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GoogleTV Coming Soon? 240

Posted by CmdrTaco from the looking-pretty-official dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Flexbeta writes that Google is looking to hire a full time project manager for GoogleTV in Mountain View, CA. The candidate must posses experience developing/launching products in one or more of the following areas: interactive TV, set-top-boxes, personal video recorders, video-on-demand, IP TV or cable TV technologies. Google recently announced their interest in the text messaging market by releasing GoogleTalk; this came to no surprise to many that were already hearing rumors month's before GoogleTalk was released. Google is also working on providing free WiFi service to some regions of the San Francisco bay area. Google is without a doubt expanding their operations beyond the search engine market which makes the possibility of GoogleTV realistic. "
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GoogleTV Coming Soon? More

GoogleTV Coming Soon?

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  • DRM? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rovingeyes ( 575063 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @04:11PM (#13624323)
    So I hope their content will be DRM free, right?

    • Re:DRM? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Kimos ( 859729 ) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `todhsals.somik'> on Thursday September 22, 2005 @04:55PM (#13624709) Homepage
      I work for a Canadian Telco that's just making the move into digital TV. The reason we're in the middle of implementing DRM on our network is so that we can expand the content we can provide. Most of the larger providers won't sell to us unless we sign a contract with them saying that their content locked and managed when it is sent out to customers. If Google goes DRM-free it would seriously limit what they would be able to provide...
      • I wonder how well that goes over when Canada and the US have such vastly different laws regarding what a private person can do with broadcast content.

        I wonder about GoogleTV, so if I search for a program on something rather ordinary like say soap will I get 1000 programs on SOAP ?

        I KID I KID!

        Also, I really like the new /. setup, although I was looking forward to XHTML 1.1 but I guess I can't have the world now can I? It's going to take a lot of work to get colapsable comment trees working in GreaseMonkey ag

    • Re:DRM? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Chyeld ( 713439 ) <chyeld.gmail@com> on Thursday September 22, 2005 @04:58PM (#13624738)
      DRM is not inheritantly evil. Unreasonably restrictive DRM is evil.

      I have no problem with iTune's Fairplay implementation, and I have every confidence that Google would be able to come up with something just as good in terms of comprimise between the content producer and the consumer.

      • Re:DRM? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by MikeFM ( 12491 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @05:05PM (#13624785) Homepage Journal
        DRM is evil. It controls how the consumer can use what they've fairly bought. It makes it more difficult for other artists to sample and extend works. It makes it less likely that content will still be accessible to future generations.

        If not evil then at least short-sighted and selfish.

        • Re:DRM? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Chyeld ( 713439 ) <chyeld.gmail@com> on Thursday September 22, 2005 @05:25PM (#13624952)
          DRM is the compromise the consumer makes to have available to them a quality digital version of a work. Without DRM, there is no incentive for the artist to provide the digital version, as DRM'less digital versions can be immediately redistributed.

          A good DRM scheme is one where the consumer's ability to use the work in the manner they wish isn't impacted while the ability to simply redistribute millions of copies is curtailed.

          iTunes' implementation of Fairplay is such a system in my eyes. Yes, the AAC files are protected. But you can authorize up to five computers to play them, you can stream the music over the network, you can even reduce the quality of the file by burning it to CD and then re-ripping it into a DRM'less version.

          As many people bitch about the fact that the music industry not adapting to the new age of digital (which I whole heartedly agree with), a lot people still seem stuck in the whole "Tape" generation of thinking where copies weren't detrimental because they never came close to the quality of the original. That isn't true anymore and you need to stop acting as if it were. Unauthorized copies, while not as a horrible threat as the suits want to make it seem, are a problem.

          It doesn't take a white beard and half a century of experience in the world to realize that anytime you have a setup that depends on everyone playing along, a setup where one person can screw it up for the rest of us, that not only is that person going to exist but they are going to make it their goal in life to screw it up just to be an A-hole.

          Your goals should not be to stamp out DRM but to work to find a setup where both sides of the equation feel as if they have gotten a fair trade out of the deal.

