The technology world seems to be shifting its focus from the smartphones and tablet wars to the traditional TV wars. Recently, Apple Inc. moved Jeff Robbin, an Apple software engineer, who had built iTunes, to their TV division, which makes Apple a considerable competitor to the well set TV makers such as Samsung and Sony. Now Google is taking yet another shot to revive its television division. The search engine giant has not been able to woo consumers with its TV sets, as the reaction for the same has been disappointing.
Google has revamped its TV service and unveiled the new version on Friday. The company officials noted that they have plans to create about one hundred online “channels” of original video programming for its YouTube website.
Google seems to be using its assets in the best possible way to make its TV service popular. Recently, it had pumped in $100 million for YouTube and one would now know that the search engine giant had planned a number of steps for its Google TV, well in advance. Google has YouTube channels featuring a number of videos which has been created by partnering various media organizations, and involving celebrities including rapper Jay-Z, Madonna and skateboarder Tony Hawk.
The company, with such efforts would even make it easy for developers to make well defined apps for Google TV. On the other hand, the new 2.0 version of Google TV has a few tools for recommending movies, TV programs and online videos to TV viewers.
Looking at the current scenario, Google TV comes built-in on Logitech International set-top boxes and on certain Sony Corp television models. These collaborations have helped users in accessing online videos and websites on their TVs. Along with it, one can use the specialized apps such as video games.
Google Product Management VP Mario Queiroz, who is leading the Google TV initiative said, “There’s a lot of thirst for using the Web in the living room.”
Queiroz notes that the company considers Google TV to be a “long-term bet”, as he quoted Reuters during a demonstration of the new product at Google’s Mountain View, California headquarters last week, “I don’t know what exact month this will take off.” He continued saying, “I do think there’s been a lot of progress over the past year and this next year there will be a lot more progress.”
However, the thoughts here even noted that the company does not shy off from agreeing to the fact that the TV division’s challenges have been frustrating for Google’s ambitions to rule the living room and compete with the likes of Samsung and Sony. Now, as Apple’s efforts have been appreciably noted, Google will be competing with a long known competitor in this field too.
Google officials provided no disclosure on the number of users, who have been using its service, which was launched last year with great fanfare. But if we go by the noting of a few analysts, version 1.0 has been a flop. Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey, “The fire they were trying to start never even got a spark.” He stressed on saying that the service is way too expensive, pricing at $299. However, analysts note that Google on its part would not want to ignore the TV division, as it knows that TV is too attractive a market to be ignored.