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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

stimtv...

[Anonymous Coward]

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

TiVo Competition

[mysqlrocks]

personal video recorders, video-on-demand

Sounds like TiVo is going to have some more competition.

They should just buy...

[bc90021]

...this company.

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

The crawling chaos, Nyarletgoogle?

[Cyclometh]

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

The mind, it boggles.

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.

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?

Windows only???

[Anonymous Coward]

Will this be Linux unfriendly as well? Like:

Picasa
Desktop
Earth
Talk
Secure Access

???????????

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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: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.

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.