Now with control of the web's largest video library YouTube, Google is setting its sights on another new frontier: television. It's teaming up with Intel and Sony to access the web's most popular services through TVs. For Intel, it's a way to get more of it's low-end chips into more TVs...for Google, the money's in the advertising potential...and naturally it'll be a Sony TV bringing this into your living room.
Many of the newest TVs on the market do have internet connectivity and built-in Web-based programming. Sony's latest HDTV, for example, comes with access to YouTube (owned by Google) as well as a variety of websites. But streaming internet-based media has been hampered by regional restrictions and licensing agreements - many popular sites can't be accessed outside USA.
Google TV plans to make the Web as accessible on TV as it is on computer, giving users everywhere access to sites across the spectrum, from social marketing to media content.
What's interesting to me is that this concept was first floated back in 1995 by Nicholas Negroponte who foresaw how the interactive, entertainment and information worlds would eventually merge, conceptually and technologically. (See? I have remembered something from uni!)
2 comments:
Hi Phil, John here from Darwin (Ex-Contiki travelling mate) You might also know that Nicholas Negroponte is responsible for OLPC. Cheers. PS Mini said she finally caught up with you via eMail sorry we missed you in NZ. I have been an avid reader of your blog since. Keep up the good work and if you are ever in Darwin....
Hi, John:
Thanx for the reminder!
For readers who aren't familiar, OLPC is The One Laptop Per Child Association, a non-profit organization creating educational opportunities for the world's poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop. Negroponte says the mission is to eliminate poverty through knowledge and education.
Go, Nick!
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