          • Re:DRM? (Score:5, Interesting)

            by Dominatus ( 796241 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @05:29PM (#13624980)
            Files on iTunes are compressed. CDs are digital, considerably higher quality, and DRMless. The compromise should be that Im paying almost as much as a real CD for compressed music in a non-tangible form. It should NOT and I repeat NOT restrict what music player I can play it on, forcing me to sacrifice quality if I want to play what I bought on a non-iPod.

            • Re:DRM? (Score:4, Insightful)

              by Chyeld ( 713439 ) <chyeld.gmail@com> on Thursday September 22, 2005 @06:02PM (#13625288)
              Your first statement contradicts your second. If AAC files are of lesser quality than a CD, then converting them to CD to be able to play them where ever (which iTunes allows) would not reduce the quality of the file.

              If AAC files are of a greater quality then a CD, then your first argument that you are paying the same price as a CD is meaningless.

              The fact of the matter is iTunes DOES allow you to burn to CD. So anytime you wish to remove the DRM, you can do so. And if you truly wished to do so, you could even use a program such as Playfair or Hymn to allow you to remove the DRM without converting the file in anyway whatsoever.

              People who complain about something as lax as iTunes' version of Fairplay are the ones who are never going to 'get it'.

              The WHOLE point of copyrights was to assure the author that their works would not be stolen enmass as soon as they were released. In the world before digital, this was fairly simple. Copies were either guaranteed to be of lesser quality than the original or would require so much effort to create that there were few who would find the work and risk of punishment worth doing.

              That is NO LONGER TRUE. Anyone can rip off a work if it's not protected and just as the RIAA has unwittingly proven, there is no way you can possibly catch everyone doing it once it gets to that point.

              You need to wake up and realize, just as the music and movie industries need to, that the world has changed and sitting there bitching about how it's so unfair that they expect you to compromise is the equivalent of the RIAA sitting around bitching about how the internet is killing the music industry.

              You are both stuck in the old world analog view of life.

          • Re:DRM? (Score:5, Interesting)

            by Peter La Casse ( 3992 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @06:06PM (#13625330)
            DRM is the compromise the consumer makes to have available to them a quality digital version of a work. Without DRM, there is no incentive for the artist to provide the digital version, as DRM'less digital versions can be immediately redistributed.

            Less incentive? Sure. Necessary to perpetuate the current content distribution paradigm? Sure. But no incentive? None at all? Without DRM, nobody would ever create any digital content?

            That's a stretch. See http://www.bradsucks.net/ [bradsucks.net] for a counterexample.

            A good DRM scheme is one where the consumer's ability to use the work in the manner they wish isn't impacted while the ability to simply redistribute millions of copies is curtailed.

            "Good" DRM appears to be impossible, or at least not invented yet, by my standards. Here's how I wish to use digital media: I want to store it on my file server and access it on whatever device I happen to be sitting in front of at the moment. I want to be able to access it with a variety of programs, and when it's out of copyright (I'm an optimist) I want to be able to manipulate it to my heart's content with a variety of tools that I'm able to apt-get (or write myself, if I'm ever so inclined.) I want to be able to access it locally even when my internet connection is down, and even when the content provider I acquired it from goes out of business / stops making content / decides they don't want me to access the content any more. (I don't enter into contracts that give the content provider that power.)

            Tivo + Slingbox is close. MythTV is close. CD music has been there for years.

          • Re:DRM? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by pavon ( 30274 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @07:09PM (#13625767)
            DRM is the compromise the consumer makes to have available to them a quality digital version of a work. Without DRM, there is no incentive for the artist to provide the digital version, as DRM'less digital versions can be immediately redistributed.

            If there is no incentive without DRM then there should also be no incentive with it. Because DRM is a myth.

            DRM only restricts people who own legally obtained copies from using them in non-approved manners. It can do nothing to prevent people with illegally obtained copies from using or distributing the work. Furthermore, it can do nothing to prevent people who have legally obtained copies from converting them to non-DRM form.

            This is because unbreakable DRM is theoretically impossible. Every DRM scheme ever created has been broken shortly after it became widely used, and once a single person breaks the DRM on a work then you are back to where you started.

            Therefore, the restrictions enforced by DRM are inherently limited to those who chose to obey the law to begin with, while it is no barrier those who choose to infringe on copyright.

            DRM is compromise - a compromise where the consumer agrees to give up his fair-use rights, the electronic companies agree to complicate thier products, and in return none of the parties, media producer included, get anything of value in return.

