Commentary
Could Google TV Be The Picturephone Of The Future?
- by Dave Zornow , May 25, 2010
AT&T is estimated to have spent up to $500 million developing the Picturephone. It seemed like a good idea: Why wouldn't you want to see the person to whom you were speaking? If facial expressions weren't important, why did those thoughtful Internet pioneers invent all of those emoticons to express what words alone couldn't? One of the reasons AT&T failed was the $21 a minute charge for using the bandwidth hungry Picturephone in a pre-fiber, barely satellite communications age. Today we can do it for free via iChat or Skype -- but even free hasn't made consumers want to be seen as well as heard.
Last week Google announced a new service that joins two communications technologies we use every day. Google TV will marry TV with search to improve the consumer experience and, in Google's words, "change the future of television." Anyone who has ever tried to use a remote control to text-search a TV interactive program guide can see the possibilities of searching "all of your channels, recorded shows, YouTube and other Websites" in one place.
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Long before the industry anointed "convergence" as the holy grail of media synergy, AT&T learned that consumers can be a fickle bunch. Google, a dominant communications company of the 21st century, might want to take a history lesson from AT&T, which was the largest communications company of the 20th century.
Google and its technology partners hope to sell new TVs (from Sony) and new HDMI-connectible set-top boxes (from Logitech) to merge your desktop and set-top worlds. According to Google TV Product Lead Rishi Chandra, users will even be able to "speak 'n search" what's on TV using the voice search feature on their Android phones.
Google's business model is to make money by bringing search to TV and extending the reach of advertising through Adwords. Google CEO Eric Schmidt says that because Google TV seamlessly combines TV and computers, "we know a lot more about what people are doing and can make more relevant television advertising -- which should be worth a lot of money."
Will Google succeed where AT&T once failed and Apple TV and Microsoft's Media Center have stalled? There's only one way to end an article that talks about almost 50 years of TV and technology: Stay tuned.
Dave;
I didn't know about the "more relevent television advertising" quote until reading your blog entry. Just like they did with radio advertising?
There might be advantages for Sony to use the android platform, but I think they'd have preferred the demo to not have crashed twice during the presentation.
This sounds more and more like them doubling down on the Google TV Ads concept. Without their help, ATSC tv sets in three years or less will be quite different than the sets of today. (ATSC 2.0). And, the "more relevant ads" won't be served by Google.
John Willkie EtherGuide Systems
I remember seeing the picture phone at the 1964 World's Fair as well as Ford's light beam where headlights are. Back to the future. Anyway, I didn't understand why I would want to do the hair/makeup thing just to talk to someone. For sure now, I still don't get it. I wouldn't want to see me.
There might be advantages for Sony to use the android platform,<a href="http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?user=191126&tag=download+battlestar+galactica">openlearn.open.ac.uk</a>
It's odd to compare an innovation for which no consumer saw a need to an innovation that has caught the world by storm. Still not convinced this "internet thing" will be popular? Hmm. I would argue that millions of people watching TV with a laptop opened up is evidence that Google TV will succeed.
It is famously discussed how the PicturePhone should have been predicted to be a major flop because people are mostly not ready to be seen when they talk on the phone. It is not just not "having the hair ready" or the face shaven or their clothes on. People want the ability to lie about their whereabouts. Any innovation that shrinks our freedom is likely to go unused by most (what we post on Facebook is exhibitionist to most of us so this doesn't count).
The science fiction writers (and readers) of the 50s had not taken simple human nature into account when they imagined the PicturePhone that AT&T foolishly then made into reality.
It is odd that no science fiction writer of the 50s thought, as he groggily headed to shave in the morning, what he would do in one of his future scenarios if the phone rang just then.
Now where you could make the connection above is that GoogleTV will end up collecting a bit too much information about the user. Will each subscriber be identifiable by full name? Does this mean their searches, many of which will be pornographic, will be tied directly to their full name account?
If so, this will be exactly like being naked when someone calls you on the PicturePhone.
Most broadband users these days do NOT have a static IP address. This allows them to openly comment on lots of websites without fear. Will GoogleTV bring with it a static IP address? Will webmasters be able to identify those who visited their sites and/or commented this way?
GoogleTV will have to guarantee complete anonymity and an ever-changing IP address.
Oh Jerry, it is about how we look (OK, where we are, too, sometimes.) You must know it is better to look good than to feel good.;)