

Anyway, my guess is this post is for managing operations relating to video search.

Re:online or over-the-air

[gregoryb]

I've wondered recently why there isn't more network television programming streamed over the internet. PVR boxes already exist, TV recording equipment already exists, network television is "free" over the airwaves, why couldn't they stream shows online and let me choose what I want to watch, when I want to watch it?

Makes sense to me. Maybe Google is doing something like this?

Re:online or over-the-air

[Anonymous Coward]

How about BOTH? If they're rolling out free wi-fi nationwide, it's not that difficult to imgaine them offering a free (but ad-supported) custom on-demand video service over it. If you're not interested in internet access, maybe you could buy a Google set top box, kick your cable provider to the curb and enjoy your free access to CNN and the like.

Re:online or over-the-air

[AdamBlom]

Why not? It all comes down to money. The local television station in your city pays a lot of money to syndicate the programs that you enjoy watching. Thy recover those costs by charging people to air advertisements during those programs. If you could go to an online source to watch the same programs, then the local telivision station would lose their monopoly over your viewing and hence their advertising opportunities could be reduced.

Re:online or over-the-air

[poopdeville]

The Google idolatry is really astonishing. What does Google know about Television? Nothing. What do they know about content? Even less, they aggregate data, they don't create it.

Which of course is why their plan to hire someone with experience in launching PVRs to create a PVR with a google back end is doomed to fail. Right?

Re:online or over-the-air

[gregoryb]

You're right, I suppose it would cause a reduction of advertising revenue for network TV. But TV stations (or whoever brings about internet television) could still embed commercials in the shows. They could even make advertising revenue off the websites used to host the content. Maybe the loss would outweigh any gains. I'm not familiar enough with the economic side to be able to guess.

Honestly...

[kurt_ram]

Honestly, I dont think this is a good idea. There is a saying... "Jack of all trades is master of none".

More background: research from 2003

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw this mentioned over on GMSV earlier today. The author of the post mentioned a 2003 Google research paper that makes for pretty interesting reading. Here's an excerpt:

Many daily activities present information using a written or spoken stream of words: television, radio, telephone calls, meetings, face-to-face conversations with others. Often people can benefit from additional information about the topics that are being discussed. Supplementing television broadcasts is particularly attractive because of the passive nature of TV watching. Interaction is severely constrained, usually limited to just changing the channel; there is no way to more finely direct what kind of information will be presented.

Indeed, several companies have explored suggesting web pages to viewers as they watch TV. For example, the Intercast system, developed by Intel, allows entire HTML pages to be broadcast in unused portions of the TV signal. A user watching TV on a computer with a compatible TV tuner card can then view these pages, even without an Internet connection. NBC transmitted pages via Intercast during their coverage of the 1996 Summer Olympics. The Interactive TV Links system, developed by VITAC (a closed captioning company) and WebTV (now a division of Microsoft), broadcasts URLs in an alternative data channel interleaved with closed caption data [17,2]. When a WebTV box detects one of these URLs, it displays an icon on the screen; if the user chooses to view the page, the WebTV box fetches it over the Internet.

For both of these systems the producer of a program (or commercial) chooses relevant documents by hand. In fact, the producer often creates new documents specifically to be accessed by TV viewers. To our knowledge, there has been no previous work on automatically selecting web pages that a user might want to see while watching a TV program.

In this paper we study the problem of finding news articles on the web relevant to the ongoing stream of TV broadcast news. We restrict our attention to broadcast news since it is very popular and information-oriented (as supposed to entertainment-oriented).

Re:More background: research from 2003

[Anonymous Coward]

We restrict our attention to broadcast news since it is very popular and information-oriented (as supposed to entertainment-oriented).

Remind me that next time that story about how SOMETHING IN MY CLOTHES COULD KILL ME!!!11Two Sounds like Google should've done more research...

Re:More background: research from 2003

[poot_rootbeer]

For example, the Intercast system, developed by Intel, allows entire HTML pages to be broadcast in unused portions of the TV signal.

Gee, this sounds virtually identical to the Teletext systems used in Europe for the past 30 years, only with IMG tags...

Re:More background: research from 2003

[fupeg]

You should've quoted the next line too:

Our approach is to extract queries from the ongoing stream of closed captions, issue the queries in real time to a news search engine on the web, and postprocess the top results to determine the news articles that we show to the user.

This sounds like exactly what a search on Google News does. If you're not convinced then keep reading:

As is common in the IR literature [18] the inverse document frequency idf of a term is a function of the frequency f of the term in the collection and the number N of documents in the collection. Specifically, we use the function log(N/(f+1)). Since we do not have a large amount of closed caption data available, we used Google's web collection to compute the idf of the terms. This means N was over 2 billion, and f was the frequency of a term in this collection. Unfortunately, there is a difference in word use in written web pages and spoken TV broadcasts. As a result we built a small set of words that are common in captions but rare in the web data. Examples of such words are reporter and analyst. All of the algorithms below ignore the terms on this stopword list.

So they found TV-specific stop words to use in combination to searching Google's web index.

All this research still begs the question of why would they need their TV station(s). This research seemed was focussed on complimenting existing TV content. It does not provide content on its own, it only supplements it. Also, it finds web pages. TVs do not display web pages and various attempts to marry these technologies have not fared well. Of course I'm also assuming that they would really want to show web pages, not just some targeted ad.

Logical step

[Red Flayer]

This was speculated by many when Google Radio was being discussed on Slashdot. (Search seems to be broken or I would have posted a link to the article & comments).

I'm just waiting for telepathy.google.com. Or tstv.google.com -- although I heard you can get there from Google image search.

Re:Logical step

[Anonymous Coward]

Fits with Google's stated goal to organize the world's knowledge. And their past success at indexing and presenting domains others thought unapproachable.

Well why not?

[mangus_angus]

They are trying to put as many eggs in as many different baskets as they can, can't say that I blame them. If they just stuck with search engine profits they might have a similar .com era fall out.

Re:G...

[Red Flayer]

"I bow to your superior intallect" (emphasis mine)

Apparently, truer words have never been spoken. :)

Re:Google idiocracy?

[m50d]

This is googledot, go elsewhere if you want something other than stupid google stories.

Though is it me or was K5 mysteriously down earlier?

Re:Google idiocracy?

[freshman_a]

I'm annoyed by people who bitch about Google articles... Don't like 'em? Don't read 'em.

perfect timing.

[admactanium]

oddly enough, i just theorized this plan yesterday over lunch with a friend of mine. being in advertising, i can see the potential here. in much the same way google delivers "unobtrusive" ads in their search engine, they can delivery custom long-form video content with banners or logo bugs in them. the major cost of television is the broadcast and the infrastructure needed. that's why you see television being run by very few large corporations. once you minimize the difficulty of distribution, the production costs of MOST tv content is quite low. the cost of a 30-second tv commercial can run into the millions. if you can use that money all in production for long-form content and only a fraction of it for distribution, then you have great potential in the world of marketing.

in the end, i also think it will IMPROVE a lot of content. since nobody really wants to download an infomercial, the content will have to be interesting/informative to make it worthwhile. for those of us in media, we should buckle up, because the whole paradigm is about to change.