            Sorry, but that is not the kind of compromise that I want to make.

      • Re:DRM? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Hans Lehmann ( 571625 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @05:45PM (#13625127)
        Who defines "unreasonable". You can bet it will be them, and not you.

  • stimtv... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 22, 2005 @04:12PM (#13624332)
    hmmm some other people are working on the whole internet tv stuff...http://www.stimtv.com/ [stimtv.com]

  • TiVo Competition (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mysqlrocks ( 783488 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @04:13PM (#13624335) Homepage Journal

    personal video recorders, video-on-demand

    Sounds like TiVo is going to have some more competition.

  • They should just buy... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bc90021 ( 43730 ) * <bc90021 AT bc90021 DOT net> on Thursday September 22, 2005 @04:13PM (#13624336) Homepage
    ...this company [criticalmention.com].

    Disclaimer: I don't work there, but I did interview there.

    • Most of Google's products are developed in house (even if they are based on open standards). Most of their big projects were not swallowed and absorbed from existing companies (ala Microsoft and Hotmail).

      And really, I like it that way. Is there a better method for insuring that the project "does no evil"?

  • First TV, then movies, books, radio, etc. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Jubalicious ( 203314 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @04:14PM (#13624338)
    I for one welcome our new Google overlords...

  • The crawling chaos, Nyarletgoogle? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Cyclometh ( 629276 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @04:14PM (#13624348)
    Crazy. And people compare Microsoft to the Borg. What's next, GoogleLaundromat? GoogleBeer? (beer Googles?)

    The mind, it boggles.

  • Splitting hairs, I know (Score:4, Informative)

    by Xarius ( 691264 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @04:14PM (#13624350) Homepage
    Google recently announced their interest in the text messaging market by releasing GoogleTalk;

    But that should really read "Instant Messaging" since Text Messaging, at least in the UK, is synonymous with SMS on mobile telephones,

    unless GoogleTalk does this?

  • online or over-the-air (Score:3, Insightful)

    by NetMagi ( 547135 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @04:15PM (#13624357)
    I wonder if this station would be over-the-air or over-the-net?

    Given their popularity and success of almost everything else they're launched, if they were to launch an on-line tv station with quality content I think they'd have a real shot to be in line with other major networks in a short while.
    • The distinction might might moot if google ends up putting wireless APs all over the country.

      Of course, if the question is, "will google start channel 5 VHF stations", I would say that is unlikely. Firstly, the project manager position that was linked to doesn't seem fitting for such an enterprise, and secondly, it doesn't fit with their past patterns.

      It would be more likely that they would actually design a protocol from the ground up to do pure 'net based interactive TV, and then pipe it through al

  • More background: research from 2003 (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 22, 2005 @04:18PM (#13624383)
    I saw this mentioned over on GMSV earlier today [siliconvalley.com]. The author of the post mentioned a 2003 Google research paper [www2003.org] that makes for pretty interesting reading. Here's an excerpt:

    Many daily activities present information using a written or spoken stream of words: television, radio, telephone calls, meetings, face-to-face conversations with others. Often people can benefit from additional information about the topics that are being discussed. Supplementing television broadcasts is particularly attractive because of the passive nature of TV watching. Interaction is severely constrained, usually limited to just changing the channel; there is no way to more finely direct what kind of information will be presented.

    Indeed, several companies have explored suggesting web pages to viewers as they watch TV. For example, the Intercast system, developed by Intel, allows entire HTML pages to be broadcast in unused portions of the TV signal. A user watching TV on a computer with a compatible TV tuner card can then view these pages, even without an Internet connection. NBC transmitted pages via Intercast during their coverage of the 1996 Summer Olympics. The Interactive TV Links system, developed by VITAC (a closed captioning company) and WebTV (now a division of Microsoft), broadcasts URLs in an alternative data channel interleaved with closed caption data [17,2]. When a WebTV box detects one of these URLs, it displays an icon on the screen; if the user chooses to view the page, the WebTV box fetches it over the Internet.

    For both of these systems the producer of a program (or commercial) chooses relevant documents by hand. In fact, the producer often creates new documents specifically to be accessed by TV viewers. To our knowledge, there has been no previous work on automatically selecting web pages that a user might want to see while watching a TV program.

