A carefully placed story in the New York Times about Google's upcoming TV service tries very hard to avoid giving anything away. The story was based on "people with knowledge of it" - although not named, because nobody is allowed to talk about it, they clearly were allowed to talk about it and the NY Times knows perfectly well who they are.
So why would a company only talk to the press on condition that everyone had to pretend? The most likely reason is that the project - which has the usual trappings of ahellish cross-company, cross-cultural, cross-market collaboratiion with TV networks, Sony, Intel and other giant business egos - isn't ready to launch, and the pre-launch publicity isnf't ready either (Imagine getting sign-off on a marketing campaign with that roster of behemoths to please. I'd rather sell voodoo dolls in the Vatican). Nonetheless, it has been deemed that we should know Google TV is on the way.
Google has an uncanny knack - one could almost say mischievous tendency - to time its leaks and launches to kibosh its competitors' own announcements. Which could mean that one of its bigger competitors has something similar in the pipeline, Google has wind of it, and suspects that the competition is about to break cover. What could be more useful than already having people talking about Google TV, thus making Apple's TV or Microsoft's TV or Oracle's TV seem like me-toos?
My money, as I've said before, is on Apple, where a TV-sized device makes so much marketing, technical and strategic sense that the hole in reality where it should be is almost painful. And while this is all pure supposition and non-informed comment on non-existent products about which nothing is known -- at least you know who's behind it. Which is one up on the NY Times, I guess.
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Hey - presume you mean something that builds on Apple's existing TV device? Apple have already had a couple of runs at building Apple TV and it's not been a massive seller mostly because it's bloody expensive for what it is and when they first launched in the UK there was one small thing missing - content!!
Microsoft has also been quietly adding some apps to its Xbox Live marketplace such as LastFM and Facebook as well as a Sky TV which blurs the whole TV, Computer, Console divide...
I was thinking about getting one but decided to run an HDMI cable from my mac to my plasma instead which is much easier and much cheaper if you remember not to trip over the cable and bring the whole lot crashing over.
Andrew and Rupert, If this is such a great idea how come the Wii and PS3 web browsers have such little market share? Integrating television with the web is not as good as it has been promised to be. I actually think the Apple approach of big TV with say an iPad on your lap is far more useful for supplementing what you are watching.
On Sunday night for instance while the final episode of Lost was running it was very entertaining to read what the fan base were banging their gums about in real time. If that was overlaid on the TV it would have been very distracting.
Google's vision of Google TV is a bit like Spike Milligan's sock full of custard. It sounds great when you read about it but when you implement it not so much.
"I was thinking about getting one but decided to run an HDMI cable from my mac to my plasma instead which is much easier and much cheaper if you remember not to trip over the cable and bring the whole lot crashing over."
Bury it under the carpet/rug.