Posts Tagged ‘smart phone’
Google's Next Game Changer: Google TV?
Wednesday, October 6th, 2010I was reading this article in the USA Today the other day about how Google’s next big product launch this Fall is going to be Google TV. Google TV promises to bring a more user-friendly web interface to our TVs than the consumers in this country have ever seen. Google’s vision seems to be to offer up web content side-by-side with the same television programs that we have been watching for years. Google also plans to offer an “app store” where consumers can buy free and paid applications that can run on the set-top boxes that will also be required to use this new service.
Whenever I think of the Internet on my TV I always think of those annoying wireless keyboards and terrible user interface that I have been finding in hotel rooms for over a decade for a $5 per day fee. I always thought that the major flaw in these systems was the terrible user experience – it is always very difficult to navigate the web on these systems because of the lack of a usable mouse and the slightly different web browsers that never seemed to support the web content I wanted to see. Google seems to be promising a solution to these problems by simplifying the browser and keyboard and supporting all standard web technologies.
I am still going to wait until I am able to use the new Google TV interface to form my opinion but I am hopeful that if any company can successfully bring the Internet to our TVs that it is Google. If they can convince consumers that the Internet on their TV is the same or comparable to the Internet on their PCs, then I think they have a good shot at being successful here.
On a side note, I also wanted to mention that today Skype announced that they have released a version of their product that is compatible with Android, the up and coming operating system for smart phones. Watch for the popularity of these mobile video calling applications to grow in the near future!