    In this paper we study the problem of finding news articles on the web relevant to the ongoing stream of TV broadcast news. We restrict our attention to broadcast news since it is very popular and information-oriented (as supposed to entertainment-oriented).

    • For example, the Intercast system, developed by Intel, allows entire HTML pages to be broadcast in unused portions of the TV signal.

      Gee, this sounds virtually identical to the Teletext systems used in Europe for the past 30 years, only with IMG tags...
    • You should've quoted the next line too:

      Our approach is to extract queries from the ongoing stream of closed captions, issue the queries in real time to a news search engine on the web, and postprocess the top results to determine the news articles that we show to the user.

      This sounds like exactly what a search on Google News [google.com] does. If you're not convinced then keep reading:

      As is common in the IR literature [18] the inverse document frequency idf of a term is a function of the frequency f of the term in

  • This was speculated by many when Google Radio was being discussed on Slashdot. (Search seems to be broken or I would have posted a link to the article & comments).

    I'm just waiting for telepathy.google.com. Or tstv.google.com -- although I heard you can get there from Google image search.

  • perfect timing. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by admactanium ( 670209 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @04:21PM (#13624417) Homepage
    oddly enough, i just theorized this plan yesterday over lunch with a friend of mine. being in advertising, i can see the potential here. in much the same way google delivers "unobtrusive" ads in their search engine, they can delivery custom long-form video content with banners or logo bugs in them. the major cost of television is the broadcast and the infrastructure needed. that's why you see television being run by very few large corporations. once you minimize the difficulty of distribution, the production costs of MOST tv content is quite low. the cost of a 30-second tv commercial can run into the millions. if you can use that money all in production for long-form content and only a fraction of it for distribution, then you have great potential in the world of marketing.

    in the end, i also think it will IMPROVE a lot of content. since nobody really wants to download an infomercial, the content will have to be interesting/informative to make it worthwhile. for those of us in media, we should buckle up, because the whole paradigm is about to change.

    • >> the major cost of television is the broadcast and the infrastructure needed ... and you think the cost of the infrastructure equipment to boost the whole internet bandwidth for full-on concurrent video to billions of homes will be less?

      >>> it will IMPROVE a lot of content. since nobody really wants to download an infomercial,

      Somehow I doubt that commercials will be sepeartely downloadable (or skippable in any other way either). Just like TV today, You'll be forced to watch commercials in o

    • Re:perfect timing. (Score:3, Informative)

      by garcia ( 6573 )
      Perhaps you haven't seen Current TV [current.tv] yet... Not only do they allow viewer content submissions, allow "pod" viewing on their website, and have a radically different approach to showing their content, they are also apparently heavily backed by Google.

      Now, none of that is really that important. What *is* important, IMHO, is how Current TV does advertising. They don't seem to be having a lot of commercials in your standard sense (they do have some -- but I guess because they are mostly submissions they don't
      • hmmm, at least there are two people watching it...
      • I was going to mention that Goggle is already in the business of producing TV but you had beat me to it ;)

        Google Current TV is pretty interesting, they pay people up to $1000 a showing (I think) for a 7 minute clip (in a 'prime time' slot) users not only submit clips, they also Vote on which clips to air on the network. Not bad, you produce an interesting clip, submit it through the currenttv site, and it's actually better than the other stuff other people are putting on there and you can get it voted on a

  • Hmm... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What if Google doesn't really know what they want to do, but are just fishing for ideas. They've got a lot of money, and a lot of press saying they're going to be bigger than Microsoft.

    Do they have a business plan, or are they just feeding off the hype?

  • Windows only??? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Will this be Linux unfriendly as well? Like:

    Picasa
    Desktop
    Earth
    Talk
    Secure Access

    ???????????
    • I would not call Talk unfriendly at all since it uses XMPP and works fine with gaim.

      I don't hold it against Google that they didn't write Yet Another Jabber Client for GNU/Linux. They've also been fairly consistent about exposing their services in a SOAP-y way, so you could implement the gmail notification/tie-ins fairly easily, if you felt like it.
    • Let's look at your points critically, shall we?