Re:perfect timing.

[JustNiz]

>> the major cost of television is the broadcast and the infrastructure needed ... and you think the cost of the infrastructure equipment to boost the whole internet bandwidth for full-on concurrent video to billions of homes will be less?

>>> it will IMPROVE a lot of content. since nobody really wants to download an infomercial,

Somehow I doubt that commercials will be sepeartely downloadable (or skippable in any other way either). Just like TV today, You'll be forced to watch commercials in order to get the good content. Heck maybe they will implement some sort of counter, so that you HAVE to watch so many before you can view-on-demand a particular program.

Re:perfect timing.

[garcia]

Perhaps you haven't seen Current TV yet... Not only do they allow viewer content submissions, allow "pod" viewing on their website, and have a radically different approach to showing their content, they are also apparently heavily backed by Google.

Now, none of that is really that important. What *is* important, IMHO, is how Current TV does advertising. They don't seem to be having a lot of commercials in your standard sense (they do have some -- but I guess because they are mostly submissions they don't need as much revenue to pay $1m/episode salaries) they do have integrated commercial content (i.e. a "pod" about Pioneer's latest in-dash navigation system which uses XM traffic data to reroute you).

I am sometime mesmerized by Current TV and sit there watching repeated content because it's *that* interesting. I don't particularly care for the blatant advertising "pods" but they are sometimes interesting the first time through.

If you haven't seen Current TV, check it out.

Re:perfect timing.

[hwestiii]

hmmm, at least there are two people watching it...

Re:perfect timing.

[lauridsd]

Yep...I was flipping through my digital channels the other day and noticed "Google Current" and was like, "WTF?" Pretty cool stuff. Interesting submissions. It's definitely a young target audience because not a soul I see there is older than 30, but it is still pretty good content from what I saw.

Re:perfect timing.

[admactanium]

Somehow I doubt that commercials will be sepeartely downloadable (or skippable in any other way either). Just like TV today, You'll be forced to watch commercials in order to get the good content. Heck maybe they will implement some sort of counter, so that you HAVE to watch so many before you can view-on-demand a particular program.

i think it'll be something more along the lines of a sponsorship banner on the bottom. or should be. something that will be included in the content since self-contained clips will always be ignored or skipped somehow.

Re:perfect timing.

[admactanium]

Perhaps you haven't seen Current TV yet... Not only do they allow viewer content submissions, allow "pod" viewing on their website, and have a radically different approach to showing their content, they are also apparently heavily backed by Google.

cool. i'll check that out. what google would bring to the table is, of course, legitimacy and likely great design and code. similar to the way that apple seems to wait for markets to develop and then do one better by boiling down the needs of the market to its essence and designing an elegant solution to solve that problem, i think google has been/will do the same thing in this next medium. wasn't there just a story a couple weeks back on here about how google was buying a lot of dark fiber? might be related.

Re:perfect timing.

[kesuki]

I was going to mention that Goggle is already in the business of producing TV but you had beat me to it ;)

Google Current TV is pretty interesting, they pay people up to $1000 a showing (I think) for a 7 minute clip (in a 'prime time' slot) users not only submit clips, they also Vote on which clips to air on the network. Not bad, you produce an interesting clip, submit it through the currenttv site, and it's actually better than the other stuff other people are putting on there and you can get it voted on air sveral times and make some pretty good money.

My biggest issue with current tv is that because of the 7 minute pod format, and because many of them are produced in house several of them wind up being 7 minute in house commercials. but it's still pretty neat, even if they slip in a few 'advertisement' pods.

Re:perfect timing.

[evlgt85]

I have DirecTV and noticed "Google Current...Current Parent...Currency...Current Interview" while flipping through the guide a little while ago. I have only watched it briefly, but I just assumed it was, essentially, GoogleTV of some sort. It did seem pretty interesting, but I can go weeks without turning on the TV, so I didn't spend much time on it. Definitely a unique format for television.

It is listed as channel 366 on DTV, I believe it replaced NewsWorld International.

Re:perfect timing.

[Anonymous Coward]

i just theorized this plan yesterday over lunch with a friend of mine. being in advertising, i can see the potential here.

In the words of Bill Hicks, "Anyone here in advertising: kill yourself. I can hear it now, 'Hey, the anti-marketing market, that's a huge market' ..."

Re:perfect timing.

[Xugumad]

If they're sensible, I think there's serious scope for them cutting down the numbers of adverts, while massively improving their effectiveness. I don't know about you, but I see a hell of a lot of adverts for car purchase credit. If I could tell Google that I don't drive, can't drive, and don't want to drive, maybe it could skip all those adverts, which were just wasted time anyway. Same for kids: don't have any, don't want any, and any turning up would be through divine intervention at this point, so there's no point trying to sell me baby products. However, I am interested in new games/hardware, so maybe it could show me more adverts for those.

Suddenly, I'm being shown adverts which are likely to interest me. They could cut adverts in half, while still providing a massively improved response rate for the outlay, and make their customers happy at the same time.

Another point - I've seen "Press this button for more information" stuff before. It's of no use to me, I'm not going to break in the middle of watching something to get more information. If instead, I could flag an advert, and come back to it later, that would be much more useful to me...

Hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

What if Google doesn't really know what they want to do, but are just fishing for ideas. They've got a lot of money, and a lot of press saying they're going to be bigger than Microsoft.

Do they have a business plan, or are they just feeding off the hype?

Re:Hmm...

[aztec rain god]

I'd say almost a billion dollars in net income after their first year public suggests a little more than hype. As for a business plan, one could say they're an advertising agency with a nice search engine and a bunch of nice apps.

Windows only???

[Anonymous Coward]

Will this be Linux unfriendly as well? Like:

Picasa
Desktop
Earth
Talk
Secure Access

???????????

Re:Windows only???

[Dan Farina]

I would not call Talk unfriendly at all since it uses XMPP and works fine with gaim.

I don't hold it against Google that they didn't write Yet Another Jabber Client for GNU/Linux. They've also been fairly consistent about exposing their services in a SOAP-y way, so you could implement the gmail notification/tie-ins fairly easily, if you felt like it.

Re:Windows only???

[Pichu0102]

You forgot Gmail Notifier and Google Web Accelerator.

Re:Windows only???

[Anonymous Coward]

Google-Picasa and -Earth run flawlessly under WINE.

Re:Windows only???

[ciroknight]

Let's look at your points critically, shall we?

Picasa: Purchased from a seperate company, porting will take time.
Desktop: Nobody on Linux wants this; significant community rejection.
Earth: Purchased from a seperate company, porting will take time.
Talk: GAIM and other IM clients are being recommended instead; GTalk is not even a really great Windows front end for Jabber.
Secure Access: never heard of google secure access.

Coming soon? Try "already"

[ivan256]

Google appears to have added their name to a frequent (seems coutinuous to me) segment on Al Gore's new "Current" network. It's been running for at least a week now.

