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Going All-Google To Replace Your PC and TV Service

Posted by Unknown on from the owning-things-is-so-90s dept.

GMGruman writes "James Curnow writes 'Google's vision of computing involves tossing your PC or Mac and moving to a cloud-centric, all-Google ecosystem. Call it the Googleplex: a mix of the Chrome OS-based Chromebox PC or Chromebook laptop, one or more Android tablets — perhaps a 10-inch model for work and a 7-inch Nexus 7 for entertainment on the go — and a Nexus Q home entertainment system that you control via an Android device.' So he takes the 'Googleplex' for a test drive to see how well it delivers on the Android/Chrome OS vision." But what about throwing xbmc or MythTV onto an old (or cheap new) box with a couple of huge drives (HDTV's being glorified monitors and all)?

39 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. Sounds like a dream come true... by Scowler · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... for advertisers.

    1. Re:Sounds like a dream come true... by dimeglio · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Advertisements already pay for "free" TV (well, some of it). If Google can give away software and cloud services using advertising why isn't that a reasonable option?

      --
      Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
    2. Re:Sounds like a dream come true... by Scowler · · Score: 5, Insightful

      We're not talking about the generic TV advertisements we just fast forward over using the DVR. We're talking 24/7 tracking, personalized, invasive, interactive commercialization being thrust at your face any time you interact with an electronic device. I'm surprised anyone in the AdBlock Plus crowd (which presumably includes most of Slashdot) would even consider going near this paradigm.

    3. Re:Sounds like a dream come true... by Darkness404 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Perhaps because its not all that bad? Assuming there would be no possible way for the government to use this information (which is really the main threat) how is being able to have more relevant ads directed at you a bad thing? Especially if it means cheaper hardware?

      Consider cable TV for instance, despite the fact you are paying your cable provider who is then paying the networks for content, you still have ads with few exceptions. Even the networks that don't run ads still have annoying interruptions (this is especially true in radio also).

      When it comes down to it though, as long as the content is being displayed on your device and runs through your local network, you have the ability to control it and you always will.

      --
      Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
    4. Re:Sounds like a dream come true... by perpenso · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Assuming there would be no possible way for the government to use this information ...

      "No possible way"? If this information exists then the government is always one small step away from accessing it.

      ... how is being able to have more relevant ads directed at you a bad thing?

      You might want to ask the teenager who wasn't ready to tell her parents she was pregnant, whose home started receiving pregnancy related targeted advertising. Pick something you are not ready to share with parents or a spouse or your boss (advertising goes to work not home - for example ads in a browser when your boss walks in), reapply the preceding.

    5. Re:Sounds like a dream come true... by Scowler · · Score: 3

      When it comes down to it though, as long as the content is being displayed on your device and runs through your local network, you have the ability to control it and you always will.

      Not if that content is copyrighted.

      I think you overstate people's tolerance for ads these days. Hulu Plus is... I canceled it after less than a month of using it. And how long can you browse without AdBlock turned on before you go nuts?

    6. Re:Sounds like a dream come true... by ColdWetDog · · Score: 3, Funny

      If it works as well as the current round of 'targeted advertising' your pregnant teenager might well get Viagra adverts.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    7. Re:Sounds like a dream come true... by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 3, Insightful

      personalized, invasive, interactive commercialization being thrust at your face any time you interact with an electronic device

      I dunno about 'invasive' but frankly I wish ads *were* more personalized to me. I'm not going to buy a Ford Truck or talk to my doctor about Cialis. I'm not interested in tampons, Sunny D or a Verizon cell phone.... Tell me about something I might care about. Of course if Facebook is anything to go by, that's an impossibility - They can't get it right either.

    8. Re:Sounds like a dream come true... by RocketRabbit · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Of course, all this talk about targeted vs. untargeted ads ignores the elephant in the room: People don't like ads at all, and will block them if possible. Why even bother debating targeted vs. untargeted when it's clear that the majority will choose no ads, knowing that it's an option?

    9. Re:Sounds like a dream come true... by dgatwood · · Score: 4

      The problem is, we already have that. It's called Amazon's suggestions. And it usually does a pretty good job. What it does not do is provide a reason for the product vendors to spend money on financing unrelated things like TV shows.