      Picasa: Purchased from a seperate company, porting will take time.
      Desktop: Nobody on Linux wants this; significant community rejection.
      Earth: Purchased from a seperate company, porting will take time.
      Talk: GAIM and other IM clients are being recommended instead; GTalk is not even a really great Windows front end for Jabber.
      Secure Access: never heard of google secure access.

  • Coming soon? Try "already" (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ivan256 ( 17499 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @04:23PM (#13624434)
    Google appears to have added their name to a frequent (seems coutinuous to me) segment on Al Gore's new "Current" network. It's been running for at least a week now.
  • ...if they are going to release a free browser [opera.com] as well ;)

  • Google is without a doubt expanding their operations beyond the search engine market which makes the possibility of GoogleTV realistic.

    I guess Google Space Vacations are realistic too, seeing as how they're hiring for their moon base [google.com].

  • google for your google (Score:5, Funny)

    by m0rphin3 ( 461197 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @04:27PM (#13624476)
    In the words of the immortal comment [slashdot.org] (seems like the first occurrence): "In a few years you'll be driving your google to the google to buy some google for your google."

  • TY, Captain Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Red Flayer ( 890720 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @04:28PM (#13624486) Journal
    "Google is without a doubt expanding their operations beyond the search engine market which makes the possibility of GoogleTV realistic."

    Other than the fact that absolutley no one should be surprised by this...

    Search engines are not Google's market. Search engines are Google's clients' market. Google sells advertising, and search engines are one of their delivery mechanisms. Previously on Slashdot, Google print ads have been discussed.

    It's really just horizontal expansion. Online advertising, print advertising, and now television (and you can bet they'll be delivering ads) -- what about radio?

  • Hell, I'd be happy with Google VOIP.
    -l
  • All that soon-to-be-less-dark-fiber is going to come in handy when they're streaming HD video over the net. As a writer, I imagine it's an absolute nightmare creating a show, getting it on some cable channel and still making money. Maybe all these tech-centric angel investors will start spending money on independent video production (the longtail of Bruckheimers) which would solve the production quality problem with most amateur content.

  • ICrave(g)TV? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Bob Loblaw ( 545027 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @04:32PM (#13624539)
    They should hire the ICraveTV guy who got clobbered by the entertainment industry lawyers years ago. He was ahead of the times and had a very functional IPTV system going. Maybe Google has the money to protect the concept this time.
  • Kind of an embrace and extend thing?

    but I won't worry till google conception is announced.

  • TV Guide (Score:4, Interesting)

    by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF ( 813746 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @04:35PM (#13624559)

    I'd say a TV guide style service that also doubles as a scheduling service for PVRs would be right up their alley for starters. Lots of people want to know what time TV shows are playing, and what an episode is about. Making it easy, fast, and searchable would be better than any of the others I've seen lately. I use TitanTV to do scheduling with my PVR right now, but I'd be happy to look at a google alternative. Maybe some of the ads would be targeted at things that actually interest me or are related to the shows I'm looking up. I'd also bet a number of Google employees have MythTV boxes at home they'd love to have a great scheduling service for, ala Tivo, especially if it included suggestions based upon the shows you already watch.

    Anyway, that is my prediction. I don't think it is likely Tivo will release a hardware box anytime soon, although it would be great to have another credible competitor in that space. A google branded MythTV box with a simple and easy UI could be a real winner. TV over IP is also a fast moving space with amateur video podcasts and DTV both starting to have content I actually like to watch. Still, my bet is on the first idea, an online TV guide and PVR scheduling service. It seems to fit their MO the best.

  • Google already has a semblance of a TV presence now on Current TV (http://current.tv/ [current.tv] Every 30 minutes or so Current runs a short video bit derived from recent popular search items. You also get treated to a faux-Ramones (or is it real? I can't quite tell) version of "What a Wonderful World"

    As riveting TV goes, I think Current has a way to go, but its off to a good start. A lot of the stuff is fairly iteresting, although some of the political humor, like "Super News", is dreadfully heavy handed. And as

  • Will anybody want to buy... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @04:44PM (#13624626) Homepage Journal
    ...a set-top box that's in beta for 5 years?

    Seriously though. Except for their original search engine, Google hasn't done that well bringing new products to market. They keep introducing cool features and web applications. But major new products? Nada.

    And no, I'm not forgetting Google Earth or Picasa. Both of which they acquired.