Re:Coming soon? Try "already"

[NoInfo]

I think it's been a few weeks now on my DirecTV.

Re:Coming soon? Try "already"

[rosie_bhjp]

Here in my neck of the woods Current TV is listed 24/7 in the digital guide as "Google Current"

Re:Coming soon? Try "already"

[Pneuma ROCKS]

Google appears to have added their name to a frequent (seems coutinuous to me) segment on Al Gore's new "Current" network. It's been running for at least a week now.

Are you implying Al Gore invented Google?

Re:Coming soon? Try "already"

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they mean the verb "google", ie, do a google search for current.

Re:Coming soon? Try "already"

[AussieVamp2]

Well, if Google invented Al Gore, instead, I hope they fired those guys already!

I wonder...

[Snaller]

...if they are going to release a free browser as well ;)

Realistic?

[mroch]

Google is without a doubt expanding their operations beyond the search engine market which makes the possibility of GoogleTV realistic.

I guess Google Space Vacations are realistic too, seeing as how they're hiring for their moon base.

GoogleNET

[Daveznet]

A very interesting piece of news, especially with google placing down all the optic fibre, it makes you wonder how far google is willing to go to index information. First searches ,emails, books, text messages and now what you watch. Looks like Google is trying redifine the internet and how information is stored/searched.

Gore TV

[Kurrurrin]

Maybe it is related to Gore TV? You know, the cable station that has a lot of Google branding?

It will be interesting to see how they combine the two mediums, no matter what the results are.

Re:Gore TV

[Alf Gored]

Al talks about Current TV on his blog... The Official President Al Gore Blog has something to say about that...

http://www.newsoftheday.com/algore

Re:G...

[Anonymous Coward]

He's waiting for his dixionry...

Text ads ?

[karvind]

But will GoogleTV have text ads at the bottom (especially during Jerry Springer shows) ? :P

A great idea

[arethuza]

I suspect this explains what they wanted with that pile of cash for and what will be pumped over that dark fibre they have allegedly been buying up.

I'm no Google fanboy, but this makes a lot of sense. Their whole business model is based on directed advertising - imagine TV adds that are targetted to you personally based on your viewing habits.

Re:A great idea

[Donny Smith]

> imagine TV adds that are targetted to you personally based on your viewing habits.

I just did and I don't like the idea. I prefer to have my TV set show stupid ads (I know they have no clue about me) than personalized ads.

Re:A great idea

[arethuza]

Can't say I'd be too keen on it myself, but having worked on deployed IPTV systems (although nothing on this scale, obviously) I can see that this idea has a lot going for it.

All your information services are going to come into your home over IP and Google want to base their business on layering advertising on top of all of that content.

Re:A great idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm.. It already shows up on my DirecTV system. Ch 366, CRNT, GoogleCurrent.

Re:G...

[wcrowe]

I bow to your superior intallect.

That shouldn't be too hard for you.

Found it

[ke4roh]

http://video.google.com/

google for your google

[m0rphin3]

In the words of the immortal comment (seems like the first occurrence): "In a few years you'll be driving your google to the google to buy some google for your google."

Re:google for your google

[TheRaven64]

Pah! I fully intend to google my google to the google to google some google for my google.

Re:google for your google

[bennomatic]

That would be just smurfy.

Re:google for your google

[jdgeorge]

Pah! I fully intend to google my google to the google to google some google for my google.

Hmmm.... Replace "google" with "smurf", and I think you might have something there.

Re:google for your google

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's more like: I fully intend to google my google (beta) to the google (beta) to google some google for my google (beta).

Re:google for your google

[ChiChiCuervo]

hmm..........

well isn't that just Smurfy!

Re:google for your google

[Anonymous Coward]

Google this, you googling googler!

Re:google for your google

[Serengeti]

Stop swearing so much.

Re:google for your google

[bythescruff]

"You see, here on Google, all people, places, and things are referred to as 'Google'"

"Doesn't that get confusing?"

"No. Here, let me show you. Google?"

"Yes?"

TY, Captain Obvious

[Red Flayer]

"Google is without a doubt expanding their operations beyond the search engine market which makes the possibility of GoogleTV realistic."

Other than the fact that absolutley no one should be surprised by this...

Search engines are not Google's market. Search engines are Google's clients' market. Google sells advertising, and search engines are one of their delivery mechanisms. Previously on Slashdot, Google print ads have been discussed.

It's really just horizontal expansion. Online advertising, print advertising, and now television (and you can bet they'll be delivering ads) -- what about radio?

Re:G...

[TheOtherAgentM]

I believe gUnderwear is called the gString.

Not Likely

[qortra]

Most of Google's products are developed in house (even if they are based on open standards). Most of their big projects were not swallowed and absorbed from existing companies (ala Microsoft and Hotmail).

And really, I like it that way. Is there a better method for insuring that the project "does no evil"?

Re:Not Likely

[WilliamSChips]

Google's bought quite a bit. Read: Keyhole, Blogger.

Re:Not Likely

[qortra]

True enough; That's why I used the word "most". Now, I would imagine that google owns a ton of companies, but I believe that you've identified the only two services or tools that use technology absorbed from a corporate purchase. http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/ If anybody can identify such services besides Earth and Blogger, I would love to know.

Re:Not Likely

[Anonymous Coward]

Picasa.

Re:Not Likely

[galdor]

picasa,dodgeball,Meetroduction

Re:Not Likely

[gregduffy]

That's true, when I interviewed there that was one of the first things people mentioned about the general environment. Smart people are very prone to the whole "NIH" thing, and there are many of them at Google.

Re:Not Likely

[Anonymous Coward]

Dejanews

Re:Not Likely

[Baricom]

DejaNews.

Re:Not Likely

[Anonymous Coward]

Maps.

Created by a company based in Sydney, Australia.

Re:Google idiocracy?

[Mr. Underbridge]

Hey, when did this stop being Appledot?

Google VOIP?

[Luyseyal]

Hell, I'd be happy with Google VOIP.
-l

Re:Google VOIP?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called Google Talk and exists already.

Current TV

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't Google already have a tie-in with Current TV?

I suppose since Al Gore scratched the internet's back, Google must scratch his...

Dark Angel over Dark Fiber...

[KrackHouse]

All that soon-to-be-less-dark-fiber is going to come in handy when they're streaming HD video over the net. As a writer, I imagine it's an absolute nightmare creating a show, getting it on some cable channel and still making money. Maybe all these tech-centric angel investors will start spending money on independent video production (the longtail of Bruckheimers) which would solve the production quality problem with most amateur content.

ICrave(g)TV?

[Bob Loblaw]

They should hire the ICraveTV guy who got clobbered by the entertainment industry lawyers years ago. He was ahead of the times and had a very functional IPTV system going. Maybe Google has the money to protect the concept this time.

Re:ICrave(g)TV?

