SOURCE :AFP, May 21, 2010, 12.38am IST
SAN FRANCISCO: Internet giant Google unveiled an ambitious new service on Thursday that aims to bring the Internet into the living room by allowing television viewers to surf the Web on their TV sets.
"Google TV is a new platform that we believe will change the future of television," Google group product manager Rishi Chandra said while demonstrating the product at a developers conference in San Francisco.
Google TV, developed in partnership with Sony, Intel and Logitech, can be accessed using upcoming Internet-enabled televisions from Sony or digital set-top boxes from Logitech that route Web content to existing TV sets.
Google TV, which seeks to extend the Internet search and advertising giant's reach into the lucrative TV ad market, "combines the best of what TV has to offer and the best of what the Web has to offer," Chandra said.
"The transition from TV to Web is totally seamless," he said during the demonstration for thousands of software developers, which featured a few awkward glitches as Google tried to get the service up and running.
"To the user it doesn't matter where I get my content, whether it be live TV, DVR, or the Web. They just want access to it," Chandra said.
Google TV product manager Salahuddin Choudhary said in a blog post that Google TV will allow TV viewers to get "all the (TV) channels and shows you normally watch and all of the websites you browse all day.
"You can access all of your favorite websites and easily move between television and the Web," Choudhary said.
"This opens up your TV from a few hundred channels to millions of channels of entertainment across TV and the Web," he said.
"With the entire Internet in your living room, your TV becomes more than a TV -- it can be a photo slideshow viewer, a gaming console, a music player and much more," he added.
Google is not the first technology company to attempt to unite the TV set and the Internet and a number of electronics manufacturers are already offering Web-enabled televisions or digital set-top boxes.
Choudhary said the Internet-enabled televisions, Blu-ray players and companion boxes from Sony and Logitech, which are powered by Intel Atom computer chips, would be available this fall through Best Buy stores.
A wireless computer keyboard and box were used during the on-stage demonstration here of Google TV, which uses traditional search to find TV channels or websites.
Sony chief executive Howard Stringer described it as "a very big deal."
"I can't stress that enough," Stringer said on stage. "When you put all this, as we've done for the fall, into the world's first Internet television, the opportunites are, in a sense, just mind boggling."
Google did not announce pricing for the TV sets or the set-top boxes.
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