    • They keep introducing cool features and web applications. But major new products? Nada.

      What is a "product" but a collection of cool new features and applications that has a frame (and possibly a price tag) attached around it?
      • Have you ever worked for a software vendor? There's a lot more to a product than a collection of features. There's support, planning, marketing, ongoing development... That last thing is especially important if you're considering adopting a product. No matter how good a product is, people will not adopt it if they think it will go away in a year or two. Except, of course, for software dweebs like you and me who get software just because they like using it. But we're not the one who drive software spending.
    • The service may be in beta for 5 years, but the set top box doesn't need to be.

      They could probably snatch up as many of these [2wire.com] as they need...

  • Hmmm (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Reality Master 101 ( 179095 ) <RealityMaster101@gmail. c o m> on Thursday September 22, 2005 @04:48PM (#13624653) Homepage Journal
    Makes we wonder... yep.

    $ whois googlemusic.com
    Registrant:
                    Google Inc. (DOM-1314687)
                    1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View CA 94043 US

            Domain Name: googlemusic.com

                    Registrar Name: Markmonitor.com
                    Registrar Whois: whois.markmonitor.com
                    Registrar Homepage: http://www.markmonitor.com/ [markmonitor.com]

            Administrative Contact:
                    DNS Admin (NIC-1467103) Google Inc.
                    1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View CA 94043 US
                    dns-admin@google.com +1.6502530000 Fax- +1.6506188571
            Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
                    DNS Admin (NIC-1467103) Google Inc.
                    1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View CA 94043 US
                    dns-admin@google.com +1.6502530000 Fax- +1.6506188571

            Created on..............: 2003-Feb-13.
            Expires on..............: 2008-Feb-13.
            Record last updated on..: 2004-Nov-01 09:49:36.

    Makes me wonder if eventually Google might do their own music distribution service. Not sure how it could succeed much better than the other music services, but you never know. Of course, this was registered way back in 11/2001, so they may have been grabbing domains as they thought of anything.
  • segment they *might* get into. Will someone please explain to me what special competency they have in entertainment?

    They have a very powerful core technology and do a very good job of selling/delivering ads I've seen.

    -maybe the way this plays out is they provide the infrastructure to deliver URL's to a broadcast, but I hardly see an urgent need being filled, much less the Studios buying into the idea. I

    -maybe they are trying to do an end-around all of the communication oligopolies, courageous move, but I
  • There is a new network on DirectTV feeds called 'Current TV'

    It uses google search data for news broadcasts and story selection. It also lets users submit content.

    Google runs or is somehow related to a new television network. http://www.current.tv/ [current.tv]

    I've been watching this new network on DirectTV.
    Basically they do serveral things well. The network is really addictive to watch.

    - All (almost all) shows are 7 minutes long unless they are REALLY interesting.
    - Viewers can submit video's and Current.tv airs them

  • Microsoft TV inevitable (Score:4, Funny)

    by wardk ( 3037 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @05:07PM (#13624798) Journal
    sheesh, now MS is going to have to rule TV too, having that bad case of google envy.

    I anticipate the announcment of a totally rock solid vapor TV that will ship with Tinhorn.

  • Getting hot in here... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Hosiah ( 849792 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @05:09PM (#13624817)
    I sure am glad Google isn't evil, because God are they ever getting *BIG*.

    If they turn to the darkside, we're all screwed.

  • An Interesting MSoft/Google Comparison (Score:4, Interesting)

    by chia_monkey ( 593501 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @05:11PM (#13624836) Journal
    Here's an interesting thought. Both Microsoft and Google have made loads of money doing their thing. However, each company has decided to go about their lives in completely different ways as they amass their fortures.

    Microsoft got loaded after they achieved their market dominance. What did they do with their money? They put some into R&D. They bought some companies out.

    Google came along and made their loads of money too. And they too have bought a few companies. But here's where the differences are. Microsoft simply wanted to protect their monopoly. They bought companies they they saw as threats or companies that they thought would help them maintain their monopoly. Google on the other hand seems to have been exploring with their money, putting it into the "cool" technologies that are still just outside the threshold of everyday consumers. It's as if Google is trying to pull it into the mainstream. It's these fringe technologies that Google is going after and preparing to assert their mark.

