Google TV turns on at I/O: runs Android and Flash, partnered with Sony, Logitech, and Intel
By Nilay Patel 
posted May 20th 2010 12:23PM
posted May 20th 2010 12:23PM
Google's not sharing hardware specs, but we're told Google TV devices will have WiFi, HDMI, the Intel CE4100 processor, and... some will have an IR blaster to tune your cable or satellite box, which is just sad. (Like, 1997 sad.) The input devices will all have keyboards, and you'll also be able to use Android devices as a remote, including using voice search to find content and sending content from the phone to the TV. The software is based on Android with Chrome as the browser and full Flash 10.1 support. Since it's Android, there's a version of Android Market -- any app that doesn't require phone hardware can run on Google TV. There will also be a Google TV-specific Android SDK launching in "early" 2011, along with the Android Market for Google TV.
As for partners, it's just as we heard: Sony will launch Sony Internet TVs and Blu-ray players with Google TV in the fall, and Logitech will introduce a set-top box with a Harmony remote and an HD camera for video chat at some point in the future. Dish Network will also launch a Google TV box at some point, while Best Buy will promote the platform as a whole in-store.
Make sure to keep up with the latest from I/O in our liveblog!
please release a firmware update for the sony bdp-s570. one less piece of hardware to buy
@pleasantcrew
They could fix the choppy Netflix HD playback on that model while they're at it too.
@pleasantcrew
I'm sure the s570 is lacking the necessary hardware unfortunately.
call me stupid, but isn't this just a set-top box displaying internet and specialized content? Why would I want this over my HTPC?
@Hate Everything
Because sir, This is GOOGLE. They will make this amazing. I have no reason to think otherwise... None.
@Arealjerk Sir, you are googled zombie.
After looking ever more into this, all I see is Google supporting old crap. Actual stand alone T.V.'s really? Who in the hell is dumb enough to actually pay for monthly T.V. service? Anything you get on T.V. you can find on the web mostly legit. But you can get it all nonetheless. I really can't understand why people even buy T.V.'s anymore. I got rid of mine about a year ago, I mean you can view everything online anyways so who cares?
@gigarath
Some of us actually prefer large screens? And no, "large" doesn't mean 24".
@Jack 1)The biggest monitor I have ever seen in 30 inches. 2)Why would you spend anywhere between $500-$2000 on a screen? 3)Why do you need anything bigger than 20 inches? It's not like your room is a freaking movie theater, and if it is buy a projector. 4) Why would you spend $40-$100 a month to get a broadcast message. I still have yet to understand why people are so stupid with their money. I mean isn't content what matters, and so long as you get a good feed with decent audio what the hell's the point? Go to a freaking movie theater if you want all that crap. And I have even not yet found out why people would spend $10 to see a freaking movie. Play a freaking video game.
Doesn't yet give me an incentive to leave Boxee
I'm not see here any innovative idea.
This is just another Netflix or etc. but from different angle.
And who need to purchase a TV with Google advertisement everytime you watching it? Noone.
And how much this whole thing would cost with crappy processor from netbooks?
Intel just need to earn something from the masses of crappy processors it produced for netbook market - which just fall lower than the ground.
Ignoring all the triumphalism, exactly how does this play nicely with the networks and cable companies (who last time I checked actually generate all this content)? Are the networks really interested in ceding some of their advertising business to Google and its interface?
@mattn2 I wouldn't be surprised if this just leads to double the amount of adds. Imagine watching the last episode of Lost and then getting a popup add for cheap vacations on deserted islands..... No thank you.
"video should be consumed on the biggest, best, and brightest screen in your house, and that's the TV"
Not in my house. I have an eight year old 20" television and a 24" LCD for my computer.
@FitFan In a pretty similar situation. You would've though Google might realise that that's pretty common nowadays...
A new revolution has arrived to a sector that is still not captured by the latest in IT and telecom. Lots of attempts have been made but none has made a huge impact. But it seems this time the story is different as couples of companies are getting together with Google to tear it apart. The sector is none other than what is watched 5 hours on average per day by every American and more than 4 billion people watch it across the world, THE TV…………….http://www.rohitprabhakar.com/2010/05/20/google-tv-tv-meets-web-and-web-meets-tv/
"There's 4 billion TV viewers..."
There ARE 4 billion...
All this Google TV, Apple TV, etc., assumes that all or at least plenty of those "40 Billion" TV users have access to high-speed Internet. That might be the direction of the future, but now it's far from the truth. The reality is that Dish, DirecTV, and the cable/satellite providers have far more reaching broadcasting infrastructure than the Internet and computer companies and their partners. You can pretty much install with great ease a parabolic dish reflector and a set top box ANYWHERE on Earth, no need for anything but the sky... and start charging money.