      Unfortunately for companies like Google and Facebook, the only way targeted advertising can work well is if it is done by a company that actually sells products and knows what a given person has actually been buying. You can't realistically hope to guess what someone is going to be interested in buying based on what they search for or what they talk about (unless they're searching product listings, and even then, without the ability to delete stuff from your search history, searches are useless). It just doesn't work that way. I talk about computers all the time. That doesn't mean I'm in the market for buying a Dell. I'm pretty much a Mac-only house except for a couple of Linux boxen (either old junk hardware or self-built). And I rarely buy software; I have software that does what I need. And I rarely buy computer peripherals. So pretty much anything I talk about on Facebook or search for through Google is going to be a red herring.

      Worse, in a world where just about everything has product reviews on Amazon, if you don't make a good product, it doesn't matter how much advertising you do. When buying products that cost more than a few bucks, most people research the product through such a site. Thus, we're rapidly moving to a point where R&D spending is crucial to sales, and advertising only matters if the potential buyer has never heard of your product.

      Which leads me to the ultimate realization that, at least in the long term, advertising is dead. With the availability of better alternatives that do a great job of showing you things that you want to buy (and only while you're in a shopping mood), there's just no room for advertising in a modern society. Apart from advertising to encourage consumption of cheap trinkets like cans of Coke or movie tickets or whatever, advertising can't realistically provide much benefit to the advertisers above what they get from "people who bought X also bought Y", coupled with reviews. And even then, the value is dubious unless the viewers just happen to be hungry or in the mood to go watch a movie in a crowded theater with a sticky floor and screaming kids throwing popcorn at them.

      Unfortunately for Big Media, this means that in the fairly near future, content creators are going to have to face up to reality and choose one of two paths: direct sales or patronage. Ad-supported content is on the way out, and the sooner everyone acknowledges this, the sooner we can move on to more sustainable business models.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    10. Re:Sounds like a dream come true... by Scowler · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That's a narrow view of advertising, one that I suggest is incomplete.

      Let's say, hypothetically, there is a Coca-Cola ad on the side of this page, even though you rarely drink Coke, and have no plans to drink more at the moment. And let's say you only superficially see and note it. And you still don't rush to the vending machine to purchase a coke.

      Has the ad failed? I say probably not. For most people, they may subconsciously note that Coke is a common thing to drink, a tasty thing to drink, and there may be a statistical increase in the likelihood that they purchase one a week from now, a month from now, with some restaurant meal.

      In other words, advertising has long term payoffs, from simply informing customers about a product to getting into a person's subconscious.

    11. Re:Sounds like a dream come true... by edumacator · · Score: 2

      Spam is about as non-targeted as you can get.

      It is!?!

      Thank God, I thought all those Extenze and V!agra ads came from sites my wife had been surfing. I feel so much better now.

      --
      An important change for education.
    12. Re:Sounds like a dream come true... by dgatwood · · Score: 2

      I have a degree in communications. I'm well aware of that purpose of advertising. However, as I understand it, those subconscious effects primarily change a person's impulse buying choice between commodity products (products for which there is little to no differentiation between vendors' goods). The more expensive the buy, the less likely people are to buy on impulse. The more differentiation between goods, the more likely people are to have a strong preference.

      The problem is that although there's still a lot of impulse buying, it is mostly for stuff that would piss people off if they had to watch ads for it, like laundry detergent. These days, the ads people would choose to watch, if they were allowed to choose ads (but were forced to watch ads), would be ads for products that are actually interesting. Unfortunately, apart from informing the customer of what is out there on the market (which sites like Amazon can do much better), those ads are unlikely to sway their buying decision because of the instant availability of reviews and other information that provide much better differentiation than ads possibly could.

      As the amount of available ad-free content grows, people get more annoyed by ads, and tolerate them less, choosing ad-free alternatives instead. This futher compounds the problem, both by reducing the number of people who see the ads and by associating a negative emotion (annoyance) with the product being advertised, which is likely to do more harm than good. And even if people don't get annoyed at the ads for commodity producers like Coke or Tide, they can't possibly provide enough advertising dollars to support all of the world's media needs.