[Achromatic1978]

Money helps, but isn't the cornerstone of protecting the concept. Remember The Insider ? Where the lawyer is explaining to the CBS execs some legal concept, and one of them asks how much damages they could be up for... her response, "At the end of the day [tobacco company] could come out /owning/ CBS".

Actually it's not a great example, but more a point that there's more to it than this.

Re:ICrave(g)TV?

[Achromatic1978]

Money helps, but isn't the cornerstone of protecting the concept. Remember The Insider ? Where the lawyer is explaining to the CBS execs some legal concept, and one of them asks how much damages they could be up for... her response, "At the end of the day [tobacco company] could come out /owning/ CBS".

Actually it's not a great example, but more a point that there's more to it than this.

Re:ICrave(g)TV?

[Bob Loblaw]

How quickly perception changes. What ICraveTV was doing was/is legal in Canada and is the basis for the Canadian cable TV industry (rebroadcast now, pay copyright holders later).
Searching back in the Slashdot archives is illuminating as to how quickly and agressively the video entertainment industry moved to squash this. If the audio entertainment industry had the same response against Napster, I doubt there would be such a thing as an mp3 player.
Innovation is only acceptable/allowed if the current stakeholders are making money off it.
Otherwise it is piracy and unholy.

MOD THIS WAY UP!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

He's right.

I didn't know that Al Gore was tied to Current. Doh!!!

evil lurks here

[Blackneto]

Kind of an embrace and extend thing?

but I won't worry till google conception is announced.

Let me know...

[lordmoose]

Let me know when Google DNA comes out. That's all I really need.

TV Guide

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I'd say a TV guide style service that also doubles as a scheduling service for PVRs would be right up their alley for starters. Lots of people want to know what time TV shows are playing, and what an episode is about. Making it easy, fast, and searchable would be better than any of the others I've seen lately. I use TitanTV to do scheduling with my PVR right now, but I'd be happy to look at a google alternative. Maybe some of the ads would be targeted at things that actually interest me or are related to the shows I'm looking up. I'd also bet a number of Google employees have MythTV boxes at home they'd love to have a great scheduling service for, ala Tivo, especially if it included suggestions based upon the shows you already watch.

Anyway, that is my prediction. I don't think it is likely Tivo will release a hardware box anytime soon, although it would be great to have another credible competitor in that space. A google branded MythTV box with a simple and easy UI could be a real winner. TV over IP is also a fast moving space with amateur video podcasts and DTV both starting to have content I actually like to watch. Still, my bet is on the first idea, an online TV guide and PVR scheduling service. It seems to fit their MO the best.

Re:TV Guide

[vandoravp]

Or just do away with the whole time-slot idea. Make all of TV on-demand and eliminate the need for PVRs in that sense.

Re:TV Guide

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Make all of TV on-demand and eliminate the need for PVRs in that sense.

That would be great, but monopolies and cartels love bundling. The Cable companies and TV studios are largely owned by the same corporations. The cable companies might be willing to give up their advertising and channels to the content providers, if they were still the delivery mechanism, but I don't see it happening without government intervention. Content providers like to sell entire shows, channels, and even groups of channels as a bundle and the cable companies enjoy the same. They have a much harder time forcing you to pay for dozens of channels and thousands of shows you don't want if they have the mechanism to deliver just the show you want to buy. It also opens them up to competition from independents, and they sure don't like having to compete based upon the quality of their shows.

From a user perspective, I think there will always be channels, but they may be more like book lists. The sci-fi channel will list hundreds of good sci-fi series and you can buy and watch any particular one. I don't see google moving into this anyway. As much as I enjoy watching random videos from DTV (which is a free version of exactly what you describe available over the internet) I don't see that the average person has the bandwidth or the means to get that video easily onto their TV. The market just isn't there unless you can come up with a huge source of content independent of the traditional production channels.

Re:TV Guide

[vandoravp]

The market just isn't there unless you can come up with a huge source of content independent of the traditional production channels.

http://video.google.com/

Not so much good stuff yet but it's getting there.

Re:Google idiocracy?

[Mr. Underbridge]

Google idiocracy?

What is that, government run by idiots?

And anyone who takes the easy, lame joke and returns a Bush administration crack will be shot on grounds of lacking creativity...

Google on Current TV

[hwestiii]

Google already has a semblance of a TV presence now on Current TV (http://current.tv/ Every 30 minutes or so Current runs a short video bit derived from recent popular search items. You also get treated to a faux-Ramones (or is it real? I can't quite tell) version of "What a Wonderful World"

As riveting TV goes, I think Current has a way to go, but its off to a good start. A lot of the stuff is fairly iteresting, although some of the political humor, like "Super News", is dreadfully heavy handed. And as an added bonus, one of its guiding lights is the 43rd President of the United States and Internet-inventor Al Gore.

Re:Google on Current TV

[AltImage]

Actually it's almost the Ramones. It's from Joey Ramone's posthoumous solo album 'Don't Worry About Me'.

Is there a difference?

[qortra]

The distinction might might moot if google ends up putting wireless APs all over the country.

Of course, if the question is, "will google start channel 5 VHF stations", I would say that is unlikely. Firstly, the project manager position that was linked to doesn't seem fitting for such an enterprise, and secondly, it doesn't fit with their past patterns.

It would be more likely that they would actually design a protocol from the ground up to do pure 'net based interactive TV, and then pipe it through all their wireless APs.

Move Over Richard Branson...

[Anonymous Coward]

Introducing: Googlejet.

Our slogan "We'll Find It, We'll Find You, and We'll Get You to It in 0.07 seconds."

Re:Move Over Richard Branson...

[richdun]

GoogleGalactic. We'll explore the strange new worlds and seek out the new life and new civilizations for you, then get the results to you in 0.07 seconds.

Will anybody want to buy...

[fm6]

...a set-top box that's in beta for 5 years?

Seriously though. Except for their original search engine, Google hasn't done that well bringing new products to market. They keep introducing cool features and web applications. But major new products? Nada.

And no, I'm not forgetting Google Earth or Picasa. Both of which they acquired.

Re:Will anybody want to buy...

[CorruptMayor]

Since when has Google sold anything directly to the consumer? In other words, who's to say it won't be a free set-top box?

Re:Will anybody want to buy...

[MrP-(at work)]

http://www.google.com/enterprise/gsa/product_model s.html
http://www.google.com/enterprise/mini/index.html

Re:Will anybody want to buy...

[CorruptMayor]

Oh yeah, I know about those. But those aren't "consumer" products. Gmail, Desktop Search, things like that are "consumer" products.

Re:Will anybody want to buy...

[poot_rootbeer]

They keep introducing cool features and web applications. But major new products? Nada.

What is a "product" but a collection of cool new features and applications that has a frame (and possibly a price tag) attached around it?

Re:Will anybody want to buy...

[fm6]

Have you ever worked for a software vendor? There's a lot more to a product than a collection of features. There's support, planning, marketing, ongoing development... That last thing is especially important if you're considering adopting a product. No matter how good a product is, people will not adopt it if they think it will go away in a year or two. Except, of course, for software dweebs like you and me who get software just because they like using it. But we're not the one who drive software spending.