    Thoughts? Comments?
    • What a BS!

      Hmm... let see some of the "cool" technologies that Google has been investing lately (publicly announced).

      GoogleTV - Oh, is that like Microsoft Digital Media division which has been investigating TV on demand for over a decade?

      GoogleIM - Oh, is that like Microsoft's Messenger that MS has had for close to a decade now?

      GMail - You mean Hotmail competitor?

      Yeah, it really looks like Google is blazing its own trails... NOT!!!

      Hey, Google may out maneuver Microsoft and execute better, but please stop thi
      • You're right in the sense that Google didn't invent all those. But wait, I didn't say they did. I also didn't say Google's strategy was better, altruistic, and cooler. My point was that the strategies of the two companies was different. Microsoft is concerned about protecting their dominance in Windows and Office. Google is not. Microsoft sees threats and they go for the jugular to take out these threats. Some may say that's wrong, others may say that's good business practice. Google didn't invent Gmail but
        • That's pathetic. You were arguing that Google's strategy was "cooler (your word)" than MS, even though everything Google is doing is just following what MS has been doing for years.

          And your argument about MS' only aim is to protect its monopoly is bogus.
          MS's TV efforts is perfectly representative of the fallacy of your argument.

          Set Top Boxes are NOT threatening MS's Windows business (at least not any near future). You can argue that they were trying to EXPAND their business but not PROTECTING their existing
          • Let me explain a little bit better. Not to be argumentative...just an explanation of what the thoughts are.

            First off, I did not say "Google's strategy was cooler". I said they were "putting it into the 'cool' technologies..." with cool being in quotes. Not because I thought it was cool, but what the mainstream thinks is cool. "Wow, Google is putting money into this 'new' or 'cool' technology". Not my thoughts...just the general public's.

            Your points about set top boxes are valid to a sense. It depends
            • You are still not making a cogent argument. You say that MS is trying to dominate everything in the computing world by going to set top boxes. Well, you can easily argue that Google has the kind of dominance in Search/Internet as MS does in OS. Which means that you can make the same argument against Google as say that Google is just trying to dominate everything in ad-based world (set-top boxes, in this sense is much closer to Googles main business than MS). So the question still is; why is that when MS d

  • Pick me! Pick me! (Score:4, Funny)

    by glamslam ( 535995 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @05:15PM (#13624864)
    I once put together a MythTV box that I built from scratch!

  • GoogleBigBrother (Score:4, Funny)

    by Duncan3 ( 10537 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @05:36PM (#13625043) Homepage
    In soviet Russia... the government watches everything you do 24/7 and kills you when you write bad stories about them.

    Here we have Google for that.

  • Thrashing around? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by snowwrestler ( 896305 )
    Google seems to be sticking its finger in every pie it can find, but the reality is that they are still pretty much a one-revenue-stream company. They've cornered the search-based advertising market to a large extent (though of course they need to keep innovating to play defense). The real question is: how else will they make money? Look at a (perceived anyway) competitor: Microsoft has done a good job of diversifying their revenue streams--they make money from consumers, from businesses, from applicatio

  • Google TV already exists in a form (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CatOne ( 655161 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @05:49PM (#13625165)
    Google has a relationship with Current TV (Al Gore's TV company), and a spot called "Google Current" that airs on a regular basis.

    This could be a more formal solidification of the relationship, or hiring for someone to manage the relationship, or I guess it could be something altogether new. Certainly Current TV isn't 100% full of non-repeating content, so there is some room for Google to take more of their broadcast time.

    See:

    http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=96 20_0_4_0_C [alwayson-network.com] for one example. Or, do a Google search for "Google Current TV" Just don't look for details on Eric Schmidt at the same time ;-)
  • Google already has a TV presence. There is a channel on DirecTV (Channel 366) called "Current TV [current.tv]" and Google has a presence on there multiple times per hour. See The Schedule [current.tv].

    Current is also carried in a couple of other major markets. I'm surprised this hasn't been brought up more often.

  • Frankly (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Nathonix ( 843449 )
    is this really a bad thing? google may be an evil corporation, but they are an evil corporation that has us by the balls, eating out of their hand, and frankly, they have a good service going on, why not let them take over the world, give ol' gates a run for his money, and make the world a better place for all mankind. or something like that.

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