      Incidentally, the opinion that advertising's effetiveness is waning is supported by studies.

      Now I will admit that there is still the possibility of replacing some of that ad revenue with money from product placement, but there aren't enough companies who could benefit from that to pay the bills long-term, IMO, and that doesn't work nearly as well for non-entertainment content (news, for example). And it certainly won't work as a means of paying the cost of developing software, maintaining websites, etc.

      Unless, of course, this post was a paid product advertisement for Tide, in which case... well, call me a shill.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

  2. A MythTV box? by Tackhead · · Score: 3, Insightful

    But what about throwing xbmc or MythTV onto an old (or cheap new) box with a couple of huge drives (HDTV's being glorified monitors and all)?

    But then the content would be cached in a large cheap local buffer, and not streamed from the cloud over bandwidth-constrained wired or wireless connections. Not only would MAFIAA not approve, but Google/Doubleclick wouldn't get analytics/metrics.

    You didn't think that the availability of cheap general-purpose computing hardware was supposed to benefit the consumer, did you?

    1. Re:A MythTV box? by jythie · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I think the bigger problem is MythTV and xbmc. They are great if you enjoy playing with computers, but if what you want is a zero maintance device that lets you start interacting with the content you want, they are pretty terrible and require non-trivial upfront research since you have to make sure all the 'old' hardware you get for it will work.

    2. Re:A MythTV box? by arkane1234 · · Score: 2

      Actually yeah, I do subscribe to cable. It costs me $40, and don't have to worry about updating/maintaining a computer attached to my TV. I also have Netflix for $7.99 and I can watch movies through my ps3, apple tv, sony bluray, etc.

      Then again, just the fact that you're using a computer to get stuff onto your tv makes me believe it's not about rights or anything else, it's just that you don't have a lot of expendable income. I'm sorry.

      --
      -- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
  3. I actually have by taktoa · · Score: 2

    most of this set up. Google TV on my HDTV, an Android phone, and a Chromebook for the kitchen. And I like it... they're robust, functional, easy-to-use products.

  4. Or, I could just be a normal person, and... by wierd_w · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Buy whatever electronic devices I find favorable, and configure them however the fuck I want.

    That way I can avoid their "ecosystem", with its inherant vendor lock in, and pervasive bullshit entirely!

    As a consumer, that sounds far more desirable.

    However, I do see where other normal consumers may fall victim here, since getting all the equipment and services from a single company should (theoretically...) make setup and use easier.

    Personally though? When I plop down on the couch to veggify some braincells, I want a few annoyances as possible, which mans the equipment has to do whar *I* want, and not what a bunch of shyster lawyers in hollywood, and a bunch of beancounters in the bay area google HQ want.

    If that means DIY home theater with MythTV and a raid array, so fucking be it.

    1. Re:Or, I could just be a normal person, and... by Darkness404 · · Score: 2

      A normal person -would- use the same vendor for everything because in general it "just works". The cable box/DVR "just works" for them, if it breaks they just call Comcast/Dish/DirectTV and get another one. Its the geek option to go for MythTV and the like. And honestly, even the Google option is going to give you much more freedom than the average person has now with an HDTV, Cable Box, DVR and blu-Ray player.

      --
      Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
    2. Re:Or, I could just be a normal person, and... by Nerdfest · · Score: 2

      ... and people wonder why I'm so pissed at Apple for making this locked-in 'eco-system' bullshit palatable. For now, the Google devices mix and match with pretty much any technology and tend to use open standards, but it's worth keeping an eye on them. The attraction must certainly be there.

  5. Unrealistic vision by frovingslosh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Google would like you to believe in a world where you get all of your media from their devices across the Internet. Unfortunately, that just doesn't work in the real world. The little old lady next door has already been hit with insane overage charges by AT&T because she dared to watch Netflix. Follow the Google vision and your overages will not only include things like Netflix but will include your own movies and even music unless you have an uncapped provider who you can believe will stay uncapped (AT&T only announced the caps last year). Maybe in Kansas City where Google offers fiber and doesn't impose monthly limits this would be a good thing, but not in the rest of America where our government grants monopolies to service providers but lets them chip away at the service rather than building out their networks.