Which goes double for something like a set-top box. Which has to appeal to dozens of cable companies and millions of cable customers. That means it had better not be just a collection of features! What features it has had all better contribute to the box's usefulness, and not conflict with each other, and be easy to use.

Google shows no sign of being able to do that. They just push out features and apps that appear to be whatever their people feel like working on. Consider Google Map: it's a great piece of software, still one of the best AJAX applications around. But nobody seems to be working on getting rid of the rough edges. When new versions appear, they do fancy things like display street-satellite overlays. Which is terribly cool, but doesn't excuse the fact that they haven't done the basic boring work the Mapquest did in their very first release.

What Google seems to do is hire lots of brilliant people and mostly let them do what they want. So everybody works on the cool stuff, and the boring basics that make for real products get neglected. At any other company that would be a recipe for disaster. (I've worked at places where it was.) Google gets away with it because their AdWord revenue guarantees enough income to keep the lights on, and their weird stock structure guarantees that they can spend money without a lot of investor meddling.

Right now, somebody's saying,"Hey, they're making a lot of money, what's wrong with that?" Not a thing. As long as you remember that the kind of organization they've chosen to be has its limitations. And I think that doing a basic consumer product, like a set-top box, is well beyond those limitations.

Re:Will anybody want to buy...

[Anti_Climax]

The service may be in beta for 5 years, but the set top box doesn't need to be.

They could probably snatch up as many of these as they need...

Dang...

[Capt James McCarthy]

The one thing I hoping was a requirement, wasn't. _Watching_ TV.

google media

[kurtis25]

Google wants to organize the world's data in order to advertise to you threw the world's data. Their new blog search indexes all of the blogs on Google servers, eventually when I have my google home page and click on a link it won't bring me to /. It will bring me to google RSS feed of /. So google can get the add money. Their video indexes videos, so I won't go to NBC.com and see their ads I'll stay at google and see theirs. They've stored books so I'll read a book and see their ads. They will pull as much 'public domain' stuff as they can so they can show their ads. It's brilliant if you think about it.

Re:google media

[CorruptMayor]

Small problem with their "brilliant" plan: NBC videos are not public domain; Slashdot isn't (I think); Books are not public domain; The web isn't public domain, for crying out loud.

A matter of time before Google cuts into the profits of their content producers. Then we gotta call in the lawyers.

Hmmm

[Reality Master 101]

Makes we wonder... yep.

$ whois googlemusic.com
Registrant:
                Google Inc. (DOM-1314687)
                1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View CA 94043 US

        Domain Name: googlemusic.com

                Registrar Name: Markmonitor.com
                Registrar Whois: whois.markmonitor.com
                Registrar Homepage: http://www.markmonitor.com/

        Administrative Contact:
                DNS Admin (NIC-1467103) Google Inc.
                1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View CA 94043 US
                dns-admin@google.com +1.6502530000 Fax- +1.6506188571
        Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
                DNS Admin (NIC-1467103) Google Inc.
                1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View CA 94043 US
                dns-admin@google.com +1.6502530000 Fax- +1.6506188571

        Created on..............: 2003-Feb-13.
        Expires on..............: 2008-Feb-13.
        Record last updated on..: 2004-Nov-01 09:49:36.

Makes me wonder if eventually Google might do their own music distribution service. Not sure how it could succeed much better than the other music services, but you never know. Of course, this was registered way back in 11/2001, so they may have been grabbing domains as they thought of anything.

Re:Hmmm

[sanx]

Makes you wonder even more...

Registrant:
Google Inc. (DOM-258919)
2400 E. Bayshore Pkwy
Mountain View CA 94043
US

Domain Name: googlesex.com

Registrar Name: Markmonitor.com
Registrar Whois: whois.markmonitor.com
Registrar Homepage: http://www.markmonitor.com/

Administrative Contact:
DNS Admin (NIC-1340142) Google Inc.
2400 E. Bayshore Pkwy
Mountain View CA 94043
US
dns-admin@google.com
+1.6503300100
Fa x- +1.6506181499
Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
DNS Admin (NIC-1340144) Google Inc.
2400 E. Bayshore Pkwy
Mountain View CA 94043
US
dns-admin@google.com
+1.6503300100
Fa x- +1.6506181499

I can just see the searches now: search "18/f/usa bi nympho"

Your search returned 0 results.

Do you mean to search for 45/m/usa chatroom addict

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

MarkMonitor looks like it's just "protecting" the Google(TM) trademark.

It's like Microsoft registering microsoftsucks.com so that nobody else can.

Re:G...

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgot one.

gSpot.

Oh Great! Another....

[mpapet]

segment they *might* get into. Will someone please explain to me what special competency they have in entertainment?

They have a very powerful core technology and do a very good job of selling/delivering ads I've seen.

-maybe the way this plays out is they provide the infrastructure to deliver URL's to a broadcast, but I hardly see an urgent need being filled, much less the Studios buying into the idea. I

-maybe they are trying to do an end-around all of the communication oligopolies, courageous move, but I think there would be a mighty reckoning in Washington DC as their competitors out-legislate the young up-start.

Furthermore all of their beta products don't seem to have a way to make the kind of profits Wall Street demands.

Someone please enlighten me.

Re:The crawling correction, Nyarletgoogle?

[Tackhead]

> Crazy. And people compare Microsoft to the Borg. What's next, GoogleLaundromat? GoogleBeer? (beer Googles?)

(...and here's the version of the post I clicked "submit" on, not the one I clicked "preview" on. Pretty sure it was my finger slip, not a CSS bug. Now to outwait the timer.)

Well, Ballmer did promise to fucking kill Google, did he not?

Careful who you throw that chair at, Monkeyboy. Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Goothulhu Menlo Park wgah'nagl fhtagn!

so

[BlackShirt]

10Mb connection to your home traded for your eyeballs?

Google Current

[mikes.song]

I know that the post is talking about a google pvr, but when I first read the headline, I though they were talking about Current, which is on channel 127 of my dial.

Very cool anyway, though I'm sure I'll get modded off topic.

They show pods. Nothing over 7 mins. And google zeitgeist or google news every 30 mins. It's hip. They are the bigest media company in the US. You think they would have a tv station. And a pvr to boot.

Re:Google Current

[Achromatic1978]

They're the biggest media company in the US?

Are you sure? That they're bigger than CBS? FOX? CNN? ABC?

Absolutely sure?

Re:Google Current

[mikes.song]

Are you sure? That they're bigger than CBS? FOX? CNN? ABC?

As far as $money$ goes, *yes*.

You like the BBC? Internet search phenomenon Google has overtaken a swathe of venerable rivals to become the world's biggest media company by stock market value.

Absolutely sure?

*Yes*

Yes, Google has more *paper* value goes... Google is larger than than any of those you mention. If I had the time to check on it, I'd tell you that they have more, again, paper value than then companies you mentioned, totaled.

