SAN FRANCISCO — Microsoft and Apple have been trying to get into your living room for years, with a variety of television-oriented products.
Now Google thinks it can succeed where other computer companies have seen only middling success. The company announced a new set-top box platform here Thursday: Google TV will marry television and the web, so users can search and view both TV and web videos with a single click.
Google TV, which is based on Google’s Android operating system, will have access to Flickr, gaming sites such as Club Penguin, and music sites such as Pandora and Rhapsody. It will combine that with a streaming media interface similar to that offered by companies like Boxee and Roku.
“There are three big limitations with the streaming media devices that exist today,” said Rishi Chandra, senior product manager at Google, speaking at the company’s developer conference, Google I/O. “They try to dumb down the web for TV. They are all closed. Many of these devices have to choose between TV and the web.”
Google has formed partnerships with Sony, Logitech and Intel to create hardware that will run this “smart TV” Android platform.
The Google TV software will be available on TVs, Blu-ray players and set-top boxes through Best Buy in fall this year. It will be independent of the cable service providers. All devices running the Google TV software will have Wi-Fi and ethernet connectivity, a keyboard and a “pointing device” or a mouse.
Google has also partnered with Dish Network to integrate Google TV into Dish’ digital video recorders (DVRs).
Google TV can also be controlled using an Android phone as a remote, says Chandra, and the mobile version of the Android market — Google’s marketplace for Android-compatible apps — will be accessible on Google TV.
“It’s a blockbuster announcement,” says Ken Dulaney, an analyst with research firm Gartner. “Google is bringing its brand and openness to a space where Apple and Microsoft haven’t done much with.”
Google also announced at the conference the release of the latest version of Android OS, Android 2.2, aka ‘FroYo’. It will support Adobe’s Flash Player 10.1, so the mobile operating system’s users can access all those Flash video and animation-heavy sites that are inaccessible to the users of other smartphones. FroYo will also have tethering and hotspot capabilities, enabling phones to share their broadband data connections with other devices, such as your laptop — assuming your carrier permits that use.
“We have big dreams for Android,” Vic Gundotra, vice president of engineering of Google told attendees at the conference.
Three years after Google introduced Android as an open source mobile operating system, it has become one of the fastest-growing mobile platforms. A host of Android-based phones grabbed 28 percent of the smartphone market in the United States, trailing Research In Motion’s BlackBerry devices (36 percent) and ahead of Apple’s iPhone OS (21 percent) in the first quarter of the year, according to research firm The NPD Group.
More than 60 devices run Android today, says Google, including handsets from major phone makers such as Motorola and HTC. Now, more than 100,000 Android phones are activated every day, says Google. And more than 50,000 applications are available on the Android Market now.
Interest in Google’s sold-out developer conference has been so high this year that tickets were auctioned on eBay and Craigslist.
Google’s move into TV platforms comes at a time when its rivals such as Microsoft, Apple and Yahoo have faltered. Apple’s Steve Jobs has famously declared its Apple TV as a “hobby,” while Yahoo’s Connected TV project that brings widgets and apps to TV sets hasn’t gathered steam.
Google could succeed because the company is making the Google TV platform open source and building a broad coalition of partners, similar to what it has done with Android, says Dulaney.
“Apple basically says I will do it all myself and it will be tightly controlled,” says Dulaney. “It provides one dimension in usability but also slows the pace of adoption. There’s also a huge marketplace outside of Apple that wants to participate and feels left out of anything Google does.”
Google TV though is likely to hurt Microsoft the most. Microsoft’s digital media player is shipped with every copy of Windows operating system, but it hasn’t been able to capture consumers’ attention, says Dulaney.
Also at the conference, Google stated that FroYo will have a just-in-time compiler to speed up apps, making them two to five times faster with the same hardware. It will also be Microsoft Exchange–friendly so it will have better security policies for business users and a better way to manage corporate devices running Android.
Android will also offer wireless internet-based downloading of music albums.
Google will also offer AdSense for mobile apps with different ad formats. These formats include expandable ads that will offer more details of the product, and a click-to-call feature next to the ad.
“If Google didn’t act, we face a draconian future. One man, one company, one device would control our future,” Gundotra told attendees at the conference, making a clear swipe at Apple — without mentioning Apple by name. “If you believe in openness and choice, welcome to Android.”
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