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
    1. Re:Unrealistic vision by edcheevy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Isn't that the point of the whole Google Fiber experiment? If Google can get generate enough interest to merely break even on Fiber, they can deliver ALL of our information from the cloud, uncapped, and fully scanned/monitored/analyzed 24/7... Advertisers will have no choice but to go through Google. The government will be fully on board because Google will grant monitoring access.

    2. Re:Unrealistic vision by olau · · Score: 2

      While that may be true today, Google is probably building this stuff so that when the world is ready, Google will be there for them.

  6. Scary by TheRecklessWanderer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I fear a world run by google and apple. They are both companies with a shiny outer layer and a dark dark underneath that won't be clear until it's too late to do anything about it.People need to remember that (especially google) the people using their services are not their customers, and that google doesn't owe them one thing. They will use every method at their disposal to be able to charge more for whatever advertising/marketing/human sorting they are working on that day. Nothing is free, you pay one way or another. Wether you pay with money or with your personal information, it's just the same.

    --
    Mean what you say...say what you mean.
    1. Re:Scary by Nerdfest · · Score: 2

      If you're interested in products and services from those companies, I think You need to make a couple of simple decisions.

      Which do you value less your freedom or your privacy?

      You don't actually need to pick either, but both of these companies do have attractive products and services for those willing to accept the loss of one of these. Personally, I'm fine with it as long as we always have a reasonable choice to to pick one of these. If either gets to be big or pervasive enough (like Microsoft did), we lose ... again.

    2. Re:Scary by theRunicBard · · Score: 2

      Well yeah, google doesn't owe them anything - their services are largely free. What, you think that Google Search has some obligation to give me something back? Isn't that what the fantastic search was? Extend that to other Google services. Free email, chat, social network, maps, videos, etc, etc, etc, ETC ETCETC! Isn't that worth a few ads? Couldn't you... I don't know, NOT click on the ads? Can we just... grow up and accept that nothing is completely free? You say that, but you still complain about it. What do you propose as an alternative? Some services charge you and you complain about the cost. Google rolls in for free (money-wise), but with ads, and people complain about the ads. Let me guess, if Google just got rid of all tracking and ads, you would complain that Larry Page isn't giving you foot massage? And if he gave you one, you would complain it didn't have a happy ending?

    3. Re:Scary by oakgrove · · Score: 2

      I'm a "real customer" of Google, e.g., I spend a lot of money for their services. Guess what. They have never offered to sell me their users' information. Pull the tinfoil a little tighter, man.

      --
      The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
  7. Cant happen by nurb432 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Not going to debate if its a good idea or not, as ISPs with their non-neutral bandwidth limits have eliminated this sort of option anyway.

    --
    ---- Booth was a patriot ----
  8. TV Ratings from Google? by joelwhitehouse · · Score: 2

    I wonder how AC Neilsen feels about this. Why spend the big bucks Neilsen's market research on what people are watching -- when google can tell you what people are watching, and for less?

  9. A tablet won't do for work. by Wee · · Score: 3, Informative

    Seriously: a 10" tablet for work is a joke. Even one 24" 1920x1200 monitor is a chore sometimes.

    -B

    --

    Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.

  10. Sorry, your connection is dropped by pubwvj · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't like using software that depends on online connections to operate. Connections are not fast enough or reliable enough. Nor are they secure. Compute Locally.

  11. Re:"PC or Mac" by jythie · · Score: 2

    Sounds like a fine grasp of technology to me. Everyone knows when the word 'PC' is used the speaker means an x86 CPU running a Windows varient and Mac referrers to a computer made by Apple. In the real world words have multiple meanings depending on the context, and going around complaining that someone is using the words incorrectly if they were being used in another context is needlessly pedantic.

  12. Just Flashblock for me by tepples · · Score: 2

    And how long can you browse without AdBlock turned on before you go nuts?