GOOG is, by far, the largest media company in the US. More than likely (and I'm only *not* saying it cause I don't want to get modded-dow), the largest media company in the world.

That's when it comes to paper stock value. But it translates in a real way too. Take these three news orgs, CBS, FOX, CNN, and ABC. Compare the number of people who visited their TV channels today compaired to the number of people who visited Google today. Not only is Google more valuable on paper, but Google gets more visitors. The visitors also get more value.

And to boot, they got a tv channel that *doesn't suck*. FOX, CBS, ABC, and maybe even CNN can't make that claim.

Ok, now I *know* I'm going to get modded-down. Truth hurts. So does most TV. Watch 127. It has to be cool, if only because they are on 127.

Google + Tivo

[geemon]

Hmm, what if this role is a precursor to managing a combined GoogleTV entity? Google buys Tivo, uses the Tivo product strengths, established user base, and DVR acceptance that is already in the market, but expands the Tivo offering to include search and retrieval of programs. Two great brands in the market and if you combine it with the Business 2.0 blurb a month or so back that Google is buying dark fiber for their own high speed network, it could add up to an interesting offering.

Googles real strategy

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to think that googles real intention is total monopoly. However for it to work they have to grow so fast that no one has to time to stop them. By the time a slow moving entity like a government tries to stop them, google is so embedded into the fabric of society that breaking them up would be detrimental to society. Microsoft and the Bells tried it, but failed. Google just may have a chance. One world under Google with Google and Google for all.

GoogleTV already here? http://www.current.tv

[Thrazzle]

There is a new network on DirectTV feeds called 'Current TV'

It uses google search data for news broadcasts and story selection. It also lets users submit content.

Google runs or is somehow related to a new television network. http://www.current.tv/

I've been watching this new network on DirectTV.
Basically they do serveral things well. The network is really addictive to watch.

- All (almost all) shows are 7 minutes long unless they are REALLY interesting.
- Viewers can submit video's and Current.tv airs them.
- They use google search statistics to find new things to air.
- They have a 'Google News' segment every half hour that is a short news broadcast based on Google search statistics.
- You can bet that Advertisers are buying these statistics too.

It is kind of like randomly searching the web without having to use the HUGE amount of energy it takes to push the mouse around. :)

Microsoft TV inevitable

[wardk]

sheesh, now MS is going to have to rule TV too, having that bad case of google envy.

I anticipate the announcment of a totally rock solid vapor TV that will ship with Tinhorn.

FOUND IT HERE TOO! VIAGRA GOOGLE SPAM

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this really a good idea to apply Google's color scheme and branding to external sources without human checking?

Google Settop Box

[ccozan]

I always thought of a google tv box, connected to internet. Google provides a bittorrent tracker for a list of movies. Imagine how the distribution works. Search for a movie, get the link, click it, the torrent starts downloading and it tells you when is ready, then watch it locally. The nicest point would be, if a movie is popular, then you're getting it faster. Now connect this idea with the announced google payment system and the google movie upload section. Ha? got the picture?? :D

my two 2eurocent

Getting hot in here...

[Hosiah]

I sure am glad Google isn't evil, because God are they ever getting *BIG*.

If they turn to the darkside, we're all screwed.

Re:Oh Great! Another....

[Anonymous Coward]

Will someone please explain to me what special competency they have in entertainment?

They have a very powerful core technology and do a very good job of selling/delivering ads I've seen.

You can't connect these two? What if google figured out a way to show you ads on tv that you're actually interested in? And what if they figured out a way to deliver the ads in an unobtrusive (but noticable) way? They can even use the ad revenue to deliver the TV content to you in the first place (over wi-fi), for free, subplanting cable TV delivery companies. I'm not saying this will happen, but if I were Google, that's what I'd do.

Imgaine the scroll on the cable news networks, but on all channels and filled with ads related to what you're watching. Or maybe Google keeps track of what you watch and delivers ads based on that. Or maybe, you'll be able to order up shows on-demand and get Google inserted ads.

controlling the world

[yeruki]

It seems like Google has not just conquered the world, he has conquered the galaxy. What could come next? GoogleMusic where it's like an iPod...who knows!

Re:controlling the world

[yeruki]

Or gooPod

Re:G... what about,,,

[kihjin]

gString

o damn!

An Interesting MSoft/Google Comparison

[chia_monkey]

Here's an interesting thought. Both Microsoft and Google have made loads of money doing their thing. However, each company has decided to go about their lives in completely different ways as they amass their fortures.

Microsoft got loaded after they achieved their market dominance. What did they do with their money? They put some into R&D. They bought some companies out.

Google came along and made their loads of money too. And they too have bought a few companies. But here's where the differences are. Microsoft simply wanted to protect their monopoly. They bought companies they they saw as threats or companies that they thought would help them maintain their monopoly. Google on the other hand seems to have been exploring with their money, putting it into the "cool" technologies that are still just outside the threshold of everyday consumers. It's as if Google is trying to pull it into the mainstream. It's these fringe technologies that Google is going after and preparing to assert their mark.

Thoughts? Comments?

Re:An Interesting MSoft/Google Comparison

[SeattleGameboy]

What a BS!

Hmm... let see some of the "cool" technologies that Google has been investing lately (publicly announced).

GoogleTV - Oh, is that like Microsoft Digital Media division which has been investigating TV on demand for over a decade?

GoogleIM - Oh, is that like Microsoft's Messenger that MS has had for close to a decade now?

GMail - You mean Hotmail competitor?

Yeah, it really looks like Google is blazing its own trails... NOT!!!

Hey, Google may out maneuver Microsoft and execute better, but please stop this BS about how their strategy is different, better, altruistic, and cooler. They are just investing into every area that MS is investing in.

Re:An Interesting MSoft/Google Comparison

[chia_monkey]

You're right in the sense that Google didn't invent all those. But wait, I didn't say they did. I also didn't say Google's strategy was better, altruistic, and cooler. My point was that the strategies of the two companies was different. Microsoft is concerned about protecting their dominance in Windows and Office. Google is not. Microsoft sees threats and they go for the jugular to take out these threats. Some may say that's wrong, others may say that's good business practice. Google didn't invent Gmail but it made webmail a hell of a lot more fun to use. Google is dumping loads of money into (as far as we know) this web TV thing and the WiFi thing. Did they invent either? No. But perhaps having the Google name will bring these to more public prominance. Just like the Apple iPod...put the word "iPod" on something and it sells like hotcakes. Granted, putting "Microsoft" on something and many will cry foul.

The two strategies ARE different. Microsoft's main concern seems to be to protect its market dominance and take a more conservative approach to where it spends its money. Google seems to be more concerned with developing new ways to do things (everything they're doing with AJAX, Google Maps, WiFi, etc) and pushing the envelope a bit and bringing it mainstream. Pushing the envelope doesn't always mean inventing new things...but sometimes can simply involve extending the capabilities of a current idea.

Re:An Interesting MSoft/Google Comparison

[SeattleGameboy]

That's pathetic. You were arguing that Google's strategy was "cooler (your word)" than MS, even though everything Google is doing is just following what MS has been doing for years.