@shishi
I'm sorry I meant *4 billion*. Didn't mean to count the TV viewers in Andromeda.
All your base are belong to us!
Google's going to rule the world (if they haven't already). I wonder what new invention they'll come up with next. It seems like everything they do is new that no else has even thought about yet.
@Narutogrey what are you talking about? Google has not had one innovative idea. They've only implemented others ideas and made them their own. Mobile phone, tablet pc, web fonts, SEARCH ENGINE, online document storage, an operating system, everything.
@chirpy +1 Exactly, they do seem to execute and integrate better and faster. In this case, having a TV becoming a two way communication and web device is a logical step and simplification over the "notebook hooked up to tv as display".
Next up: Google will privatize air and water.
@shishi I'd be all for Google air and Google water. We'd get free water and cleaner air at the small expense of giving them our shopping habits.
please make one for direct tv
@snowrid3r
Logitechs version is essentially Google TV + Harmony remote which you can control your DirecTV with it.
I know cause I work on it :)
Google become more evil. They want conquer everything. Beware!!!
What's the appeal for UK customers?
I'm gonna go ever-so-slightly OT here, but what about the plush Android next to the TV in the top image? How comes that's not in the Google store? I want that.
I'll wait and see on the Google TV front though, living in the UK and all...
Win Win Win. Go Go Go Google!
"video should be consumed on the biggest, best, and brightest screen in your house, and that's the TV.". oh, what are great discovery....
BTW, what a genius, to think of people would pay money to buy a TV that help you to feed ad to them
We're supposed to know what "I/O" is?
Can this thing even play local content like movies and TV-shows stored on my own network?
What a yawn, another TV box that will try to do to much and will be to difficult for people to use. This is just another webTV, another Windows extender, another thing to fill the landfills.
Nice to see Google announce their next discontinued product today. O course it was a thin announcement. . .no release date, no price, but hey, it's got HDMI!
Vaporware.
Makes me wonder how long Google can really keep this up making everything free ? Right now all their revenue is from Ads and all this "free" ( Google developers need to be paid ) stuff have to start to generate some revenue ( like their revenue from mobile adverts should be on an upward trend ).
Today I believe Google is flush with cash and they are starting to throw money at almost everything ( Android/Orkut/Wave/Docs etc ) and so far I believe only Android seemed to be making some headway though not sure of it's impact on their revenue stream ...
I think this means IPTV over WiMax before LTE.
But will it be available outside the US ? Could simply be another Hulu.
Did I miss it? Howcome engadget didn't report the google I/O demo glitch? Come on engadget, I rely on you for this... If this demo happened on apple I'm sure there's a lot of thrashing everywhere.
I must be an idiot for not seeing the value in this.
I plug my FiOS box into one HDMI jack on my TV. I plug my computer into another. I can use PIP to see them both at the same time, if I want. Each contributes to the TV experience what it does best.
What does Google/Apple/KIRF TV give me that this setup does not?
Future generations will see "convergence" as one of the more laughable obsessions of our time.
Google should buy Boxee.
great..so now that theyre parternered w/ sony on this it will only be a matter of time before this probably shows up on the playstation...time for microsoft to get mediaroom on the 360 cuz the media center extender isnt gonna cut it against this...
Google: Revolutionizing the world.
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-50676-Ottawa-Technology-Examiner~y2010m5d22-Google-TV-puts-competitors-to-shame
I've been boycotting cable TV for 2 years now. Death to the commercial!!! I didn't know Godgle would be the ones to go for it, but take em down!!!
My three favorite companies working together to create something. From the makers of the Core i7, (I use everything Google), and the PS3, we're bound to see something amazing happen. Let's hope this is truly revolutionary.
Behind of Google TV
The idea behind to offer the Internet on the TV is like “oh.. let’s offer it and see how we can earn money in the future”. My friends don’t believe on it. They always try to say something like that, but they have already the model plan to make money with that.
You are right, it is Advertise business. But some people can be asking how this model will run. I am going to explain now.
The model of Google TV Advertise:
The idea is the Set Top Box to make the download of the Video Ads and keep it until the movie which the users are watching to go to the advertising break time. At this moment, the break time, the Video Ads which was saved on the Hard Disk of the Set Top Box will run. I am going to make a example, for example at 8:00 pm on Fox Channel will start the movie “Two and Half Man” in about 20 million TV (the Google TV will earn so much money, then they will be able to offer expensive content TV as free) everyone will be watching the same thing at the same time, but when it is the break time the 20 million TV will play the Ads which is saved in his HD. On this way Google TV will be able to play Ads by suburb, by age and other relevant they will be able to offer to the small shop the possibility to run a small campaign, for exempla, a small restaurant will be able to buy the advertise in just 1.000 TV. Small businesses will compete with large companies in advertisements on TV.
