An employee answers phone calls at the switchboard of the Google office in Zurich August 18, 2009. (Credit: Reuters/Christian Hartmann)
(Reuters) - Google Inc, Intel Corp and Sony Corp unveiled "Google TV" on Thursday in the latest effort to marry the Web to television and reach into the $70 billion TV advertising market.
The attempt to bring the Internet into living rooms has frustrated virtually every major player in the technology and consumer electronics industry for years, from Microsoft Corp to Google's new archrival Apple Inc, which was the focus of frequent verbal jabs and jokes.
Television represents an attractive market in which to expand Google's Internet advertising business, which generated the bulk of its $23.7 billion in 2009 revenue, but so far a successful formula has proved elusive.
Google's main focus was to integrate an Internet-style search box into sets which could then look for video and other information on television as well as the Web.
Sony will build devices to launch in the fall -- in time for the 2010 holiday buying season -- with Intel providing its small Atom processors to run machines.
For Sony, whose dominance in electronics has been eroded by the likes of Samsung Electronics, the effort helps it get ahead of rivals in developing a new generation of devices.
"Video should be consumed on the biggest, best and brightest screen in the house. And that's a TV. It's not a PC or a phone or anything else in between," said Google project senior product manager Rishi Chandra.
Best Buy Co Inc will sell devices and DISH Network TV will integrate its service into Google TV. Chief executives from those companies, as well as Google, Sony, Intel and Adobe Systems Inc, all went on stage at Google's developers conference for the announcement.
TOUGH TASK
The effort is hardly a sure thing, based on the track record of other high-profile attempts.
Executives said previous efforts had failed because they dumbed down the Web for television, were closed to participation by others, and made people choose between using the Web or television.
"It's much harder to marry a 50-year-old technology and a brand new technology than those of us in the brand new technology industry thought," Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt acknowledged to the audience of developers.
Portending the potential speed and bandwidth limitations of such a device, embarrassed Google engineers struggled initially to get their TV up and running, and had to ask their audience to turn off their cellphones, which were interfering with Google TV remote controls.
Google's increasingly tense relationship with Apple was clear throughout the conference. Engineers showed off new versions of the Android mobile phone platform, which will also run Google TV and which competes directly with Apple's iPhone.