And your argument about MS' only aim is to protect its monopoly is bogus.
MS's TV efforts is perfectly representative of the fallacy of your argument.

Set Top Boxes are NOT threatening MS's Windows business (at least not any near future). You can argue that they were trying to EXPAND their business but not PROTECTING their existing business.

If you want to argue that they were protecting their current business by expansion, then you can say the same thing about what Google is doing right now (expanding their ad-based business to TV).

So, why is it when MS does something is nasty, but when Google does the exact same thing it is "cool"???

Re:An Interesting MSoft/Google Comparison

[chia_monkey]

Let me explain a little bit better. Not to be argumentative...just an explanation of what the thoughts are.

First off, I did not say "Google's strategy was cooler". I said they were "putting it into the 'cool' technologies..." with cool being in quotes. Not because I thought it was cool, but what the mainstream thinks is cool. "Wow, Google is putting money into this 'new' or 'cool' technology". Not my thoughts...just the general public's.

Your points about set top boxes are valid to a sense. It depends who you talk to. Some will say Microsoft is trying to dominate everything in the computing world. Others will say they are innovating. In terms of innovating...where has MS really innovated? Windows? Office? IE? Once MS got a lock on the market, improvements pretty much came to a standstill.

Re:An Interesting MSoft/Google Comparison

[SeattleGameboy]

You are still not making a cogent argument. You say that MS is trying to dominate everything in the computing world by going to set top boxes. Well, you can easily argue that Google has the kind of dominance in Search/Internet as MS does in OS. Which means that you can make the same argument against Google as say that Google is just trying to dominate everything in ad-based world (set-top boxes, in this sense is much closer to Googles main business than MS). So the question still is; why is that when MS does it, it is because they are just trying to protect their turf, but when Google does it, it is because they are "putting it (money) in to the 'cool' technologies". You have responded twice without answering this question (and just nitpicking on the exact quotation). Now can you answer why?

Pick me! Pick me!

[glamslam]

I once put together a MythTV box that I built from scratch!

Google Earth

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm starting to wonder if that is the overall plan at Google. To be everything on earth?

CurrentTV?

[VeganBob]

Isn't CurrentTV already "GoogleTV"? Perhaps the major difference will be that GoogleTV will be broadcast on the internet, whereas CurrentTV isn't, as far as I know.

GoogleTV

[Bent Mind]

I've been watching a TV show on DirectTV that's called Current Google or some such. I figured Google TV already existed. I wish I could remember the exact name of the show and which channel it was on. I'll have to see if I can find it tonight.

GoogleBigBrother

[Duncan3]

In soviet Russia... the government watches everything you do 24/7 and kills you when you write bad stories about them.

Here we have Google for that.

Re:GoogleBigBrother

[shutdown -p now]

Indeed, the wonders of capitalism in action. Why should the government waste citizens' tax dollars on maintaining the Big Brother, when free market takes care of that much more efficiently...

Thrashing around?

[snowwrestler]

Google seems to be sticking its finger in every pie it can find, but the reality is that they are still pretty much a one-revenue-stream company. They've cornered the search-based advertising market to a large extent (though of course they need to keep innovating to play defense). The real question is: how else will they make money? Look at a (perceived anyway) competitor: Microsoft has done a good job of diversifying their revenue streams--they make money from consumers, from businesses, from applications, from OS, from servers, from middleware, from games, from hardware...etc. How will Google do it?

Re:Oh Great! Another....

[mpapet]

I see your point and I strongly prefer no adverts at all and that's why it's lost on me.

GoogleTV Domains...

[Anonymous Coward]

here are some domains that google has registered for googletv...

googletv.com
googletelevision.net
googlehd.net
googlehdtv.net
googlehidef.com
googlehighdefinition.com

found this at http://googleaddiction.blogspot.com/2005/09/google tv-in-works.html

Internet TV--Think of the possibilities

[JourneyExpertApe]

Just think, the day when we'll be able to watch television programs wirelessly is almost here. Er, wait, that happened in 1928.

Google TV already exists in a form

[CatOne]

Google has a relationship with Current TV (Al Gore's TV company), and a spot called "Google Current" that airs on a regular basis.

This could be a more formal solidification of the relationship, or hiring for someone to manage the relationship, or I guess it could be something altogether new. Certainly Current TV isn't 100% full of non-repeating content, so there is some room for Google to take more of their broadcast time.

See:

http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=96 20_0_4_0_C for one example. Or, do a Google search for "Google Current TV" Just don't look for details on Eric Schmidt at the same time ;-)

Real Video Search Today

[Anonymous Coward]

A decent video search with one click to videos... I wish others would follow suit:

http://www.truveo.com/

Google formation in TV is solidified

[stlloftstyle.com]

If you remember, almost 3 months ago. Google made a very large investment in Current Communications Group. This company provides broadband over powerlines.

It would only make sense that they provide TV over this super high speed network.

Boggle your mind with Boogle

[tomasdore]

Welcome to Boogle, the new service from Google. Boogle works with your world to help it to boggle your mind.

Microsoft TV already here

[droopycom]

Dude, try the other way around. MSTV (MSFT IPTV platform) has been here for some time now (at least 2 years), and they were all over the Press for IBC...

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,122466,0 0.asp

Google has a lot of catchup to do if they are trying to do the same thing. But maybe they aren't. MSFT is about the platform, GOOG might be about the content...

What about "Current"?

[Anonymous Coward]

I stubmled on this channel called "Current" recently and it seemed to me very much like a "GoogleTV" channel. It featured clips like news related to the most searched items on Google. I'm not sure who owns/runs it though.

Re:What about "Current"?

[v3xt0r]

yea, this is a channel fully sponsered by google.

They even had reporters at the katrina disaster handing out Redhat Linux hats to children they interviewed, and made sure they wore the hats during the interview. =/

Not for us.

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux users.
 

Maybe kphone works with it, but it still does not show up in google/talk/other ims
 

:-[

VOIP combined with social networking

[elucido]

And you get Google's social networking, VOIP, WIFI, Dodgeball, GoogleTV, all into one. This means you'll be able to meet friends who search for the same stuff, watch the same shows, and who are in the same area, and talk to them over VOIP for free.

Google has the perfect businessplan, this will make them bigger than Microsoft if they pull it off. The question is simply a question of pulling it off.

Google Talk

[Luyseyal]

I thought the idea of Google Talk was Instant Messaging with cheesy Voice-over-Computer crap. I was thinking something more in line with Vonage or Packet8.

-l

Re:Google Talk

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it is still beta. You can currently hook up USB phones to it, and the site says they anticipate adding outcalls to the PSTN network in the future. So eventually you may get your wish.

the remote for googleTV

[busto]

http://www.thinkoptics.com/Digital_Home.html

Navigating the Digital Home

The modern digital living room is an amazing place. Large HDTV screens, Cable/Satellite reception, and Digital Video

Recorders (DVRs) are showing up in more and more homes. But it doesn't stop there. Many homes have broadband

always-on Internet access, wireless networks, and game consoles connected to the family TV. And PCs are now

starting to make their way into the living room in the form of Media Center or Home Theatre PCs that offer even more

choices and capabilities.