Advertise marketing business run about $ 150 billion in advertising market TV for year around the world. I am going to make a simple estimate of $ 0.05 for each advertises played in each TV. If it is right for the business model plan of today I could say I am not surprise if this model which I explained above go up to run $1 trillion for a year. With this model plan the Ads TV will not be any more exclusive just to the big companies, a lot of small business will start to make the ads in their suburb, and they will be able to buy like $ 200.00 Ads at the TV. But in the other hand they will not pay anymore just $ 0.05 for each TV but they will pay like a $ 1.00 or more for each TV, too expansive but still a very good deal. Small shops are interested to make advertise to relevant costumers and not to statewide. As you see, if the Ads TV become from $ 0.05 to $ 1.00 it is not too far to go from $ 150 billion to a $ 1 trillion for a year (A trillion could be a dream but you got what I mean). If Google go alone with that then they will be a monster.
For the user this business model will so interesting as Google will earn a lot of money and pass to offer as a free the paid content, as Google will be interested to make his set top box popular.
Google has not announced it yet because their idea is that Google TV becomes popular in homes first and then they will propose to the channels this way of selling advertising. Surely the channels will be interested in this integration of their content with advertising that will be on the set top box HD, because the amount paid for each trade will be much higher than those paid by large companies that pay small cents per TVAds.
Do you know how I know they will do this? Because I am who gave this idea to them. Google TV that are launching today is just something they want to popularize in the houses and do not attract the attention of the competition. They plan to roll out this business plan that I spoke only after they are masters of the market.
Can you remember, begin of this year, when the Japanese guy who is the inventor of the game “Metal gear”, Hideo Kojima, said the console in the future will not exist (the console which he was talking about is Xbox, Wii, Nintendo and others). He was making predict of Google TV. As I find out, he has a very strong relation with Sony and Sony is the partner of Google TV. We can guess he already know about the Google TV or he has made a very strong predict, we never know.
Yeah Google, if you had given me the job I would not have written the entire business model that I sent to you and that you intend to launch.
This business model for Google TV, I sent to Google by letter and email and I had got nothing back from them. These ideas I wrote here I put in a Blog which you can read and check the date of the Post which was in the begins of 2009. In the same blog that I sent to some people from Google I made Google Home Page with just the logo, the search box and the two buttons, and after the mouse move appear the links. This page googlefirstpage I put in a domain that I was interested to send to my friends as I was ashamed of my friends search for my domain and find my blog and after reading my blog to start to call me of crazy, I got it and took out the page, also because I thought it was wasted time, because Google did not answer anything. I did not think the idea is so good, but it was not what Google thought they liked it and made it. This idea was originally for Yahoo to focus more research on Yahoo, because other things took the focus of Yahoo Search. And for Google to do that would hide links, for example, advertise, News, Maps, Shopping. But it seems that they liked the idea so much that I sent and not care about that.
I have been years and years sending ideas to Google and asking for a job and they have done a lot of these ideas and I never got something back. For my experience with Google I can tell you man, they are making Google TV because of my idea, the Ads TV which I sent to then. You can see, my idea is original, simple, but original as it is your first time to read something like that, no one wrote this model in the internet until now.
- You can check the TV Ads idea which I sent to Google on begins of 2009:
Search for “lookingforonejob TV Advertising”.
- See also the idea for Android Remoto Control:
Search at Google for “lookingforonejob Android Remote Control” second result.
- See the idea which I sent to YouTube to make the ads more attractive, they are playing all ads video without of sound and playing the sound after the click. I sent the idea to them before they start with that:
Search at Google for “lookingforonejob Video Ads Attraction Play”.
- The idea to meet friend who is near from us is one of my idea which I sent to Google before you read in any place when the Google CEO said that.
Search at Google for “lookingforonejob Android Friend Conection”
-I had read about Facebook is going to make a Question and Answer tools, if you know Mark Zuckerberg, ask him to read my post at Blog, I sent the idea to Google for Orkut and it is a quite good.
Search at Google for “lookingforonejob New way to make money with Orkut”
Please, if you're reading this and know someone important from Bing.com or Facebook I would like to ask a favor, send it to them. I have great ideas to Bing and to Facebook. I am looking for a job.
I think I can’t post my blog link here, but it is lookingforonejob . wordpress . com