Interviews with Digital Media Thought Leaders

A Year Ahead of Google

Podcast Audio | Posted by Phil Leigh on March 19, 2010

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On Wednesday, The New York Times reported a secret initiative termed GoogleTV that is a collaborative effort among Google, Intel, Sony, and Logitech. Essentially the plan is to provide an appliance enabling televisions to also function as browser-or-app-centric viewing screens for an abundance of Internet content and applications. As regular subscribers know, for over a year we have repeatedly emphasized that the natural evolution of television is toward just such a product. One example is this post about our February ’09 Third Generation Television market research report.

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Two points about GoogleTV as reported are particularly important.

First, the device will use the Android operating system and may also integrate the Google Chrome web browser. Since Android is open-source it will likely attract a host of independent developers to create applications for the appliance. Accordingly, popular video websites like YouTube, Hulu, Crackle and Blip.tv, could develop applications permitting their videos to play through GoogleTV. Furthermore, if GoogleTV includes an embedded browser users won’t even need applications to view Internet videos. Instead they could merely visit the websites via the browser much like they do currently with computers. Whether consumers will prefer an interface that’s either apps-centric, or browser-centric, remains to be seen. However, by offering both the utility of the appliance is enhanced.

Second, despite repeated comments that AppleTV is merely a “hobby”, GoogleTV will almost certainly motivate Apple to give much more serious consideration to the Digital Living Room of the Future. We have emphasized this point in our Future of Apple research report as well as in a post earlier this week. At over $220 billion annually, the market opportunity in the United States alone exceeds four-times the size of Apple’s anticipated worldwide revenues this year.