But with all this choice comes some serious pain. TV navigation is quickly approaching a bottleneck in the Digital Living

Room with an ever increasing number of devices to control and a rapidly growing amount of digital content to navigate:

Remote: WavIt MC: Media Center Remote Control-

When combined with a simple and intuitive user interface, navigation and control of digital multimedia content(e.g., video, music, TV, Internet) is transformed from a tangle of devices and equipment to an easy and natural

lean-back experience. Revolutionize the digital living room. "Point-and-Flick" and every device is under your immediate control. Convergence like you have never experienced it before.

Expected release: Spring 2006

a rest please

[sickOfGoogleStories]

for fuck sake enough of the google stories. Tomorrows slashdot headline - google employee goes for a piss and decides to create a google golden shower at piss.google.com - please, enough. Some other real stories please. No matter how long the slashdot editors stay in a circle jerk about google they are not going to get hired there.

Google Current - Already on TV

[Fez]

Google already has a TV presence. There is a channel on DirecTV (Channel 366) called "Current TV" and Google has a presence on there multiple times per hour. See The Schedule.

Current is also carried in a couple of other major markets. I'm surprised this hasn't been brought up more often.

Current TV and TiVo

[sdpinpdx]

I tried watching current tv, but found it frustrating to find the bits I cared about. Maybe I'm just not their demographic, but sitting there for hours hoping something interesting will go by is just not how I want to spend my free time. I have TiVo to avoid that problem.

It's currently un-TiVo-able, because there's no meaningful show description data in the EPG (at least there wasn't in the first few weeks when I gave up). It would help if they could at least put certain categories on at certain times so you wouldn't have to FF through 4 hour chunks of irrelevant junk.

They don't seem to do tagging, but if they did and you could catch them with tivo keyword wishlists you'd have something like flickr for video. That is, let users tag videos in the current.tv screening room, push this out in the EPG data for the "pod", and let us catch the pods with the tags we want. Of course this means the EPG data has to have pod granularity, or something close to it.

Getting the EPG data updated fast enough might be a problem. You might have to live with a 24-hour lag (actually lag and sample rate are separate issues) on tag space. It seems like EPG updating could be much faster on DirecTV (for near-term stuff, anyway), but I'll bet there are process reasons that it's not.

This directly conflicts with their late schedule binding feature, so some portion of the pod stream would probably have to be reallocated to stuff scheduled further in advance. For example, make the first pod of every hour one of the stream of yesterday's top pods.

You can get something close to this with a del.icio.us RSS feed of tagged video, but most if us can't watch it on our TVs (yet).

Frankly

[Nathonix]

is this really a bad thing? google may be an evil corporation, but they are an evil corporation that has us by the balls, eating out of their hand, and frankly, they have a good service going on, why not let them take over the world, give ol' gates a run for his money, and make the world a better place for all mankind. or something like that.

Nothing wrong with acquisitions

[grahamsz]

It's much cheaper to acquire a company that has something cool and proven than invest in your own projects which may or may not be succesful.

Google seems to keep a good balance between the two.

Re:Nothing wrong with acquisitions

[fm6]

Where did I say there was anything wrong with acquistions?

GoogleTV

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Mountain view, and and the Comcast channel line up, there is a channel called "Google TV".

When going to the channel, there is a message that says you have to subscribe to it.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

GoogleTV ad no longer exists

[Anonymous Coward]

The GoogleTV product manager ad no longer exists on Google jobs. The link in the headline doesn't work anymore and GoogleTV doesn't turn up in Google's "Search Jobs" search results.

FairPlay and the iPod Shuffle

[supersat]

Unfortunately, many songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store will cause your iPod Shuffle to crash. Illegally stripping the DRM is the only way to get your purchases to work on it. The issue has been known to Apple for months now, and there's still no fix.

What's also particularly scary is that the iTunes Music Store Terms of Service essentially says they can close up shop or change their systems, and you'll be SOL:

d. You acknowledge that some aspects of the Service, Products, and administering of the Usage Rules entails the ongoing involvement of Apple. Accordingly, in the event that Apple changes any part of the Service or discontinues the Service, which Apple may do at its election, you acknowledge that you may no longer be able to use Products to the same extent as prior to such change or discontinuation, and that Apple shall have no liability to you in such case

google talk

[geddes]

does anyone actually use google talk? Or did you give it up like I did after downloading it the first time and realizing though everyone may have a google talk account through gmail, that they use thier AIM accounts anyway

Hot hot

[srikrishnak]

more n more people are trying to enter in to the drawing rooms. It seems inevitable as the IT market is highly competetive n the profits are dropping. letz see how it will turn.

Re:G...

[DarkLox]

Hmm...but then Apple would turn around and say Google is infringing on their naming convention.

ie:
iTunes
iMac
iChat
iPhoto
iPod
iSuckAtMakingPosts

There's already a GoogleTV on TWC in Austin

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, I don't know about where you guys are, but here in Austin, TX, we already have GoogleTV. It's a special television station called GoogleCurrent and on Time Warner Cable's Digital Cable service. It's actually pretty nice!

Google is taking over the world

[Punker22]

Google is going to run the world within the next 10 years i swear to god.

So what?

[snowwrestler]

unbreakable DRM is theoretically impossible

So what? So is an unstealable car, but I don't see many cars without locks on the doors and ignition.

It's tempting to reduce the argument to the logical extreme, but there is a continuous range of security, consequences, AND respondent behavior. As illegal things get harder to do, or punishment more likely, fewer people are likely to do them.

Picture a quadrant plot of the axis wide open --> unbreakable against the axis likely consequences --> no consequences. Plot all human activities and you get an envelope. The more you can move an activity into the "unbreakable & likely consequences" corner, the fewer people will do it.

I know--digital media is different because it's so easy to distribute, right? Not necessarily...it's networked behavior and thus subject to Metcalf's proposition of value: the square of the number of participants. So with each person an effective DRM discourages, the overall value of the network declines considerably. The ability to attract and hold participants falls away, and over time the network is reduced to a hard core of dedicated true believers. This is no different than the effect of law enforcement in the trafficking of stolen car parts--also a networked behavior.

It doesn't matter that in the case of digital media you're trafficking in perfect copies rather than physical items. What determines people's behavior is how easy is it to do, and how hard is it to get caught. An effective DRM makes it hard to strip the protection from the file (not impossible, just hard for the average citizen). An effective enforcement regime makes it seem possible that if you distribute or receive the files, you might get caught (it doesn't even have to be efficient to achieve this...just well publicized).

There's no such thing as perfect security or perfect law enforcement, so to argue against any DRM because it's not perfect is pretty much a straw man argument. The question for each DRM scheme is the same as for any security scheme--how much does it cost (in any units), how does it impact ease of use, and where does it move the needle in the behavior quadrant?