    I don't use an ad blocker; I just use an SWF blocker, which keeps advertising at a tolerable level. If advertisers have something substantial to say, surely they can boil it down to text or a still JPEG, and if so, let 'em. Flash ads are for video sites like YouTube and Newgrounds.

  13. So this is the future by cvtan · · Score: 2

    Cell phone crappy camera instead of a good camera. And now: TA DA!!! Watching video on a 7-in screen. I'm too old for this nonsense.

    --
    Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
  14. Aha! Theories disassembled by SuperKendall · · Score: 2

    The more differentiation between goods, the more likely people are to have a strong preference.

    Consider Coke and Pepsi. The difference between them really is minor, and yet they evoke incredibly strong preferences in just about anyone I've ever met.

    although there's still a lot of impulse buying, it is mostly for stuff that would piss people off if they had to watch ads for it, like laundry detergent.

    Are you sure about that? People seem to hold strongly onto laundry detergent brands.

    These days, the ads people would choose to watch, if they were allowed to choose ads (but were forced to watch ads), would be ads for products that are actually interesting.

    So what is interesting about deodorant? And yet - Old Spice Guy.

    If the only advertising that will work anymore is interesting advertising, then that is the ad agencies job, to make ANY product advertising interesting. There is no product so lowly or humble that interesting advertising cannot be created for it. The days where you could simply slap a logo up and people would be forced to stare at it for 20 seconds are over, so the advertising industry has to adapt. But it can, we have already seen it do so.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  15. I bet... by WaffleMonster · · Score: 2

    Every huge technology company (Or in googles case advertising company) wants total control over all your gear and your data.

    Being honest and telling everyone this is actually your plan or that this model somehow represents the future and you will like it is an interesting strategy however the answer is still "no".

    This is for googles own good too. The more we stand by and help google corrupt its own soul the worse off everyone including google is in the long run.

  16. PC? No. TV? Meh. by billstewart · · Score: 2

    Replace my primary data storage with cloud services? Not a chance. Run my applications cloud-based off cloud-based storage rather than on local storage? No, that's way too slow; even serving disks across Wifi is slow. Not only is it not cost-effective, and not performance-effective, but more importantly, I don't control my data that way.

    Get most of my TV from Google/Hulu/Netflix/etc. instead of Comcast? Meh. Most of it's probably there, and digital broadcast TV probably looks better than analog most of the time, but still, it doesn't strike me as worth the trouble.

    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
  17. Re:Aha! Theories disassembled by dgatwood · · Score: 2

    Consider Coke and Pepsi. The difference between them really is minor, and yet they evoke incredibly strong preferences in just about anyone I've ever met.

    IMO, Coke and Pepsi taste nothing alike. Coke has a much stronger bite to its flavor—almost a tartness—that Pepsi does not have. They are a commodity from a functional perspective. From a flavor perspective, not so much.

    Are you sure about that? People seem to hold strongly onto laundry detergent brands.

    Yes, I'm sure. People typically buy what they are used to buying, so the main advantage to advertising of products in an established commodity market is hooking new buyers who haven't formed an opinion yet or to introduce new products.

    So what is interesting about deodorant?

    Nothing. Which is why I haven't put up with watching a deodorant ad in about ten years.

    There is no product so lowly or humble that interesting advertising cannot be created for it.

    Your threshold for "interesting" must be a lot lower than mine. Unless I'm either learning something new or being seriously entertained, it isn't interesting. And nobody seems to care about the first one, which pretty much leaves "seriously entertained". Statistically speaking, such ads, though memorable, don't result in a lasting brand impression, which makes them not particularly useful.

    --

    Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

  18. Re:Aha! Theories disassembled by SuperKendall · · Score: 2

    Your threshold for "interesting" must be a lot lower than mine.

    Very likely, mine I think is just about perfectly average, which makes me a great leading indicator of what ads will be popular - any ads I like have invariably been widely liked. I enjoy analyzing ads and thinking about why they might work or not.

    However, I cannot believe you can talk about advertising without acknowledging the massive success that was the Old Spice Guy. If you don't understand what happened there, I don't think you know the face of modern advertising or what has been successful.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley